Review of Sybil Unrest by Larissa Lai and Rita Wong

McGiffin, Emily

English

Wilfrid Laurier University

The GooseVolume 13 | No. 2 Article 51-20-2015Sybil Unrest by Larissa Lai and Rita WongEmily McGiffinYork UniversityPart of the Critical and Cultural Studies Commons, Literature in English, North AmericaCommons, Nature and Society Relations Commons, and the Place and Environment CommonsFollow this and additional works at / Suivez-nous ainsi que d’autres travaux et œuvres:https://scholars.wlu.ca/thegooseThis article is brought to you for free and open access by Scholars Commons @ Laurier. It has been accepted for inclusion in The Goose by anauthorized editor of Scholars Commons @ Laurier. For more information, please contact scholarscommons@wlu.ca.Cet article vous est accessible gratuitement et en libre accès grâce à Scholars Commons @ Laurier. Le texte a été approuvé pour faire partie intégrantede la revue The Goose par un rédacteur autorisé de Scholars Commons @ Laurier. Pour de plus amples informations, contactezscholarscommons@wlu.ca.Recommended Citation / Citation recommandéeMcGiffin, Emily. "Sybil Unrest by Larissa Lai and Rita Wong." The Goose, vol. 13 , no. 2 , article 5, 2015,https://scholars.wlu.ca/thegoose/vol13/iss2/5.Sybil Unrest by Larissa Lai and Rita WongErratumWrong publication date.This book review is available in The Goose: https://scholars.wlu.ca/thegoose/vol13/iss2/5  Sybil Unrest by LARISSA LAI and RITA WONG New Star Books, 2013 $18.00  Reviewed by EMILY McGIFFIN  Allusion, alliteration, internal rhyme, metaphor, onomatopoeia: Sybil Unrest, a book-length poem co-authored by Rita Wong and Larissa Lai, uses them all. Its politically-charged verse is a linguistic kaleidoscope, a sinuous movement through tirades that twist into word games, nursery rhythms, and the jangle of commercial jingles. It tunnels into the dark matter of contemporary life then springs away from the danger of taking itself too seriously. Beyond the highbrow literary devices, though, the work owes a hefty part of its success to an unsung hero: the lowly pun.  Their accomplishment is striking. In their hands, puns—the ordinary stuff of corny jokes and advertising—gain exceptional life and power. Their double entendre illuminates cliché and morphs banality into irony. The opening pieces alone give us “shrinkwrapped pushy / condemns on sale,” “safe sects,” and “global swarming.” Drawing on sources ranging from the Bible to Rage Against the Machine, their lyrics boom with deep intelligence and razor-sharp wit:  she drove a Plymouth satellite faster than the speed of light to the love hotel to the smack  smack smack of the catfish shack  all the while knock knock knocking on  chevron’s door pulling all the master’s strings till she sets the night on fire the oilfields are alive with the  sound of mutiny  In this stanza and throughout the book, the poets capture multiple meanings in puns that, like metaphor, record the literal and the gesture beyond it. Their lines allude to familiar turns of phrase, yet through twists of wording or spelling the authors insert altered perceptions that inflect back onto the original concept. The recurrent irony in the double entendres troubles the assumptions that lurk behind everyday sayings and aphorisms, and reveals cliché where it had gone unrecognized. Meaning builds up in layers, lines resonate with new ideas, and the echoes of the original cliché or nugget of pop culture are rendered unfamiliar and transparent. Take the title, for example. The two words crane towards the invisible phrase they stand in for. The ear hears both “sybil unrest” and “civil unrest.” It sticks there, caught not only by the sly wit but also by the ways in which the implied meanings reverberate off one another. A sibyl is a prophetess, a clairvoyant. Here she shares her solitary unrest with the civil body: communal, social. More than the stirrings of an unsatisfied public, the unrest here is also the cogent, prescient unrest of an oracle who calls the future as she sees it.  Originally published in 2008 by LINEBooks, the book was reprinted in 2013 by New Star Books, an independent Vancouver publisher specializing in political writing. In their discussion of the book’s origins, the authors explain that the poem “began in a renga spirit during the 2003 Hong Kong International Literary Festival.” With the SARS crisis unfolding around them in Hong Kong and daily footage of the invasion of Iraq flashing across their hotel TV, “it was a fraught moment.” The book 1McGiffin: Sybil UnrestPublished by / Publié par Scholars Commons @ Laurier, 2015  emerged over a series of emails in the years that followed.  True to its subject matter and origins, the poem eschews a narrative thread. Stream of consciousness, pinball machine, or scattershot, the text bounces from the Gulf War to gender politics to rock lyrics. This form is demanding—it takes concentration to follow the linguistic and political leaps that are rarely linked by conventional syntax. Unpunctuated, the language flows breathlessly through mounded adjectives, multi-hued lists. The style aptly reflects the idiom of contemporary media sound bites, the breakneck pace of modernity, and the poets’ own outrage as “economists pantomime / the pollution of oceans / the razing of old growth / on spreadsheets.” The book is divided into three untitled sections, but formally it divides itself into two halves. In the first, the poems, albeit unpunctuated, maintain an orderly, left-justified form. In the second, the authors let go of the margin, freeing the poems to seek their own individual arrangements on the page. The protean structures give the poems an added fluidity and spontaneity aligned with the shape-shifting language of each piece. Through dropped lines, caesura, and close attention to the physical form of the typography, the poets add further layers of thinking and meaning to the richly textured pieces.  Overall, Sybil Unrest is exemplary in its skilful entwining of poetry and politics and its experiments with language to find new ways to critique, query, and lampoon twenty-first century North American society. It is a book that takes you out dancing then sucker-punches you with linguistic virtuosity. It is a poem for the curious, the sceptical, the disenfranchised, for those searching for ideas drawn together with powerful rhythmic momentum.  EMILY McGIFFIN is a PhD student in York University’s Faculty of Environmental Studies. She is the author of two poetry collections (Between Dusk and Night, Brick Books, 2012, and Subduction Zone Pedlar Press, 2014) and a contributor to the forthcoming anthology Speak to the Wild (University of Regina Press, 2015). 2The Goose, Vol. 13, No. 2 [2015], Art. 5https://scholars.wlu.ca/thegoose/vol13/iss2/5

