Yanyi

Winner of the 2018 Yale Series of Younger Poets prize How can a search for self‑knowledge reveal art as a site of community? Yanyi’s arresting and straightforward poems weave experiences of immigration as a Chinese American, of racism, of mental wellness, and of gender from a queer and trans perspective. Between the contrast of high lyric and direct prose poems, Yanyi invites the reader to consider how to speak with multiple identities through trauma, transition, and ordinary life. These poems constitute an artifact of a groundbreaking and original author whose work reflects a long journey self‑guided through tarot, therapy, and the arts. Foregrounding the power of friendship, Yanyi’s poems converse with friends as much as with artists both living and dead, from Agnes Martin to Maggie Nelson to Robin Coste Lewis. This instructive collection gives voice to the multifaceted humanity within all of us and inspires attention, clarity, and hope through art-making and community.

Year of Blue Water

From an award-winning poet comes a collection on heartbreak and transitions, written with a lyric and piercing ferocity Question: How do we carry our homes with us? Answer: In memory Informed by Yanyi's experiences of immigration, violent heartbreak, and a bodily transition, Dream of the Divided Field explores the contradictions that accompany shifts from one state of being to another, these are poems of love and isolation, lust and alienation, tenderness and violence, suffering and wonder. In his latest book, Yanyi conjures the beloved whom we believe we know, yet who is never who we imagine, and who threatens to erase us even as we stand before them. We exit our old selves like homes, these poems suggest. We look through the windows and recognize some former aspect of our life that both is ours, and isn't. We long for what we had even as we recognize that we can no longer live there. In tender, serene, and ethereal poems, Dream of the Divided Field examines a body breaking down, and a body that rebuilds in limitless and boundary-shifting ways.

Poems

Dream of the Divided Field

From an award-winning poet comes a collection on heartbreak and transitions, written with a piercing lyric ferocity. “A book like no other: tender, and eloquent, a singing across borders, across silences.”—Ilya Kaminsky, author of Deaf Republic, National Book Award finalist The poems in Yanyi’s latest book suggest that we enter and exit our old selves like homes. We look through the windows and recognize some former aspect of our lives that is both ours and not ours. We long for what we had even as we recognize that we can no longer live there. Yanyi conjures the beloved both within and without us: the beloved we believe we know, the beloved who is never the person we imagine, and the beloved who threatens to erase us even as we stand before them. How can we carry our homes with us? Informed by Yanyi’s experiences of immigration, violent heartbreak, and a bodily transition, Dream of the Divided Field explores the contradictions that accompany shifts from one state of being to another. In tender, serene, and ethereal poems, Dream of the Divided Field examines a body breaking down and a body that rebuilds in limitless and boundary-shifting ways. These are homes in memory—homes of love and isolation, lust and alienation, tenderness and violence, suffering and wonder.

Yanyi

Books

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