"Stine An’s B-Dragon Suite shines forth from the crossroads of a transcultural, multilingual imaginary that bridges K-pop and poetry with a fierce, singular, poetics. Rich with cross-cultural sonorities and perspectives, the poems espouse sharp collisions—or slippages—between the US and Korea, poetry and music, translation and multilingualism, grief and resistance. This book threads hard histories into the needle of the present day, rewiring them into a poetic coup d’etat. It’s a maximalist, hyper-sensual, energizing treat, revealing the sinuousness of our globalized moment: some call it soft power, but the punches are very real."—Sawako Nakayasu"Bridging South Korea and Korean America, Kafka and K-pop, Stine An’s B-Dragon Suite is a revelatory libretto for the absurdist afterlives of modernity-coloniality. In this dazzling debut, An queers, camps, tickles, and remixes language into a series of shimmering anti-translations, transforming a journey through the underworld into candy-coated spectacles of visual poetry. Accompanied through this mirror world by Lil Bang, 'your favorite soft power ethno-nationalist global sensation *pop* boy band,' we watch as 'bomb' bubbles into the balms and blossoms of bom (spring), as gutters fill with dreams of a lemon-flavored limitlessness. Underneath it all, a troubling question pulsates: 'But has anyone told you what it costs to make it back out of the underworld just to perform your role well enough to save others?' In conversation with a rich tradition of feminist Asian/American avant-garde poetic practice, B-Dragon Suite is both highly referential and wholly original; an intoxicating, brain-scratching joyride that is also deeply moving."—Franny ChoiPrevious praise for Stine An's translations:“High praise is also due for the tremendous dexterity of translator Stine An, who wraps her arms around the wild edges of Yoo’s distinct poetic voice, like giving a hug to the rain while growing an umbrella.”—Sawako Nakayasu, in praise of Today’s Morning Vocabulary, translated by Stine An“Translator and poet Stine An is the latest collaborator in Yoo’s photographic process, allowing English-language readers to recognize both Yoo’s absurd and humane ingenuity and his location along the lyric coordinates of Yi Sang, Frank O’Hara, Kim Hyesoon, Georg Trakl, Tomaž Šalamun, and others. Today’s Morning Vocabulary is an elixir, an invaluable tonic.—Joyelle McSweeney, in praise of Today’s Morning Vocabulary, translated by Stine An
