Border vista : poems

Title:

Author:

Liu, Anni, author.

ISBN:

9780892555451

Personal Author:

Liu, Anni, author.

Uniform Title:

Poems. Selections

Publication Information:

New York : Persea Books, [2022]

Physical Description:

82 pages ; 23 cm

General Note:

"A Karen & Michael Braziller book."

Abstract:

"In Border Vista, winner of the 2021 Lexi Rudnitsky First Book Prize in Poetry, Anni Liu intimately narrates experiences of being undocumented, or precariously documented, in America, in poems that move between China and the United States"-- Provided by publisher.

Genre:

Poetry.

Awards:

Lexi Rudnitsky First Book Prize in Poetry, 2021.

Document ID:

SD_ILS:2395578

Holds: Copies:

Available:*

Library	Collection	Collection	Call Number	Status
Searching... Visalia Library (Tulare Co.)	Searching... Unknown	Non-Fiction Area	811.6 LIU	Searching... Unknown

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Summary

Border Vista intimately narrates the experience of being undocumented, or precariously documented, in America. In poems that consider migration as an ongoing process rather than a finite event, Anni Liu writes exquisitely and on fear (useful and paranoid) and agency, loneliness, and the way the violence of the carceral state shapes our most intimate relationships to each other and to the land. As she does, she revisits moments of unexpected poignancy: searching for turtles in a drainage ditch, picking crabapples along a rural highway, smelling the namesake flower of her mother, who is half a world away.

Author Notes

Anni Liu was born in Xi'an, Shanxi, ($$$) in the year of the goat. Her work is featured in Poetry, Ploughshares, Ecotone, and elsewhere. She earned her MFA at Indiana University and edits prose at Graywolf Press.

Reviews (1)

Booklist Review

The opening poem in Liu's prize-winning first collection, "Ars Poetica in a Dream Language," elegantly and indelibly marks the intricate parameters of this piercing cross-cultural inquiry. The poems that follow hopscotch through signal childhood moments as a seven-year-old girl's mother leaves their ancient Chinese city, as the girl's father and grandparents care for her, as she takes English classes, and as she suddenly experiences a "double-edged feeling" that will define her and her life as she immigrates to America. Liu's poems are confiding, lithe, and vital, pulling one urgently forward. And yet each line, vivid and visceral in its imagery and emotion, is meticulously composed, the internal rhythms and rhymes exquisitely expressive, the range of implication extending as the story moves into the shadows and light of the narrator's adulthood. The title poem is set along the U.S./Canada border, and borders and perspectives take many forms as Liu contrasts languages, countries, memories, and actualities, incisively tracing the blurring of night and day, aloneness and connection, interior and exterior, the human and the wild, undocumented and documented. "That skinless feeling. Your own endlessly permeable self."

$$$
Ars Poetica in a Dream Language	p. 3
Demolished Landscape with Open Mouth	p. 4
The Story	p. 5
Aftershock	p. 7
Memory in a Foreign Language	p. 8
Beijing Aquarium	p. 9
Departure Sequence	p. 11
What No One Told You	p. 15
$$$
Aubade, Untroubled	p. 19
Additionally, what freedoms have I been trained to deny myself?	p. 20
Border Vista	p. 21
Northeast Kingdom	p. 23
Night Swim at Shadow Lake	p. 24
Document: Eight Months Before Expiration	p. 25
Six years old, my classmates and I	p. 26
After School	p. 27
And I Looked Away	p. 28
... loss and grief are generated by juridicopolitical mechanisms ...	p. 29
Sleeplessness: A History	p. 31
Ditch	p. 32
$$$
Qigong	p. 37
Remains	p. 38
Finding Fruit	p. 40
On Jay Peak Road	p. 41
Permit	p. 42
Solstice	p. 43
Hypnogogia	p. 44
Shape Note	p. 46
$$$
Upon Hearing the News	p. 53
In Her Place	p. 54
Going Back	p. 55
Sightings	p. 56
Misapprehension	p. 57
Xi'an Nocturne with Jasmine and Pears	p. 58
Jiangsu, Early Summer	p. 59
Transubstantiation Sonnets	p. 60
Entries from Hottest Year on Record	p. 61
$$$
Pantoum	p. 67
Open Letter to the Boy in the Car	p. 68
State Symbols	p. 69
While You Were Gone	p. 71
At the Miller House	p. 72
On Injury	p. 74
$$$	p. 75
Autoscopy	p. 77
Notes	p. 78
Acknowledgments	p. 79
About the Author	p. 82

Available:*

Bound With These Titles

On Order

Summary

Summary

Author Notes

Reviews (1)

Booklist Review

Table of Contents