What draws me into Monica Youn’s poem, “Study of Two Figures (Pasiphäe / Sado),” is the variety of “containers” fashioned in the poem. A container formed by the concept of race. A literal container each story’s main character has to fit themselves inside of. The poem itself as a container that juxtaposes two stories—stories that likely hadn’t been considered in relation to each other, but then, by virtue of the poet, who has positioned herself as a part of the poem container, everything gets contained together. And then, like in a shell game, the poem keeps moving the containers around, so what was one juxtaposition gets re-viewed and reconsidered as something else. Put directly, the poem complicates the idea of setting things in a container, showing that even someone opposed to the biases containers can bear in the general culture, they can’t avoid the meaning a container imposes. So, for instance, if Asianness exists as a container, and that immediately signals the poet’s identity as Asian, there is no escape for the poem from an Asian American category. And yet, not everyone in this Asian American poem will be read as Asian. The figures identified as “tourists” or an “artist” depicting the container (smaller containers in the poem), those people will likely be read as White. All these containers are so complicated!
And the poem only complicates this further by having so many “hot button” containers, like race, which makes the poem’s other “hot button” issues more present and considerable. And, from my perspective as a reader, it fashions the poet in an authoritative position that bears itself out through the remainder of Youn’s book, From From.