About BC Books Online
BC Books Online was created for anyone interested in BC-published books, and with librarians especially in mind. We'd like to make it easy for library staff to learn about books from BC publishers - both new releases and backlist titles - so you can inform your patrons and keep your collections up to date.
Our site features print books and ebooks - both new releases and backlist titles - all of which are available to order through regular trade channels. Browse our subject categories to find books of interest or create and export lists by category to cross-reference with your library's current collection.
A quick tip: When reviewing the "Browse by Category" listings, please note that these are based on standardized BISAC Subject Codes supplied by the books' publishers. You will find additional selections, grouped by theme or region, in our "BC Reading Lists."
Enlarge Cover
list price: $17.95
edition:Paperback
category: Poetry
published: Feb 2010
ISBN:9780889712447
publisher:
Nightwood Editions
imprint:
Junction
Description
Cold Sleep Permanent Afternoon, the follow-up to Ray Hsu's award-winning first collection, Anthropy, is the second book in a prospective trilogy that explores the "grammar of personhood."
Whereas Anthropy approached the human condition through the prism of first-, second- and third-person perspectives, Cold Sleep Permanent Afternoon uses the grammatical concepts of singular and plural as grid-lines to chart contemporary life and concerns both harrowing and humane. Extending from this principal division, Hsu explores the borders between civic engagement and domesticity, dissent and accord, freedom and restriction--each of these are tested against another and framed by the tension between the collective and the individual. With Cold Sleep Permanent Afternoon, Ray Hsu presents our landscape in stark light,confronting the human drama that is manifesting within our lives,and investigating how we make sense of ourselves and the world we have wrought.
Editorial Reviews
Through startling images ("Birds swing into the milk / sky like tiny rags"), Hsu investigates influences that are at once internally and culturally imposed: "Am I filling in this form / or filling it out?"...These are complex reflections on the "intricate want" of selfhood, absolutely uncaged in desire with an inquisition that is more choral than solipsistic.
―Jennifer Still, Winnipeg Free Press
Clearly, this is not ... your regular poetry book but, rather, one that is intended to take you out of your complacency by challenging your expectations ... Hsu brings to mind the writings of Anne Carson, as both have sought to bridge the divide between genres, both in their own way and both quite successfully.
―John Herbert Cunningham, a href=http://ojs.lib.umanitoba.ca/prairie_fire/issue/view/6>Prairie Fire
The brief yet memorable poems offer glimpses into the day-to-day drama of the human condition, with particular focus on the borders that divide harmony and dissent, and the seeds of conflict that grow amid strife between individuals and society as a whole. A thoughtful and provocative compilation, that lingers in the mind and spirit long after being read.
―The Midwest Book Review
By turns elegiac, graceful, and dramatic, Hsu's second book is a deeply intelligent and felt contribution.
―Kit Dobson, a href=http://www.alecc.ca/goose.php>The Goose
