Full Description
"An alert, skeptical, passionate book about human understanding and its limitations."—Robert Pinsky
"With a calm voice and distinct music, the poet speaks about love and loss and many micro-aspects of the human condition today. It is a splendid debut."—Ha Jin
A linguistic tour-de-force that traverses cultural, psychological, and international boundaries.
Eleanor Goodman navigates between worlds, from a parent's cancer in Ohio to Hong Kong's Tolo Harbor to migrant workers in China. These poems are snapshots of daily life as lived and considered, moments of elegy and rejoicing. Goodman won the 2015 Lucien Stryk Prize and was shortlisted for the Griffin Poetry Prize for her translations of Chinese poetry.
Contents
Contents:
For Once
Ancestry
Les Restes
Outside Muncie, Indiana
Sustenance
To an old farmer
Harvest
On Vacation in Vermont, My Father Foresees His Death
Oma's Testament
Dressing
On the Slope of the False Peak, My Father Looks for his Grave
Ohio
Obey, Obey
Wanting Out
On the Plane Back to Shanghai, I Contemplate My Father
Since the Divorce My Mother Never
Allowance
How Cancer is a Reminder of Other Pain
Piety
Swimming Lesson
Hummingbird
Weekend Getaway
Sanctum
By the Sea in Rain
Operation Enduring Freedom
Boy
To leave Zimbabwe
Fiel
Alpenglow
Iceland From the Air
Near Heidelberg
Dance
Night, Plowing
Foreign Tongues
Gift
Piety
Nine Dragon Island
Affair
Night Train
Man in an Alley off Jiangsu Lu, Shanghai
Mahjong
Mangosteen
Six-Foot Chopsticks
Fire Confirms to What it Shapes
Fault Line
Return
Beggars Outside the Chengdu Train Station at Noon
Hope
In Praise of Dumplings
On the Second Day of her Trip to Beijing, My Mother Loses a Toth
Discipline
Then, Something
