The third full-length collection from physician and poet Jenna Le
blends traditional form and the current moment.
In Manatee Lagoon, sonnets, ghazals, pantoums, villanelles, and a
"failed georgic" weave in contemporary subject matter, including
social-media comment threads, Pap smears, eclipse glasses, and gun
violence. A recurring motif throughout the collection, manatees become a
symbol with meanings as wide-ranging as the book itself. Le aligns the
genial but vulnerable sea cow with mermaids, neurologists, the month of
November, harmful political speech, and even a family photo at the
titular lagoon.
In these poems, Le also reflects on the experience of being the daughter
of Vietnamese refugees in today's sometimes tense and hostile America.
The morning after the 2016 election, as three women of color wait for
the bus, one says, "In this new world, we must protect each other."
Manatee Lagoon is a treasury of voices, bringing together the personal
and the persona, with poems dedicated to Kate Spade, John Ashbery, and
Uruguayan poet Delmira Agustini. With this book, Le establishes herself
as a talented transcriber of the human condition--and as one of the
finest writers of formal verse today.
