By Emily Velasquez
Brandon Shimoda is a fourth generation Japanese American writer, educator, and author of eight books, all of which are mixed-genre, composed of both poetry and prose. Shimoda’s work is most notable for its conversations that center around Japanese American wartime incarceration, a topic that is personal to him as his grandfather, Midori Shimoda, was incarcerated during World War II. Through his transcendent language, Shimoda pushes readers to examine the significance of remembrance and memory that exists in the proof that we are all descendants of a past, a type of ancestorhood. His most recent book, Hydra Medusa, is a collection of poems and essays where Shimoda describes the desert as a place where he can connect with the unliving through moments he describes as dreams. To Shimoda, the dream is another path that allows access to those who came before us and who were erased from the earth. The pieces in this work are articulate and finely enriched with a distinctive voice. The interpolation of essays serves as a map to help draw further meaning from the poetic essence of this book, amplifying and clarifying Shimoda’s reflections on the desert and his ancestors’ lives.
Hydra Medusa incorporates a narrative aspect within each poem where, although Shimoda might be establishing a parallel between death in a relationship and his ancestors’ lives, he does it in such a way where it reads as if he is carefully unwinding the experience of being in that harrowing site of depression, anguish, and unresolved feelings. Shimoda’s poems document the lives that have shaped him and to which he owes his existence. In his poem “Death Of The Flower,” the speaker examines fruition and how the result of giving fruit to a friend is the death of a flower:
When I think of fruit, I think of friends
Giving fruit to friends Gestures of goodwill
A friend leaving, going off,
for a long time,
forever.
Here is the fruition.
Here is the death of the flower.
Shimoda’s move towards death using fruit giving represents the passing on of one life to another, echoing how remnants of his ancestors continue to exist in Shimoda himself. In this collection, the passage of life is Shimoda’s means of examining and reflecting upon the life his ancestors created for him and others. Though, like the flower, his ancestors could not see the fruition [of what?], or who their descendants would become, the fruit became the witness of that death. Hydra Medusa offers a path where Shimoda can revise the image of the desert through the remembrance of his grandfather and how that is the fruit that has given Shimoda and his descendants access to a place of belonging.
Emily Velasquez is a poet who loves anything about food and cooking. Born and raised in Santa Ana, she received her B.A. in English from California State University Fullerton. She earned an M.F.A. in creative writing and an M.A. in English from Chapman University. She is a poetry reader for The Adroit Journal.