REVIEW: Percussing the Thinking Jar / Maw Shein Win
Percussing the Thinking Jar
Maw Shein Win
Omnidawn
Review by Suzanne Tay-Kelley
Disparate experiences as daughter, sister, college professor, and grieving caregiver permeate the third full-length poetry collection of Burmese American author Maw Shein Win. Percussing the Thinking Jar, published by Omnidawn, creates dreamscapes both delightful and poignant in an innovative form she dubs “thought logs”.
Conceived amid lockdown claustrophobia at the height of the Covid pandemic in spring 2020, Win has compiled observations, sensations, and journal entries akin to a ship’s bell book, or a patient’s medical chart in a poetic smorgasbord. In the Notes section, her “Thought Log About Thought Logs” explains the pieces are tinged with a sense of “Waiting for the light to sound” with a defiant mantra: “Life can’t kill my rainbow”.
In the tradition of her earlier work, Storage Unit for the Spirit House (Omnidawn, 2020), in Thinking Jar, Win plays with varied containers in crafting her creations. Meditations, incantations, and catalogs find space among poetry to capture reflections. “Blood Pressure Logs” comprises five-line poems paired with journal entries, while other logs are anchored by free-verse stand-alone pieces.
Full-page Sumi ink sketches by artist Mark Dutcher complement these poems—16 elegant geometrics accentuating text in a counterpoint dance—testimony to Win’s longstanding practice of artistic collaboration.
Win transforms the mundane into exquisite with gentle humor in the face of calamity. Even infection takes on a dreamy quality, as “warm germs slip/ through the screen/ into mouth-rooms”. Joy and fear permeate 16-line “log” packages which tackle life from weather to devastation from a stroke, to reminiscences about a beloved pet cat. Rhythmic variety periodically disrupts expectations, as in the achingly tender “Bokchoy Log” which resembles a prose poem:
Bokchoy’s green wicker ball with the bell inside rolls across the floor.
I scan the living room. Silence.
Kidney disease. In her final month, I held up a small bowl
of water. Quick sips.
Some sections are sheer fun. A sonic playscape sprinkled with drumming beats from Win’s punk rocker past references actual percussing rudiments, such as the delicious “Flamadiddle, Ratamacue, Long Roll” and “Pataflafa, Flam Drag, Triple Stroke Roll”. Typefaces from a wordsmith’s toolkit add distinctive rhythm with “Helvetica, Sabon, Garamond”. More wordplay with “Meadow dots, god hobbies, odd goblets” and “Train rattle, rain tattle”. Is it a Freudian slip with the confessional “I want to make a living playing air drums on YouTube”?
Along with sound saturation, colors captivate. “The Thinking Jar” dives into reverie from an emerald launchpad into an explosion of hues:
I dab viridian green on eyelids
a gnat hums <> in the factory
an opera is borne
on the shed an owlet
broods in shade <> I knit
a shawl of cadmium orange
Whether enjoying structural novelty or reveling in a psychedelic flight—a là “a blue baby was sipping from a small bowl of Dr. Pepper”—Win’s hypnotic creations invite readers to explore personal vulnerabilities and resilience amid surreal times.
