
The Lengest Neoi
Stephanie Choi(Author)
University of Iowa Press
Published on 6. May 2024
Book
Paperback/Softback
102 pages
978-1-60938-951-2 (ISBN)
Description
"The Lengest Neoi embraces and complicates what it means to err-to wander or go astray; a deviation from a code of behavior or truth; a mistake, flaw, or defect. Beginning with the collection's title, which combines a colloquial Cantonese phrase (Leng Neoi/"Pretty Girl") and the English suffix for the superlative degree (-est), these poems wander, deviate, and flaw across bodies, geographies, and languages. From the Nantucket Whaling Museum to the War Remnants Museum in Saigon, from childhood speech and bodily correction to the history of the American Chestnut Tree and anti-Asian sentiment and policies, from voicemails to experimental translations between English and Cantonese-this book asks: to wander or go astray from where? Who and what defines error? What is a right translation? Of language, of body, of self, of history? The speaker's insatiable desire for self-definition-to transform "error" into poetic space and play-leaves her wondering if the process of creating and looking doesn't also embody a kind of projected, and potentially problematic, fantasy of self. Ultimately, the collection grapples with how one might be "still of the histories that define me," and able to locate sites of agency and self-creation. In this debut collection from Stephanie Choi, you'll find the poet's "tongue writing herself, learning to speak.""--
More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
Iowa
United States
Product notice
Paperback (trade)
Unsewn / adhesive bound
Illustrations
2 b&w images
Dimensions
Height: 226 mm
Width: 175 mm
Thickness: 10 mm
Weight
181 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-60938-951-2 (9781609389512)
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Person
Stephanie Choi's poems have appeared in Bellevue Literary Review, New Ohio Review, PANK, Blackbird, and Electric Literature. She is currently the poet-in-residence at Sewanee: The University of the South, and lives in Sewanee, Tennessee.