The other day, I was talking to my neighbor, a well-read guy, about books and poetry, and he said, “Who understands poetry anyway?” His question reminded me of Janice Mirikitani’s statement from her inaugural address as San Francisco’s poet laureate: “It had been my experience in school that poetry was esoteric—art elevated above life—rarefied and inaccessible.” As an antidote to the feeling that poetry is inaccessible and therefore meaningless, I would recommend Mirikitani’s book of poems, Love Works. Mirikitani’s poetry is accessible, straightforward, and topical, with some turns of phrase that sparkle like jewels, despite others that feel a little heavy-handed. Mirikitani makes it her mission to “...redefine poetry as a means to connect with others, and to make poetry a bridge, spanning communities, ethnicities, continents.” Love Works is an excellent example of a poet making poetry matter.

The primary theme that runs throughout Mirikitani’s poems is the necessity of breaking through the silence experienced by victims of abuse, racism, or poverty. The poem “Moth in the Closet” is told from the point of view of a moth watching a little girl hiding from “the large man / who smells like mash and chicken feathers.” In this poem, the moth tells the story of the girl’s fear and abuse because she is unable to tell it herself. Most of the poems in this collection explore the struggle to find a voice, especially for women, and celebrate those who do. In “Generations of Women,” Mirikitani tells the stories of her grandmother, her mother, and herself experiencing racism as Japanese-Americans and pain as women dealing with disappointment in marriage. The first two sections of the poem end with the sentence “There are no tears / for moments as these,” signifying a lack of ability on behalf of her grandmother and mother to express their sorrow and frustration. In the third section of the poem, about the third generation of women, the speaker proclaims:

Generations of yellow women,

gather in me,

to crush the white wall

not with the wearing of sorrow,

Not with bitterness or regret.

We crush the white wall

our voices released.

The third generation is able to speak for herself and for those who have come before her. When the line “There are no tears for moments as these” is repeated in this section, it means that tears are no longer necessary as a means of expression, because the speaker has found a powerful voice for all of them.

Mirikitani uses conversational language in free verse poems with varying line lengths, giving an effect that’s often very much like prose broken into short lines. This style of writing enhances the overall theme of learning to break one’s silence: to be heard, you also want to be understood. Being cagey or elusive is the opposite of speaking clearly. In most cases, the clarity works well with the poetic imagery or figuration, as in these lines from “Moth in the Closet”: “And every flame / shall taste / her wings.” This is not inaccessible, confusing diction; it’s straightforward and to the point, but still lyrical and imaginative. Other lines, however, sound clunky as they strive for accessibility: “Women are the yin of romance in the yang of struggle,” from “Delicious,” or “When I was in high school one of my best friends was Roberta,” the first line of “Roberta.”

The poems in this collection are narrative, telling stories that have a beginning, middle, and end. The narrative approach makes the poems accessible, if occasionally predictable, because the plot of each is easy to follow. In the poem “Kamikaze on a Clothesline,” for example, a little girl is tormented by the kids in her apartment building for being Japanese. The neighbor rescues her dramatically, “swinging a samurai sword around his head.” It’s easy to imagine this story as a movie, which is enjoyable, but it doesn’t necessarily give as much depth to the situation as it might have if it were freed from the strict narration. Some of the endings feel a little pat or moralistic, such as the last lines from “His Dominion,” a poem about a small boy hitting a small girl in a parable about violence against women: “She tells her mother about her day, / talking only of the boy / who destroyed her creation, / who painted her face red / with crayon, blue with bruises. / Her mother says: ‘That means he likes you.’” This ending strikes me as heavy-handed; I feel hit over the head with the message.

The poems stick to relatively proselike sentence structure and syntax, occasionally using slightly unusual punctuation or capitalization to emphasize a word or a point. Mirikitani sometimes places a period before the end of the sentence, or forgoes a period and uses a capital letter to begin the next thought anyway, like these examples from “Soul Food”: “My fish is raw. / on shredded lettuce...” or “You say / There are few men....” Sometimes she uses alliteration, rhythm, and rhyme in a way that makes me think that many of them would work exceptionally well read aloud, as in “You Bring Out the “B” in Me”:

You bring out the B word in me

A burnishing sunrise BE-ing in me

A bridge of visible Beauty

that spans even chasms of bigotry.

Sometimes in the quest for accessibility, however, the poems veer into speech making or sentimentality. I am wary of poetry used as a means of recovery, because the work can tend to sink into the language of therapy or talk shows. The poem “Iron Butterfly” skirts this edge in lines such as “And I in circles of recovery / discovered my tongue in the mouths / of women telling stories / changing whispers of shame and sorry / to shouts for justice, truth, release.” I find the sentiment appealing, but as a poem, it leaves me unmoved. Some of these poems rely more heavily on the political than on the poetry. For example, the epigram for the poem “Bad Women” says that it was delivered as part of a speech, and parts of it read like one:

Bad women overcome homelessness, violence, addiction and self hate.

Bad women march for equality

education, jobs, childcare, universal health care,

affirmative action and choice.

Aside from the repetition of the words “bad women” and the arrangement on the page, these lines don’t strike me as particularly effective poetry. These lines feel like someone telling me what to think instead of letting me decide for myself.

Other poems in this collection deal with similar issues but are more powerful poetically, like these lines from “What Is Possible”:

Some women

like orchards, grow

heartily despite winter,

planted deep

strongly rooted

her seed tendrils stretch, branches spread.

In elegant ripeness

are released leaf, fan, fragrance, fruit.

The metaphor makes these lines more stirring, compared with the speechiness of the previous poem. I think the latter lines are still accessible and understandable, and they move me more than the previous poem.

As Mirikitani states in her inaugural address, “Poetry gives form to the power of imagination and speaks as the conscience of real life.” I am impressed by Mirikitani’s ability to create poetry that is accessible and important for people without voices, especially women, children, the underrepresented, the hurt, and the invisible. I particularly enjoy the poems that show poetic discipline, the ones that are able to walk the line between Hallmark sentimentality or political speeches and inaccessible, obscure language. Most of the poems in this collection succeed, making it a collection worth reading, and Mirikitani’s a voice worth listening to.