It wasn’t the knob of sunOr grainy currents crossing the eyethat invites thought that you’ve finally arrivedat the clearest understanding this very instant on the Huangpu Riverwhere the mind is serrated dragging its way All this thinking thousands upon thousands along the river and inlandand still meaning is heavier than the bodies we yoke it to Surely for this reason death must announce itselfagain and again in such sour languageso we may live closer to the senses the sweat of the unsayable Moments when we feel history pulling from behindthe eyes the mouth hooked But the remainder of this lifeis still millions of kilometers away from being born
In Search of
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- July 21, 2022
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“In Search of” from THE RUPTURE TENSE: by Jenny Xie.
Published by Graywolf Press on September 06, 2022.
Copyright © 2022 by Jenny Xie.
All rights reserved.
Reproduced by Poetry Daily with permission.
First published in Spring 2020 issue of The Yale Review.
Jenny Xie is the author of Eye Level, a finalist for the National Book Award, and The Rupture Tense. She has been supported by fellowships and grants from Civitella Ranieri Foundation, Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, Kundiman, and New York Foundation for the Arts. In 2020, she was awarded the Vilcek Prize in Creative Promise. She lives in New York City and teaches at Bard College.
“Jenny Xie’s The Rupture Tense, like the photographs of Li Zhensheng, invites a powerful reckoning with the history of the Cultural Revolution. Her stunning language enacts a journey through an emotional landscape where we listen to the pain of the dead and the grief of those who inherited the terrible stories. . . . Disquieting and gorgeous.’”
—Rigoberto González
“A masterwork of witness. . . . These poems brilliantly capture the discomfort and wonder of returning home to a country shorn of memory, where the soiled corners of the past remain all too evident. The Rupture Tense doesn’t just haunt—it pulls me back into singular, urgent moments until I live inside them, shaken and transformed.”
—Sally Wen Mao
“With brilliant inquiry and imagination, Jenny Xie writes into what has vanished from the archives of the Cultural Revolution. . . . The Rupture Tense is innovative, stunningly precise, and heartbreaking.”
—Cathy Park Hong
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