SPEED READING: Dream Elevator / Marisa Lin
Dream Elevator
Marisa Lin
KERNPUNKT Press
Review by
Noah Sanders
Welcome to Speed Reading, our fast, occasionally flippant, review column where we attempt to spread the love of a recent new release in a very short amount of time. We’ll take the time to find some incredible books, you spend your time reading some incredible books.
So, what’s Dream Elevator about?
It’s about displacement. It’s about being picked up and dropped into a strange new world and the struggle to find, even create, yourself there. It’s about mothers and daughters and the stresses of trying to exist as your own human within the structure of the flawed relationships we refer to as family. It is about holding on to what we know while trying to pull ourselves slowly forward. It’s about movement – real and imagined – and the quiet state of transition one finds in the processed air of an airplane cabin.
Who’s Marisa Lin?
The Racket has published two pieces of Lin’s work – “Snow” and “Dream Elevator”. Versions of both can be found in Dream Elevator. I understand that’s not an actual description of “who Marisa Lin is” but I promise both of these pieces will give you insight into Lin’s gorgeous writing and inspiration to continue to read more of it.
A single reason why you should read Dream Elevator?
Lin plays with the physical form of her poems – a poem shaped like The United States, another like a bra – in ways that could be gimmicky, but her writing is so strong, her themes so beautifully addressed, it only adds.
A few more reasons why you should read it:
For some reason, reading Dream Elevator makes me think of staring at the tiny screen in the airplane seat in front of me, watching the tiny plane follow an arched line across the continental United States. This is a book about crossing distances – physical and emotional – and the toll it takes to reimagine yourself time and time again in each new place. There is a satisfying anger and a deep line of sadness thrumming beneath these poems, the various narrators all pushing back against the person they are assumed to be. There’s a surprising lightness in this work though. Allusions to nature, moments of humor, nostalgic call backs – the collection, like the characters within, are always more than one might assume them to be.
If you’re a fan of these books, you should give Dream Elevator a chance:
Minor Feelings / Cathy Park Hong
The Other Americans / Laila Lalami
Martyr! / Kaveh Akbar
A small taste of Dream Elevator:
Once I dreamed about bodies of water.
Their shifting maps, fluid skeletons,
How they might lead us back, or elsewhere.
