What our lives permit us to perceive as givens, Nguyen reveals as mere
conditions, inextricably tied to and guided by greater forces--from the
economy to the environment, from the Mayan predictions to the menstrual
cycle, from the weight of history to the burden of the future. --Michael
Brodeur, The Boston Globe
The poems in Violet Energy Ingots contain a sense of dis-ease,
rupture, things frayed, and grief--as love shimmers the edges. Ryo
Yamaguchi describes Nguyen's writing as "a kind of stuttering with
intelligences, impressions, and emotions flaring up as the words find
their pathways." As grounded in the earth as in the stars, her poems are
reminders of the possibilities of contemplation in every space and
moment.
A Brief History of War
And what if Jupiter
is your faith
a balloon
but I call you
by the improper
names I'm stained
by the world here
To be brave and endure
the losing To be brave
and be the losing
Luck Brutal
Born in the Mekong Delta and raised in the Washington, DC area, Hoa
Nguyen studied Poetics at New College of California in San Francisco.
With the poet Dale Smith, Nguyen founded Skanky Possum, a poetry
journal and book imprint in Austin, TX, their home for fourteen years.
She is the author of several poetry collections, most recently Red
Juice: Poems 1998-2008 and As Long as Trees Last. She lives in
Toronto, Ontario where she curates a reading series and teaches poetics
privately and at Ryerson University.
