Reviews
"Language itself is the protagonist in these spell-woven poems, simultaneously soliciting and fending off the sharp outlines we mistake for understanding. 'I'm coming down with morning,' says their speaker, as though it were an illness. Hanae Jonas is after nothing less than the springs of consciousness here and firmly turns her back on paraphrasables. A bold and absorbing debut." --Linda Gregerson, "In Softly Undercover, lyric's devotional mode is both thrall and throe: the powerlessness and pain of being in relation to a higher power, of being 'a constant / hostage to mystery.' These masterful poems make stringent, witty music. 'Three times removed / from any grip on home,' Hanae Jonas writes, 'which place is the real life?' Instead of answers, the stark beauty of these lyrics offers just enough succor to sustain the ardent devotion of us, 'the earthly alone.'" --Brian Teare, " Softly Undercover is a stunning collection that carefully shapes isolation, sorrow, fracture, and uncertainty into original imagery and sonic nuance, inducing a breathlessness with its candid, valiant pauses and admissions. It casts society's procedures and the haunted flourishes of the soul in remarkable light." --Marcus Jackson, Charles B. Wheeler Poetry Prize judge, " Softly Undercover is a stunning poetry collection full of lyricism that is authentic and inventive. The poems in this book carefully shape isolation, sorrow, fracture, and uncertainty into original imagery and sonic nuance. This collection induces a breathlessness with its candid, valiant pauses and admissions, and it casts society's procedures and the haunted flourishes of the soul in remarkable angles of light." --Marcus Jackson, Associate Professor and Director of Creative Writing at Ohio State University, author of Neighborhood Register
Synopsis
From its opening insistence on "not love but procedure." Hanae Jonas's Softly Undercover explores the possibilities and limitations of ritual and repetition, asking what it means to believe and see clearly. Formally rangy poems map out territories of devotion and divination, contrasting the realm of mystery, dreams, and symbols with the alienation of the mundane. Against a backdrop of intimate relationships, small towns, rural landscapes, and claustrophobic interiors. Jonas casts her gaze on isolation, nostalgia, repression, visibility, and loss while examining the desire "to go anywhere more docile / than facts." Animated by uncertainly, this elliptical and lyrical debut dwells in the pleasures and hazards of illusion., An elliptical, lyrical debut that explores the pleasures and hazards of ritual, devotion, divination, and illusion, examining what it means to believe., From its opening insistence on "not love but procedure," Hanae Jonas's Softly Undercover explores the possibilities and limitations of ritual and repetition, asking what it means to believe and see clearly. Formally rangy poems map out territories of devotion and divination, contrasting the realm of mystery, dreams, and symbols with the alienation of the mundane. Against a backdrop of intimate relationships, small towns, rural landscapes, and claustrophobic interiors, Jonas casts her gaze on isolation, nostalgia, repression, visibility, and loss while examining the desire "to go anywhere more docile / than facts." Animated by uncertainty, this elliptical and lyrical debut dwells in the pleasures and hazards of illusion.