Sybil Unrest by Larissa Lai and Rita Wong

Scholars Commons

The Goose
Volume 13 | No. 2 Article 5
1-20-2015
Sybil Unrest by Larissa Lai and Rita Wong
Emily McGiffin
York University
Part of the Critical and Cultural Studies Commons, Literature in English, North America
Commons, Nature and Society Relations Commons, and the Place and Environment Commons
Follow this and additional works at / Suivez-nous ainsi que d’autres travaux et œuvres:
https://scholars.wlu.ca/thegoose
This article is brought to you for free and open access by Scholars Commons @ Laurier. It has been accepted for inclusion in The Goose by an
authorized editor of Scholars Commons @ Laurier. For more information, please contact scholarscommons@wlu.ca.
Cet article vous est accessible gratuitement et en libre accès grâce à Scholars Commons @ Laurier. Le texte a été approuvé pour faire partie intégrante
de la revue The Goose par un rédacteur autorisé de Scholars Commons @ Laurier. Pour de plus amples informations, contactez
scholarscommons@wlu.ca.
Recommended Citation / Citation recommandée
McGiffin, Emily. "Sybil Unrest by Larissa Lai and Rita Wong." The Goose, vol. 13 , no. 2 , article 5, 2015,
https://scholars.wlu.ca/thegoose/vol13/iss2/5.
Sybil Unrest by Larissa Lai and Rita Wong
Erratum
Wrong publication date.
This book review is available in The Goose: https://scholars.wlu.ca/thegoose/vol13/iss2/5
  
Sybil Unrest by LARISSA LAI and RITA 
WONG 
New Star Books, 2013 $18.00 
 
Reviewed by EMILY McGIFFIN 
 
Allusion, alliteration, internal rhyme, 
metaphor, onomatopoeia: Sybil Unrest, a 
book-length poem co-authored by Rita 
Wong and Larissa Lai, uses them all. Its 
politically-charged verse is a linguistic 
kaleidoscope, a sinuous movement through 
tirades that twist into word games, nursery 
rhythms, and the jangle of commercial 
jingles. It tunnels into the dark matter of 
contemporary life then springs away from 
the danger of taking itself too seriously. 
Beyond the highbrow literary devices, 
though, the work owes a hefty part of its 
success to an unsung hero: the lowly pun.  
Their accomplishment is striking. In 
their hands, puns—the ordinary stuff of 
corny jokes and advertising—gain 
exceptional life and power. Their double 
entendre illuminates cliché and morphs 
banality into irony. The opening pieces 
alone give us “shrinkwrapped pushy / 
condemns on sale,” “safe sects,” and 
“global swarming.” Drawing on sources 
ranging from the Bible to Rage Against the 
Machine, their lyrics boom with deep 
intelligence and razor-sharp wit: 
 
she drove a Plymouth satellite 
faster than the speed of light 
to the love hotel to the smack  
smack smack 
of the catfish shack  
all the while 
knock knock knocking on  
chevron’s door 
pulling all the master’s strings 
till she sets the night on fire 
the oilfields are alive with the  
sound of mutiny 
 
