{"product_id":"the-past-9780819580467","title":"The Past","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eElegiac and searching, poems written in the long shadow of immigration\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe poems in Wendy Xu's third collection, \u003ci\u003eThe Past\u003c\/i\u003e, fantasize uneasily about becoming a palatable lyric record of their namesake, while ultimately working to disrupt this Westernized desire. Born in Shandong, China, in 1987, Wendy Xu immigrated to the United States in 1989, three days ahead of the events of Tian'anmen Square. \u003ci\u003eThe Past\u003c\/i\u003e probes the multi-generational binds of family, displacement, and immigration as an ongoing psychic experience without end. Moving spontaneously between lyric, fragment, prose, and subversions in \"traditional\" Chinese forms, the book culminates in a centerpiece series of \"Tian'anmen Square sonnets\" (and their subsequent erasures), to conjure up the irrepressible past, and ultimately imagine a new kind of poem: at once code and confession.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Tian'anmen Sonnet\" (dead air in air ... )\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eDead air in air \u003cbr\u003eThe anniversary of language \u003cbr\u003eholds you back against \u003cbr\u003ebucolic dreaming, down stream \u003cbr\u003efrom here is running \u003cbr\u003ea miraculous color, elegy \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ebursts like a ribbon in air \u003cbr\u003eThinking again of the Square today \u003cbr\u003eBold sky, passing episodes of cloud \u003cbr\u003eVegetation mutters in the Far West \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eA column of ghosts \u003cbr\u003egoing violet over time \u003cbr\u003eFamiliar song looping overhead \u003cbr\u003eLines pressed in air\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAbout the Author\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cp\u003eWENDY XU (Brooklyn, NY) is the author of \u003ci\u003ePhrasis\u003c\/i\u003e, named one of the 10 Best Poetry Books of 2017 by the\u003ci\u003e New York Times Book Review\u003c\/i\u003e. She teaches writing at the New School, and serves as Poetry Editor for the arts magazine \u003ci\u003eHyperallergic\u003c\/i\u003e.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e","brand":"Wesleyan University Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":50671529132306,"sku":"9780819580467","price":11.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0831\/4771\/8930\/files\/img_bb762238-a27b-4ffa-a700-0a4e5e0225bb.jpg?v=1733803463","url":"https:\/\/surprise-castle.myshopify.com\/products\/the-past-9780819580467","provider":"Surprise Castle","version":"1.0","type":"link"}