Povel

Povel is a fantastic, extended excursion into the mind and life (in words) of Geraldine Kim, a young, first-generation Korean-American girl born into the most modern of all situations: the end of the 20th century in a small town in New England, from which she launches herself through venues urban and cerebral, academic and commercial. The book-length poem's stream of consciousness is just that: a stream, untrained and unleashed. Its form, however, is strictly, if arbitrarily regulated by another or our most modern conveniences: the "centered" stanza, which provides not only a container for the author's thinking, saying, and doing, but also a means of signification: This is a poem-novel -- or "povel" -- by virtue of its self-reliance and its bold marking of territory. Povel is, in the author's own words: "a successful merging between confessional verse poetry and the novel" -- hence the coinage of its title. Povel is also a radical entry in the annals of the several genres. The author purports an omniscient skepticism about its future: that it will ever be read; that it can be appreciated. Its reader cannot help but be amazed and heartened at the vigor this book injects into its chosen forms, and the humor with which its despair is tempered.