You lie underwater, under clarity -
anything I catch sight of
is familiar and wrong.

from 'Reading Yu's Love Letter to Li Z'ian'


This is a debut of interlocking narratives through which we encounter a Tang dynasty poet and Daoist nun, a young deer recast as the evolving and emerging adolescent, and the tensions and exposures of life in a small Polish village. At the heart of it are poems that grapple with the impact and aftershocks of the murder of a friend. Tang interrogates the potency and limitations of violence and grief, as well as of language, while disarming us with its wit and inventiveness.