September 10, 2023 - Rahil Najafabadi on Ellen Zhang’s “Semaphore”

I was very excited to read Ellen Zhang’s collection of poems and very happy to see them on Curlew’s Daily. Reading Ellen Zhang’s Semaphore was like embracing the scent of a vase of fresh lilies. I couldn't stop going over the lack of things that create meaning and questioning, with these lines in Semaphore:

“What about unpredictability amid

hope makes you think of connection flights,

swaying of bird cage doors amid

burning houses?” (Zhang 5-8).

Poetry has been always about a song and the echoing sound of meaning that follows. Ellen captures that lingering meaning that is hidden in least common places. The collection of “unpredictability” and the places it takes us in Semaphore, is a visual demonstration of what a beautiful yet meaningful poem does to thinking and to envisioning. The images of “connection flights,” “swaying of bird cage doors,” and “burning houses” fill in the empty space of sound in mind, quite literally and figuratively. Who thought that bird cage doors swaying in hope, yet of itself so suddenly? Unpredictability is hard to pinpoint, but Ellen Zhang lets us see it.