Review: Amy J's "The Temple Yields Like a Lamb"

​by Ọbáfẹ́mi Thanni.


The declaration of God to the persona to fold which begins the poem "The Temple Yields Like A Lamb", is a voice and allusion that continues and grows through the poem. The writer's response to the instruction that begins the poem is that of humour. As the poem progresses, this humour grows into a need for survival which takes the form of a lily; a marked presence to make the absence of the persona noticed, a mark to let the viewer or reader, know where to look.

This growth continues throughout the poem, marked by a tension that is heightened with form. In the prosaic rendering of the poem, the line breaks often by the sheer weight of a declaration, only for the line to be sustained by the consequence or the subversion of the instruction. These subversions cause the words to be charged, to be both essential to and complicit in the resistance of the persona, such as in subverting the instruction to be good the resistance grows from description to action and the persona becomes worsted. 

The writer's voice redefines the expectations of yielding, of obedience, and lends agency to the very act of folding, of slivering by ensuring such acts are carried out by the subject itself. This agency is informed by mortality, by the possibility of pleasure, by a final word that replaces disappearance with blossom; that replaces dust with fruit.

read amy j's poem in issue 1