Book review: The Shadow List by Jen Sookfong Lee
Article content Wishes are never simple, and in every poem Lee excavates the conflicts and contradictions inherent in our deepest desires. The narrator wants intimacy even though it comes with pain; she dreams of escaping the familiar confines of her life, even as she lovingly brushes her aging dog’s teeth. A writer, her characters are bad mothers who “leave / their children, sit with regret in their lap.” She thinks: “You have never. You would never. And yet.” She mulls these thoughts over at night, in bed, where solitude offers its own kind of pleasure: “This bedroom was designe...