[REVIEW] Séance in Daylight by Yuki Tanaka

REVIEW BY GABINO IGLESIAS

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Yuki Tanaka’s Séance in Daylight, which won the 2018 Frost Place Chapbook Competition, is one of those rare poetry collections that appeal to me both as a lover of poetry and a fan of horror fiction. At once full of light and darkness, the poems in this short book cover a plethora of topics. The lack of central theme, however, doesn’t detract from the work because Tanaka’s voice and the combination between light and dark gives the collection a sense of cohesion.

Séance in Daylight is a superb title, and Tanaka delivers on everything it promises:

“A man drowned in a river.

We scoop up the water

and look at his face. Inside

his egg-shaped head, a white

spasm—death looks like birth.”

Ghosts, pain, transformation, and memories wrapped in the emptions they birthed are the elements Tanaka used here to build his tiny universe. This is a book I originally read in April of 2019, but the beauty of some of these poems made it linger in my mind, so I decided to bring it back for this National Poetry Month project. The best poetry, I think, paints pictures vividly using language, and that’s what Tanaka does here in every page. He tells stories that feel like gloomy fairytales, and that makes this feel much longer that it is.

Mentioning horror in a poetry review is odd, but it fits here. As the title suggests, Tanaka gets close to horror in these pages, often offering lines that could be considered spooky:

“She opened her mouth as if her throat were a bird

ready to leave her. I thought she was going to sing

for the dead, because she saw them always.”

Séance in Daylight holds secret conversation with other texts, which Tanaka reveals in the notes at the end. However, what matters most here is that the feverish nature of the writing creates a space in which the reader feel like they don’t always know if they’re witnessing a memory, a nightmare, a fever dream, or a hybrid creatures that brings them all together. Whatever the case, this chapbook is a great introduction to Tanaka’s work as well as an enjoyable slice of poetic darkness.

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Gabino Iglesias is a writer, editor, literary critic, and professor living in Austin, TX. He is the author of ZERO SAINTS and COYOTE SONGS. You can find him on Twitter at @Gabino_Iglesias.