Commons by Myung mi Kim is a book of poetry held together by white spaces. The tempo is abrupt, and it changes suddenly from page to page, and just as often mid-page. Sections of quotations from medical or official texts sit between stark moments that blend 20th Century Korean (war) history with views on modernist agriculture, society and nature. I am not well read in poetry so I may have missed a lot of the depth of this book, but as an immediate experience it was stark, jarring, and really engaging.