Review: A Nail the Evening Hangs On by Monica Sok

Reviewed by Brooke Green

A Nail the Evening Hangs On
Poems by Monica Sok
Copper Canyon Press, February 2020.
$17.00; 60 pp.
ISBN: 978-1556595608

Monica Sok’s radiant debut collection, A Nail the Evening Hangs On, begins with a challenge to remember, to name, to own.  In “Ask the Locals,” the Khmer Rouge morph into insects,  “so-called revolutionaries/who wanted so-called Year Zero so bad,” and who “turned into mosquitoes…They forget. Don’t forget.” Sok, a child of Cambodian refugees, writes poetry that delves into questions of identity and individuality in a complex web of memories and relationships.  Her speakers, both living and dead, weave a poetry of trauma, diaspora, war and timelessness.

In her poetry, Sok stands both inside and outside of her family’s history and her direct voice rings with imaginative power and grace.  In one of Sok’s most compelling poems, “ABC for Refugees,” a father reads books in English with his daughter, teaching her a language he is still learning.

Cherub-bee-dee how does a man
who doesn’t read English well know that cherub-bee-dum
those aren’t really words bee-dee
But birds.

In their children’s book, the nonsense words intermingle with English words to mimic the sound of birds, and we see a transformation of language.

Birds, what are birds?
Thanks to my father, reading with me, I have more feathers.

What are feathers? Like words, they protect, but they can also be plucked. Once plucked and utilized, the speaker has the opportunity to name and own what she sees. 

T-H-E. First word he ever taught me to pluck…

The article,” the,” is important because it is so useful in the newly acquired language. Proficient in English, the child becomes empowered.  By the poem’s end, the speaker is teaching her mother to read.

Mother, mother. Repeat after me.
Cherub-bee-dee, cherub-bee-dum!

The nonsense words carry the tongue into a new familiarity with English.  The internal rhyme, cadence, and pacing of this poem brings to mind a children’s picture book.  The avian imagery, “I have more feathers” speaks of autonomy, flight, and the temporality of experience. Childhood is recalled in the lines of a book, the repeating of words, the use of a new language to name what surrounds oneself.

 Sok’s poetry explores the complexity of identity.  For example, in the poem, “Americans Dancing in the Heart of Darkness,” the speaker wrestles with her relationship to her family’s history in Cambodia.  As an exchange student, the speaker interrogates herself about her feelings for the other students.

The Americans hate me and I hate them,
but they’re the only students with me and maybe I’m American too.

The long lines and couplets create an energetic pace, a searching, as if the speaker is moving through the city.  Can she belong to a group she despises and feels that they in turn dislike her?  To what degree does her identity as an American inhabit her being? As a Cambodian American? As the child of refugees, can she belong to both groups?

When the speaker learns of a stampede on a bridge and the many people who died, she feels separate from the other students and recognizes her individuality: “…they still don’t understand, but I go with them anyway/to the Heart of Darkness, the nightclub empty but open.” The Americans are dancing as if nothing has changed, but the speaker is set apart because she comprehends and identifies with the victims and their survivors.

The exploration of identity is further explored in the poem, “Self-Portrait as War Museum Captions,” as the speaker visits a war museum and contemplates her relationship to the war.  It raises questions of how intergenerational trauma affects the youngest members of a family, especially those who have no direct experience in the source of the trauma.

A daughter of survivors stands in the grass among tattered military
tanks. She is the only one in her family who wants to visit the
Museum. Siem Reap, Cambodia. Nov 2016.

Surrounded by artifacts of the war, yet separate from them at the same time, the speaker recognizes that she is the only one in her family who wants to see the museum.   As a  “daughter of survivors,” the speaker inherits the memories and dreams of her parents and grandparents.  She is both outside and inside of history.  It runs through her just as if it was a part of her.

Similarly, her connection to familial history ignites Sok’s poem, “The Weaver,” in which the speaker recalls sitting beside her grandmother as she worked, “…weaving at her loom, rivers and lakes/underneath her hair.”  In this poem, the natural world inhabits the weaver’s body, and her long grey hair, as if she was a mythological being.

Sometimes, when she was tired,
She’d tie it up
And let all the tired animals around her house
Drink from her head.

The weaver’s whole being becomes a source of nourishment and comfort to her family. The repetition of “tired” emphasizes the fatigue of the past’s trauma.  Sok sketches a blurry line between the real and imagined as if it is a dream rather than a memory.

“The Weaver” makes the love and interconnection between family members tangible. In Sok’s poems, experiences, dreams, and history are interwoven into a breathtaking collection. The poems in A Nail the Evening Hangs On explore the nature of memory and family history.  Sok traces the lines of her family’s trauma and observes how it is woven into her being. Sok transforms her experiences into a deeply affecting and intimate book. 

Originally from New York, Brooke Green lives in Los Angeles, where she teaches English. Her work has appeared in publications including Santa Barbara Review, Mudfish, and Reed.