In this stanza and throughout the 
book, the poets capture multiple meanings 
in puns that, like metaphor, record the 
literal and the gesture beyond it. Their lines 
allude to familiar turns of phrase, yet 
through twists of wording or spelling the 
authors insert altered perceptions that 
inflect back onto the original concept. The 
recurrent irony in the double entendres 
troubles the assumptions that lurk behind 
everyday sayings and aphorisms, and 
reveals cliché where it had gone 
unrecognized. Meaning builds up in layers, 
lines resonate with new ideas, and the 
echoes of the original cliché or nugget of 
pop culture are rendered unfamiliar and 
transparent. 
Take the title, for example. The two 
words crane towards the invisible phrase 
they stand in for. The ear hears both “sybil 
unrest” and “civil unrest.” It sticks there, 
caught not only by the sly wit but also by 
the ways in which the implied meanings 
reverberate off one another. A sibyl is a 
prophetess, a clairvoyant. Here she shares 
her solitary unrest with the civil body: 
communal, social. More than the stirrings of 
an unsatisfied public, the unrest here is also 
the cogent, prescient unrest of an oracle 
who calls the future as she sees it.  
Originally published in 2008 by 
LINEBooks, the book was reprinted in 2013 
by New Star Books, an independent 
Vancouver publisher specializing in political 
writing. In their discussion of the book’s 
origins, the authors explain that the poem 
“began in a renga spirit during the 2003 
Hong Kong International Literary Festival.” 
With the SARS crisis unfolding around them 
in Hong Kong and daily footage of the 
invasion of Iraq flashing across their hotel 
TV, “it was a fraught moment.” The book 
1
McGiffin: Sybil Unrest
Published by / Publié par Scholars Commons @ Laurier, 2015
  
emerged over a series of emails in the years 
that followed.  
True to its subject matter and 
origins, the poem eschews a narrative 
thread. Stream of consciousness, pinball 
machine, or scattershot, the text bounces 
from the Gulf War to gender politics to rock 
lyrics. This form is demanding—it takes 
concentration to follow the linguistic and 
political leaps that are rarely linked by 
conventional syntax. Unpunctuated, the 
language flows breathlessly through 
mounded adjectives, multi-hued lists. The 
style aptly reflects the idiom of 
contemporary media sound bites, the 
breakneck pace of modernity, and the 
poets’ own outrage as “economists 
pantomime / the pollution of oceans / the 
razing of old growth / on spreadsheets.” 
The book is divided into three 
untitled sections, but formally it divides 
itself into two halves. In the first, the 
poems, albeit unpunctuated, maintain an 
orderly, left-justified form. In the second, 
the authors let go of the margin, freeing the 
poems to seek their own individual 
arrangements on the page. The protean 
structures give the poems an added fluidity 
and spontaneity aligned with the shape-
shifting language of each piece. Through 
dropped lines, caesura, and close attention 
to the physical form of the typography, the 
poets add further layers of thinking and 
meaning to the richly textured pieces.  
Overall, Sybil Unrest is exemplary in 
its skilful entwining of poetry and politics 
and its experiments with language to find 
new ways to critique, query, and lampoon 
twenty-first century North American 
society. It is a book that takes you out 
dancing then sucker-punches you with 
linguistic virtuosity. It is a poem for the 
curious, the sceptical, the disenfranchised, 
for those searching for ideas drawn 
together with powerful rhythmic 
momentum. 
 
EMILY McGIFFIN is a PhD student in York 
University’s Faculty of Environmental 
Studies. She is the author of two poetry 
collections (Between Dusk and Night, Brick 
Books, 2012, and Subduction Zone Pedlar 
Press, 2014) and a contributor to the 
forthcoming anthology Speak to the Wild 
(University of Regina Press, 2015).
 
2
The Goose, Vol. 13, No. 2 [2015], Art. 5
https://scholars.wlu.ca/thegoose/vol13/iss2/5


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Sybil Unrest by Larissa Lai and Rita Wong

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