In Imago, a finely-realized first collection of poems, Manhattan-based Joseph Legaspi looks back through the gates of adulthood at an Eden-like childhood in the Philippines. But these free-verse narratives are not simple, sugar-coated, or — for all their use of the word “I” — self-centered; their delicate surfaces give way to reveal a world that is primal and visceral. Legaspi wrestles with severing and connecting, violence and love, and his place between homelands and among family members living and dead.
The title poem, which opens the book, is representative of many of the poems that follow. Like all the poems in the first three of the book’s four sections, this one takes place in the Philippines — the final section is set in the United States — and begins, “As soon as we became men / my brother and I wore skirts.” It’s one of three poems about the ritual circumcision of the twelve-year-old speaker and his brother. It’s also one of Legaspi’s many poems about violent but necessary loss.
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