Why I Chose Bear, Diamonds and Crane

Rumpus Poetry Club Board Member Camille T. Dungy on why she chose Claire Kageyama-Ramakrishnan’s Bear, Diamonds and Crane as the October selection of The Rumpus Poetry Book Club:

Out of the deepest
wound, a new bloom, black ink on
beige flower petals.

“The Gift of Inheritance”

The long and the short of it: That’s why I chose Bear, Diamonds and Crane.

I appreciate the moments of distillation in Kageyama-Ramakrishnan’s latest book.[1]  The poems tell stories of displacement and connection.  They reach deep into history but feel very much of the now.  They tell incredibly personal stories, but they reveal the communal connections between her own experiences and so many others’.[2] There are poems about war between nations, between neighbors, within families, within the self. There are poems in which women fight their own bodies, using food, drugs, denial to protest the realities of their own flesh.[3] There are haiku, and lists, and fat chunky columns of text over two pages long.[4]  Kageyama-Ramakrishnan moves from the misty world of poetic nuance to the direct confrontation of dramatic narrative and just as quickly back again.[5]  The constant disorientation and reorientation is part of the wonder of this book. [6] Out of her deepest wounds, poems.[7]

***

[1] I also like the way she’s not afraid to stretch into ideas, and how she lingers on one loss for a while, as if she knows that the totality of loss can’t be confined to one meditation.

[2] I am particularly interested in the ways that Kageyama-Ramakrishnan made the disclosure of Japanese, Japanese-American, and Indian cultural histories part of the fabric of her poems.  The texture of so many of the pieces depends on descriptions of lives fully lived. The cultural and historical details I’ve just mentioned are as much a part of the descriptions of these lives as are her sensory details: her colors, her tastes, her sounds.

[3] Then there are the poems of desperate desire to hold onto the body.  Poems that confront the terrible consequences of a body fighting itself.

[4] It is as if the poems are formally working against the confines of the body.  As if they are warring with themselves and each other to decide what sort of body would best hold the poet/spirit.

[5] Frequently, her thoughts seem to overflow beyond the confines of the poems.  The notes section of Bear, Diamonds and Crane grows into an integral part of the book.  In reading it, I sense even more the enormity of history and emotion Kageyama-Ramakrishnan is tackling in these poems.

[6] That connotative pun was not originally intended, but I will keep it now that it is written because it seems of a piece with the concerns of this book.

[7] We who read the poems experience both direct and indirect reenactments of the processes by which she came to bear these wounds.

***

There’s still time to join The Rumpus Poetry Book Club! Just click here!

Share
Tweet
Share

Camille T. Dungy is the author of the essay collection Guidebook to Relative Strangers: Journeys into Race, Motherhood, and History (W. W. Norton, 2017), a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, and four collections of poetry, most recently Trophic Cascade (Wesleyan UP, 2017). She edited Black Nature: Four Centuries of African American Nature Poetry (UGA, 2009), co-edited the From the Fishouse poetry anthology (Persea, 2009), and served as assistant editor on Gathering Ground: Celebrating Cave Canem's First Decade (University of Michigan Press, 2006). She is the poetry editor for Orion magazine. Dungy's work has appeared in Best American Poetry, 100 Best African American Poems, Best American Essays, Best American Travel Essays, the Pushcart Anthology and more than 30 other anthologies, plus dozens of print and online venues including Poetry, American Poetry Review, VQR, Literary Hub, Paris Review, and Poets.org. Her honors include a Guggenheim Fellowship, an American Book Award, a Colorado Book Award, two Northern California Book Awards, two NAACP Image Award Nominations, and fellowships from the NEA in both poetry and prose. She lives in Colorado with her husband and daughter (and down the street from her parents, who followed her this time around). Dungy is a University Distinguished Professor at Colorado State University.

You May Also Like

The Rumpus publishes original fiction, poetry, literary humor writing, comics, essays, book reviews, and interviews with authors and artists of all kinds. Our mostly volunteer-run magazine strives to be a platform for risk-taking voices and writing that might not find a home elsewhere. We lift up new voices alongside those of more established writers our readers may already know and love. We want to bring new perspectives into the conversation that will make us all look deeper.

We believe that literature builds community—and if reading The Rumpus makes you feel more connected, please show your support! Get your Rumpus merch in our online store. Subscribe to receive Letters in the Mail from authors, join us by becoming a monthly or yearly Member and/or make a tax-deductible donation here.

We support independent bookstores! 10% of sales on any titles purchased through our Bookshop.org page or affiliate links benefits the magazine.

The Rumpus in your Inbox!
The Rumpus
© 2025, The Rumpus.

Sign up for the weekly Rumpus

Once a week, we'll send you a roundup of what's new on the magazine, invites to upcoming events, open calls for submissions, and more!

Total
0
Share