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Book Synopsis"What our lives permit us to perceive as givens, Nguyen reveals as mere conditions, inextricably tied to and guided by greater forces--from the economy to the environment, from the Mayan predictions to the menstrual cycle, from the weight of history to the burden of the future." --Michael Brodeur, The Boston Globe The poems in Violet Energy Ingots contain a sense of dis-ease, rupture, things frayed, and grief--as love shimmers the edges. Ryo Yamaguchi describes Nguyen's writing as "a kind of stuttering with intelligences, impressions, and emotions flaring up as the words find their pathways." As grounded in the earth as in the stars, her poems are reminders of the possibilities of contemplation in every space and moment. A Brief History of War And what if Jupiter is your faith a balloon but I call you by the improper names I'm stained by the world here To be brave and endure the losing To be brave and be the losing Luck Brutal Born in the Mekong Delta and raised in the Washington, DC area, Hoa Nguyen studied Poetics at New College of California in San Francisco. With the poet Dale Smith, Nguyen founded Skanky Possum, a poetry journal and book imprint in Austin, TX, their home for fourteen years. She is the author of several poetry collections, most recently Red Juice: Poems 1998-2008 and As Long as Trees Last. She lives in Toronto, Ontario where she curates a reading series and teaches poetics privately and at Ryerson University.
Trade Review"What our lives permit us to perceive as givens, Nguyen reveals as mere conditions, inextricably tied to and guided by greater forces--from the economy to the environment, from the Mayan predictions to the menstrual cycle, from the weight of history to the burden of the future." --Michael Brodeur, The Boston Globe "Hoa Nguyen's poems probe dailiness to divorce us from our base assumptions about how language might present the world to us. Her poems are also funny, and they strangely develop their own language games which comprise some of the most inviting lyrics I've found in a living poet." --Joshua Marie Wilkinson, Bookslut "[Hoa Nguyen's poems] impart a sense of how one might look at the various parts of a life and let them speak out without settling into simple dichotomies." --American Poets "Nguyen makes poetry that sticks in the heart and the craw, and she deserves to be widely and aggressively read." --Seth Abramson, Huffington Post "Nguyen remains one of the most powerful, vivid, and even visceral contemporary poets working today." --Dan Shewan, The Rumpus "[I]n her spare, wry way she's such a careful observer that the reader feels immersed in life's most quotidian details, its hurts, and rocky hopes." --Barbara Hoffert, Library Journal
Table of ContentsAUTUMN 2012 POEM DEAR LOVE NOT AS A SLAVE, MEKONG I HAUNTED SONNET A BRIEF HISTORY OF WAR HEADLESS OR HEAD WHO WAS ANDREW JACKSON? A SEPTEMBER ELEVENTH POEM SCREAMING BIRTHDAY POEM PHARAOH NOTES WEEK OF WORDS HOW THE SUN SHIVERS AFTER SONNET 117 POEM OF FIRST LINES FROM JACK SPICER POEMS STRUMMER MEANT TO SOME, VISITING JANUARY THREAD CORD HAWK CHASED BY BLACKBIRDS TOWER SONNET MACHIAVELLI NOTES DIANA WAS THE MOON BLOUSY GUITAR DIGRESSIVE PARENTHESIS I DIDN’T KNOW PS: FIRST FLOWERS THE WHITEBOARD ORPHEUS POEM LOCUST TREE NOTES (EAST TORONTO) MY GREEN I AM TOO EAT VIOLETS ANGEL GOING POW MOAN & LOW SHE SAILS (SPRING) POEM OF FIRST LINES FROM TAGORE POEMS HID DO I PLUNGE SUNFLOWER GUARDIANS SPARROW AGAIN BLOODLANDS ARTIFACTS FROM THE “UNEARTHLY CAVE” NAMED “THE PLACE WHERE THE MAN WAS KILLED BY THE BULL” AFTER THE MURDER BALLAD TO SEEK EVE COPPER DREAM IN OCTOBER ME THAT THE DIFFERENCE IS VELOCITY FOR LOVE RED RED VOICE OWL TORN YOU SONNET FOR MIMIR’S HEAD AFTER THE SONG AND LEAVE
