{"product_id":"about-blank-9780822966685","title":"About: Blank","description":"In \u003ci\u003eabout: blank\u003c\/i\u003e, Tracy Fuad builds a poetics of contemporary dissociation. Funny, plaintive, and cutting, this formally inventive debut probes alienation in place and in language through the author's consideration of her own relationship to Iraqi Kurdistan. \u003ci\u003eabout: blank\u003c\/i\u003e--the title of which is the universal URL for a blank web page--complicates questions of longing and belonging. Interrogating the language of internet chatrooms, Yelp reviews, and the Kurdish dictionary, the poems here leap surprisingly between subjects to find new meaning. Written before and during the years the author spent living in Iraqi Kurdistan, the collection documents the alienation of being inside, outside, and between language(s) and the always-already terror of grammar. At once haunted and humorous, \u003ci\u003eabout: blank\u003c\/i\u003e inhabits and exhibits the disorientation and fragmentation that is endemic to the internet era, and mourns the loss of a more embodied existence. \u003cb\u003eExcerpt from \"Iraq Vag Panic\"\u003c\/b\u003e We approach the fertile crescent: \u003ci\u003eHewl?r, Kirkuk, Baghdad - \u003c\/i\u003ethree neon shocks. Across the aisle a woman opens up a document that just says ART. Then selects the text in baby blue and makes it shrink. Timing, says the healer. Such a powerful force in life.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAbout the Author\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eTracy Fuad \u003c\/b\u003eis the author of \u003ci\u003ePITH\u003c\/i\u003e, winner of the Gloria Anzaldúa Prize, and \u003ci\u003eDAD DAD DAD DAD DAD DAD DAD\u003c\/i\u003e. Her work has appeared in \u003ci\u003ePoetry\u003c\/i\u003e, the \u003ci\u003eBest New Poets Anthology\u003c\/i\u003e, the \u003ci\u003eNew Republic\u003c\/i\u003e, and elsewhere. She is a graduate of the Rutgers-Newark MFA program and a 2021-2022 Writing Fellow at the Providence Fine Arts Work Center.\u003cbr\u003e","brand":"University of Pittsburgh Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":50379532075282,"sku":"9780822966685","price":12.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0831\/4771\/8930\/files\/img_c271dc14-0312-4620-8b0e-92c4fc42e16b.jpg?v=1728663564","url":"https:\/\/surprise-castle.myshopify.com\/products\/about-blank-9780822966685","provider":"Surprise Castle","version":"1.0","type":"link"}