Real talk, this is a theory-heavy book meant for literature students, but reading it shaped the way I’ve thought about my creative writing since I read it. Min Hyoung Song makes a strong case not only for the creation of more climate-centric literature but also for reading the climate into books that are not about the climate crisis.
Song’s style is also very readable despite being a theory book. I was greatly moved by how he wrote about climate-related despair and hope and how he spoke frankly about what he believed literature could teach us in these times.
In Climate Lyricism Min Hyoung Song articulates a climate change-centered reading practice that foregrounds how climate is present in most literature. Song shows how literature, poetry, and essays by Tommy Pico, Solmaz Sharif, Frank O'Hara, Ilya Kaminsky, Claudia Rankine, Kazuo Ishiguro, Teju Cole, Richard Powers, and others help us to better grapple with our everyday encounters with climate change and its disastrous effects, which are inextricably linked to the legacies of racism, colonialism, and extraction. These works employ what Song calls climate lyricism-a mode of address in which a first-person "I" speaks to a "you" about how climate change thoroughly…
Ruth Ozeki is one of those writers I believe I’ll be reading closely for a long time. I read My Year of Meats a few years ago and was absolutely astonished by what that book accomplished, and this book continued that trend. Ozeki managed to weave together a tale with mystery elements that captured the uncanny realities of planetary connections.
I was also absolutely astonished by how unforced the style was when Ozeki bounced between the two main characters of the book. The overlaps between the two characters felt utterly natural and vividly described on the page despite being separated by time and location.
A brilliant, unforgettable novel from bestselling author Ruth Ozeki, author of The Book of Form and Emptiness
Finalist for the Booker Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award
"A time being is someone who lives in time, and that means you, and me, and every one of us who is, or was, or ever will be."
In Tokyo, sixteen-year-old Nao has decided there's only one escape from her aching loneliness and her classmates' bullying. But before she ends it all, Nao first plans to document the life of her great grandmother, a Buddhist nun who's lived more than a…
Victoria Chang’s book is a masterclass in poetic compression. Using Japanese poetry forms and borrowing titles from W.S. Merwin, Chang creates an utterly original and hauntingly lyrical collection.
What I also found so impressive was how the form became invisible. Even knowing the constraints of Chang's forms, the poems feel exactly as long/short as they need to be, the lines are broken exactly where they need to be, and the words feel like just enough. The result is close, concentrated attention to vivid images.
'Impeccable, precise poems, sometimes shocking and strange, but always startling' Irish Times
A lover of strict form, best-selling poet Victoria Chang turns to compact Japanese waka, powerfully innovating on tradition while continuing her pursuit of one of life's hardest questions: how to let go.
In The Trees Witness Everything, Victoria Chang reinvigorates language by way of concentration, using constraint to illuminate and free the wild interior. Largely composed in various Japanese syllabic forms called 'wakas,' each poem is shaped by pattern and count. This highly original work innovates inside the lineage of great…
Inspired by various disasters, from climate change to the pandemic, my poems whirl together extreme weather, isolation, and interpersonal dysfunction into a gathering storm of a book. Split into five parts named for the four stages of hurricane formation and the eye of the storm, the book builds in intensity only to suddenly provide precious moments of calm relief.
Poems about unbridgeable distances are side-by-side with poems about deep friendships and romantic relationships. Shattered free verse poems that move across the page are interspersed with orderly sonnets and other forms. Guiding the reader through a maelstrom before leaving them becalmed, the book artfully reproduces the feeling of living in chaotic times.
