Extinction Theory
Poems
Published on 30. October 2022
96 pages
978-0-8203-6274-8 (ISBN)
Description
Extinction Theory is a collection of pseudoscience poems that try to provide rationales for some of life's most salient mysteries. Where is God? What does it mean to belong? Who killed the dinosaurs? Kien Lam creates new worlds with new rules to better answer these perennial questions. His poetry is that of discovery, of looking at the world as if for the first time. Lam exposes the transitory and transcendent nature of things and how we find meaning.
At the heart of this collection is also a cataloging of the smaller "extinctions" in life. Every passing moment is the death of something, and try as we might to recreate the feeling, it can never be the same. Maybe it's a relationship. Maybe it's a donut. It changes its shape as we juxtapose it against something new. Extinction Theory is as much about language as it is about the absence of language. Of English, of Vietnamese, and then of neither.
At the heart of this collection is also a cataloging of the smaller "extinctions" in life. Every passing moment is the death of something, and try as we might to recreate the feeling, it can never be the same. Maybe it's a relationship. Maybe it's a donut. It changes its shape as we juxtapose it against something new. Extinction Theory is as much about language as it is about the absence of language. Of English, of Vietnamese, and then of neither.
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10/2022
University of Georgia Press
€16.60
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Persons
Kien Lam is a Kundiman Fellow and an Indiana University MFA alumnus. His poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Poetry, the New Republic, the Nation, and other publications. He currently lives in Los Angeles, where he writes about professional video game players.
Kyle Dargan's poetry collections include Logorrhea Dementia: A Self-Diagnosis (Georgia); Bouquet of Hungers (Georgia), which received the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award; and The Listening (Georgia), which was a winner of the Cave Canem Poetry Prize. He is the former managing editor of Callaloo and the founder and current editor of POST NO ILLS magazine. He is an associate professor of literature and creative writing at American University.
Kyle Dargan's poetry collections include Logorrhea Dementia: A Self-Diagnosis (Georgia); Bouquet of Hungers (Georgia), which received the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award; and The Listening (Georgia), which was a winner of the Cave Canem Poetry Prize. He is the former managing editor of Callaloo and the founder and current editor of POST NO ILLS magazine. He is an associate professor of literature and creative writing at American University.
