“And yes, so perhaps the world will end in water, takingĪll loving things. Yoon’s storytelling and investigation of her historical present for the sake of human improvement uplifts as it bears witness, as her lilting final poem “Time, in Whales” illustrates. If Yoon were to openly offer some definition of what it is to be woman, femme-presenting, it might be: “woman, which means some kind of sorrow.” And while the book holds fast to its tone of measured rage and sardonicism, and maintains a steady eye that demands accountability, it does not rest in negativity. In the following passage, the female speaker reaches out as victim and advocate-the girl in the ground and the girl reaching toward her: There are two primary series in the collection: a suite of personas entitled “The Testimonies” and a series she calls “An Ordinary Misfortune.” Each, from different decades, turns on a notion of impotence or weaponized fecundity. We’re free to wade into images of bees, honey, and dead dandelions. There’s a lot of research threaded into these pages, so the burden doesn’t rest on the reader. Yoon’s poems pay homage to those who have been abused by the basest version of humanity, as well as to the sanctity of self and home. The ordinary stories in this collection come from the mouths of women-from the primary speaker and from other personas intended to “amplify and speak these women’s stories, not speak for” former “comfort women.” The persona poems are drawn from documentary materials in a variety of nonfiction texts. They’re rendered in descriptions of the swallowing earth, of graveyards, of countryside, and oceans. Her book is full of knives and other sharp edges, each honed by global historical narratives of war from the 1930s to the present day. In this world, a woman comforts herself, a young woman comforts her mother, girls are raped for the comfort of men. Yoon foregrounds these stories in her mostly narrative poems. “Our” reminds me there are ordinary stories that, in comparison to our worst tales of deprivation, are redemptive. And there’s no other species for which “this grape-bell has to do with speech. No other species has been known to prostitute their own for comfort. The worst of it, yes, but there’s a comforting sobriety in the inclusion of “ our” in her book’s title. Emily Jungmin Yoon’s debut collection of poetry begins with humanity.

A cruelty special to our species