{"id":121153,"date":"2022-07-07T16:54:35","date_gmt":"2022-07-07T21:54:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/?p=121153"},"modified":"2022-07-07T16:54:40","modified_gmt":"2022-07-07T21:54:40","slug":"book-reviews-by-conor-hultman-the-witches-of-lila-springs-by-sabrina-ito","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/book-reviews-by-conor-hultman-the-witches-of-lila-springs-by-sabrina-ito\/","title":{"rendered":"Book Reviews by Conor Hultman: “The Witches of Lila Springs,” by Sabrina Ito"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The Witches of Lila Springs<\/em>
by Sabrina Ito
Plan B Press ($10)<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Twenty-four pages. Twenty-four pages! For the range of style, of forms, of register; for the scale of experience, the breadth of emotion, the description, the sounds; for the amount of time I spent first reading it, maybe thirty minutes, about a minute per page, but with mounting excitement as I began to realize what I was witnessing, with expansive interest, the poems that broke themselves down into word-units I was processing them so quickly, zero latency, the terrible and awesome fervor you get when you realize This is it<\/em>, and I sped through the whole chapbook like that, and then started again with the meticulousness of the scientist in an enemy country, trying to figure out How does this work?<\/em> with reverse engineering, until I gave up trying to understand the singular music of it and just listened again, at normal speed, scanning and saving the shape of the whole thing altogether to map out my favorite parts. This is how you will read The Witches of Lila Springs<\/strong><\/em> by Sabrina Ito<\/strong>, if you are anything like me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"\/<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

\u201cJackson Square,\u201d to talk about one poem, starts off with the beautifully concrete and self-aware line, \u201cAt night, it lights up like a poem.\u201d  Ito measures out rhymes, \u201cgreen absinthe steaming\u201d before \u201cbackdrop of evening,\u201d and \u201cteaming \/ with cracks,\u201d then goes off on a descriptive, full-bodied ABCDEADBFG solo, formally representative of the jazz setting of the poem, executed with the acuity of a master player, \u201cpeat-covered cobble stones\u201d and \u201cbooze-breathing taverns.\u201d The rest of the poem continues with the seamlessly unorthodox schematics and sensuous down-to-earth objects, my favorite being \u201cBruised lips take quick sips \/ from thick, chicory coffee \/ filled to the brim, \/ quivering with cream.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Other poems are sparer, with the suggestive shadowplay of a haiku. \u201cSunday\u201d is short enough to print here:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sunday
Drinking cold beer in the sun is better than weeding
because a patch of exploding flowers is better watched, than tamed.
(Today\u2019s task is this: try to strike a poem.)
But first, get your mind off things drink warm beer in the sun
and kick dry dirt over buttercups before they go to seed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The evocative commonplace of \u201cDrinking cold beer in the sun\u201d touches off a feeling in the reader, a ghost limb of shared experience, while the format and the spacing centers and draws the eye around and inward, all for \u201cbefore they go to seed\u201d to close the circle with dread finality.\u00a0 Some of my other favorites in The Witches of Lila Springs<\/em> are the prose poems, like \u201canother cielo drive,\u201d a metaphorical poem inspired by the Manson murders, or \u201cRed Barn,\u201d a wish fulfillment as charming as it is natural. The title poem is a crown jewel, and rightfully sits at the end of the book, anointing the next reading. I cannot recommend The Witches of Lila Springs<\/em> highly enough\u2013 it has sounds and images and movements that will not leave me for a long time coming.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Witches of Lila Springsby Sabrina ItoPlan B Press ($10) Twenty-four pages. Twenty-four pages! For the range of<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":123467,"featured_media":117396,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[20522],"tags":[6480,20523,21896,21895],"class_list":["post-121153","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-book-reviews","tag-book-review","tag-conor-hultman","tag-sabrina-ito","tag-the-witches-of-lila-springs"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/02\/2022-02-03-Book-Reviews.jpg?fit=620%2C349&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121153","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/123467"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=121153"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121153\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/117396"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=121153"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=121153"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=121153"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}