Book Review: Mother Tongue Apologize

Arièle Bonte

Mother Tongue Apologize by Preeti Vangani, RLFPA Editions, 2018

Reviewed by Scott Neuffer

Some men don’t know how to use their tongues right, and it shows. The speaker of the poems in Preeti Vangani’s Mother Tongue Apologize finds enough power in the poetic beat of her own tongue — a master of three languages, in fact — to leave such men to the rubbish heap of history. Containing just under fifty knockout poems, this collection weaves the grit and dizziness of sex with a bourgeoning feminist spirit. A spirit born in grief, unfortunately. These poems elegize a lost mother and a mother tongue and a motherland (Vangani hails from India). They question what such a beloved woman’s death means in a country (and world) where women are raped and murdered and male desire reigns supreme.

I want to crush strawberries

in the face of the man who once filled me

with cynicism

the poet declares early on in “Genealogy.”

But from loss and bewilderment, poetry itself builds something new and assertive:

this poem, part ruin part construction site, rumble on the other

side; I, my mouth open, encrypting the absent voice into a voice.

If the first section of the book explores womanhood in light of loss and disillusionment with male power, the second section sets the feminine free. A feisty, irreverent feminism that is also complex and searching for the levers of empowerment. In one of the best poems in the book, ironically titled “Poems Are Useless,” Vangani sparks fire:

Each her and her a particle of raw dust

birthing storms. Every Her a dust that cooks, creates, cradles

but never settles.

It is this juxtaposition of mourning and empowerment that makes Mother Tongue Apologize so damn powerful. It’s the kind of empowerment that comes through grief and guilt, trauma and pain, and hard-won art. Mother Tongue Apologize offers a vital voice that is formally experimental, deeply lyrical and ultimately liberating.