What have you done to our ears to make us hear echoes
(Paperback)
Publishing Details
What have you done to our ears to make us hear echoes
By (Author) Arlene Kim
Milkweed Editions
Milkweed Editions
25th October 2011
United States
Classifications
General
Non Fiction
811.6
Physical Properties
Paperback
96
Width 139mm, Height 215mm
170g
Description
WINNER OF THE AMERICAN BOOK AWARD
In her stunning debut poetry collection,What have you done to our ears to make us hear echoes, Arlene Kim confronts the ways in which language mythologizes memory and thus exiles us from our own true histories. Juxtaposing formal choices and dreamlike details, Kim explores the entangled myths that accompany the experience of immigrationthe abandoned country known only through stories, the new country into which the immigrant family must wander ever deeper, and the forked paths where these narratives meet and diverge.
Sharing ground with Randall Jarrells later poems, and drawing on a dizzying array of sourcesincluding Grimms Fairy Tales, Korean folklore, Turkish proverbs, Paul Celan, Anna Akhmatova, Antonin Dvoraks letters, and the numerous fictions we script across the inscrutabilities of the natural worldKim reveals how a homesickness for the self is universal. It is this persistent and incurable longing that drives us as we make our way through the dark woods of our lives, following what might or might not be a trail of breadcrumbs, discovering, finally, that we are the only path.
Reviews
Winner of the 2012 American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation
