REVIEW: “She, Self-Winding” by Luu Dieu Van

Written By Michael Workman

Cover image courtesy the poet and Ugly Duckling Presse.

REVIEW
She, Self-Winding
By Luu Dieu Van
Chapbook, $10.80
Ugly Duckling Presse 

By Meredith Wood Bahuriak

In She, Self-Winding, the specific choice of words and superlative usage of imagery affirms the bold femininity of Luu Dieu Van’s narrative poetry. As well, this a series of poems illuminates the paradigm of the incredulous struggle to live with the archetypal judgment of western society.

The beginning of Dieu Van’s poetry reads as a hint of something personal to say on the subject, but doesn’t go further. An emphatic nod, a half told anecdote, an enigmatic ‘I know the feeling’ — which one places into conversations like those little flags that warn diggers of something buried underground.

semaphorism 

a beautiful woman calling an ugly woman beautiful is a motivator 
an ugly woman calling a beautiful woman ugly is a cynic 
an ugly man calling a beautiful woman sexy is a chauvinist 
a man calling any woman beautiful is actually a therapist

Her frequent use of humor and dramatic irony perpetuates each poem into the next.

premier funeral 

victim and victory are of the same philosophy
overcoming one gains the other

daughter of doubts 

Healing is forgetting that we are being forgotten

The poet’s words of brutality and truth, alert the reader to the many examples of personification in our daily lives.

neither jewelry nor perfume 

misunderstanding is pre-pink 
shells of memory penetrate cells turning malnourished 
oily inferno of clemency with black seductive crack 
with white chastity fight 
blow by blow, dual-speed, from inaudible folding lips to audacious dermal rims 

[ … ]

feminism doesn’t come with two AA batteries or instructions 
but it is self-operated

In She, Self-Winding, Dieu Van’s juxtaposition highlights the contrast of man, woman, and humanity. A detailed memoir of a young immigrant girl coming into womanhood while surviving her harsh new society.

she self-winding 

when her legs spread at a quarter of someone
a human angle divulges posthumously 
a narrow entry only tongue-twisted lovers and political sympathizers can slip through 
the most beautiful part of herself is self-winding 

[ … ]

where real men love deeply, real women mate freely, as real humans suffer voluntarily the circuitry of trying and failing


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Michael Workman

Michael Workman is a choreographer, language, visual and movement artist, dance and performance artist, writer, reporter, and sociocultural critic. In addition to his work at the Chicago Tribune, Guardian US, Newcity magazine, WBEZ Chicago Public Radio and elsewhere, Workman is also Director of Bridge, an artistic collective and 501 (c) (3) publishing and programming organization (bridge-chicago.org). His choreographic writing has been included in Propositional Attitudes, an "anthology of recent performance scores, directions and instructions" published by Golden Spike Press, and his Perfect Worlds: Artistic Forms & Social Imaginaries Vol. 1, the first in a 3-volume series, was released by StepSister Press in October 2018 with a day-long program of performances at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago. Most recently, two of his scores were accepted for publication in a special edition of the Notre Dame Review focusing on the work of participants in the &NOW Festival of Innovative Writing.

https://michaelworkmanstudio.com
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