Deer Hour

Luminous and feral, DEER HOUR is part creation documentary of the worlds we build for ourselves with language, part elegy for the fact that it is impossible to generate closure without enclosure. In a world where humanity is bound to "red cedars whose secrets keep us logging" as well as "childhood / writing from the front lines," Xiong would guide us through the anxieties of being "bound in sore action, / unable to reconcile / the wild & the not-wild" with poetry that is determined to witness while resistant to the complicities of history. Here, as in other crucial, contemporary poetics, the acts of speaking and writing are not halves of a pristine poetic whole, but yearning, expressive portions that remain troubled by the absence of a bearable relationship to the world. The resulting work is of an important new perspective that would liberate us from the dualism of what is sayable and free us into an argument about what is livable. Read this book if you have ever contemplated the institution of civilization, known the love of language, or taken one step toward the wild and opened your eyes. --Lo Kwa Mei-en, author of YEARLING