Orange Tree

Häftad, Engelska, 2023

181 kr

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Beskrivning

Debut collection of poems that weaves stories of family history, war, and migration. Dong Li’s The Orange Tree is a collection of narrative poems that braids forgotten legends, personal sorrows, and political upheavals into a cinematic account of Chinese history as experienced by one family. Amid chaos and catastrophe, the child narrator examines a yellowed family photo to find resemblances and learns a new language, inventing compound words to conjure and connect family stories. These invented words and the calligraphy of untranslated Chinese characters appear in lists separating the book’s narrative sections. Li’s lyrical and experimental collection transcends the individual, placing generations of family members and anonymous others together in a single moment that surpasses chronological time. Weaving through stories of people with little means, between wars and celebrations, over bridges and walls, and between trees and gardens, Li’s poems offer intimate perspectives on times that resonate with our own. The result is an unflinching meditation on family history, collective trauma, and imaginative recovery. The Orange Tree is the recipient of the inaugural Phoenix Emerging Poet Book Prize for 2023.

Produktinformation

Utgivningsdatum:2023-03-31
Mått:165 x 241 x 10 mm
Vikt:172 g
Format:Häftad
Språk:Engelska
Serie:Phoenix Poets
Antal sidor:88
Förlag:The University of Chicago Press
Medarbetare:Srikanth Reddy
ISBN:9780226826165

Utforska kategorier

Poesi inom Skönlitteratur

Mer om författaren

Dong Li is a multilingual author who translates from Chinese, English, French, and German. Born and raised in China, he was educated at Deep Springs College and Brown University. His poems have been published in Conjunctions, Fence, Kenyon Review, POETRY, Poetry Daily, and many others.

Recensioner i media

"Li’s method of blurring the distinction between singular and plural is in perpetual service to the book’s tone, one I can best describe as strange, mournful, and obliquely beautiful. . . . Li is a sure-footed guide. The Orange Tree avoids the affective pitfalls of both the memoir and the chronicle, replacing the nostalgia of the former with a clipped aloofness, and countering the roteness of the latter with an insistent, unflinching imagism. . . . Li’s poems introduce the reader to a way of seeing that is not unlike his own approach to history, a reconciliation of individual and collective scales. With unsentimental conviction rather than didacticism, The Orange Tree restores dignity to those whose lives and deaths were forgotten, or worse, remembered falsely, turned into propaganda, patronized, or pitied. The stories of these lost ones may lack a preexisting language, but that does not mean they are untellable; no matter how faded a photograph is, our minds will still fill in the outlines."

Innehållsförteckning

Foreword: Srikanth ReddyAviary of Water and FireThe Orange TreeLive, by LightningThe Army DreamerThe Maple BridgeGlossary: In Search of WordsAcknowledgments