Post by shayepoet on Jun 2, 2008 20:29:41 GMT 2
Equivalence
Shin Yu Pai[/b]
Equivalence is the first major collection from poet Shin Yu Pai. Drawing its name from photographer Alfred Stieglitz’s series of cloud images, the poems in this collection explore connections and correspondences between poetry and the visual arts, Eastern and Western cultures, tradition and modernity, perpetual migration and the sense of home. In the course of this exploration, the poet is inspired by modern and contemporary artists such as Wolfgang Laib, Piet Mondrian, Joseph Cornell, Yoko Ono, and Felix-Gonzales-Torres.
Reviews for Equivalence:
“Those professional mourners busy lamenting the current state of the poetry union—too many MFAs, too many first book prizes, too many first books, too many books—will be delighted (or perhaps vexed) to discover poet Shin Yu Pai. Though Equivalence was published by the perspicacious La Alameda Press without the occasion of a prize, Pai attended an MFA program and the book was nourished by a state grant and a visit to the MacDowell colony. And guess what? It’s a terrific, original, clean-lined book, which delivers quite a lot of substance with its polished style—more proof that the institutional support system helping young writers can be good, as opposed to deadly, for poetry.”
– Joyelle McSweeney, The Constant Critic
“…Because her art arises from this visual and tactile world, we come to understand that the poem and/or the painting, and the world the artist inhabits, are virtually inseparable.
– Barbara Jane Reyes, Tamafyhr Mountain Poetry
“Unlike many contemporary poets, Pai isn't obsessed with documenting the stale torpor of post-modern existence or lush, picturesque, scenic backdrops. Her wordplay is rich, but never off-putting in its extravagance… The emotional payoff: Temporal concerns surrounded by a uniquely transcendent aura. The end result: a lilting journey through perpetual spaces and multicultural hope that demands your attention.”
– Chi Tung, Asia Pacific Arts
“I can see Pai’s poems as vessels of remembrance; an exploration of personal space that try to speak the unspeakable. Pai creates a precipitous voice. One that is fearless and figurative.”
– Loren Kleinman, Sidereality
"Pai offers readers a glimpse into the secret life of text in the culture – the looming, ominous backdrop to our existences. When she challenges continuity, she challenges unquestioning consumption of the shit that the system feeds us. While her poems do not offer a magical, lyrical place in which a reader can dwell, they do offer an examination of words in the world."
– Olivia Cronk, Bookslut
“Pai operates along the trajectory set out by Baudrillard in the late twentieth century wherein signs are not only deconstructed into signifier and signified, but signifiers, instead of pointing to a deeper level of reality, only point to more signs, leaving representation to precede and determine the real. In Pai’s landscape, signs of the real substitute for the real, leading to a critique of the commodification of both language and visual image."
– Karla Kelsey, Octopus
About the author:
Shin Yu Pai is the author of Works on Paper (Convivio Bookworks), Sightings: Selected Works [2000 - 2005] (1913 Press, 2007), The Love Hotel Poems (Press Lorentz, 2006), Unnecessary Roughness (xPress(ed), 2005), Equivalence (La Alameda, 2003), and Ten Thousand Miles of Mountains and Rivers (Third Ear Books, 1998). Forthcoming projects include Haiku Not Bombs from the Booklyn Artists Alliance . Her work is anthologized in America Zen: A Gathering of Poets (Bottom Dog Press, 2004) and The Wisdom Anthology of North American Buddhist Poetry (Wisdom Publications, 2005).
Website: shinyupai.com
ISBN 1-888809-41-8, 88 pages, $14.00
La Alameda Press, 2003
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Small Press Distribution; tinyurl.com/3s8ael
Amazon: tinyurl.com/5hyl56
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