Master
Simon Shieh
(Author)
Terrance Hayes
(Introduction by)
Description
Winner of the 2022 Kathryn A. Morton Prize in Poetry, selected by Terrance Hayes. The debut collection from Simon Shieh, Master is a stark, surreal, and imagistic reckoning with a traumatic past. Master follows the speaker's struggle with masculinity from a martial arts school in upstate New York to a boxing academy in Beijing. Language emerges in this collection not as a neutral witness to a boy's subjugation, but as the very tool of hegemony, though one which also holds the key to its own undoing, and therefore to freedom. As much as Master is the story of pain, it is also a journey to healing, illuminating that while violence can be our patrimony, it does not have to be our destiny.Product Details
Price
$17.95
$16.69
Publisher
Sarabande Books
Publish Date
September 12, 2023
Pages
90
Dimensions
0.0 X 0.0 X 0.0 inches | 0.0 pounds
Language
English
Type
Paperback
EAN/UPC
9781956046212
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About the Author
Simon Shieh is a Taiwanese American poet and essayist. He has lived in upstate New York and Beijing, China, where he co-founded Spittoon Literary Magazine, which translates the best new Chinese writing into English. From 2008-2014 he competed as an amateur and professional Muay Thai fighter in China, Brazil, Argentina, Thailand, and the U.S. In 2021 he was named a Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellow by the Poetry Foundation and in that same year moved to the U.S. with his wife, Charlotte, and their dog, Momo.
Reviews
"Where does one learn such vivid depictions of mystery and memory? I thought of Frank Stanford's vernacular surrealism, except this surrealism is as restrained as a Rottweiler holding butterflies in its mouth; a steady, steely muzzle holding delicate fluttering colors. The lucid and haunted tone is bound to the specter of the Master shifting between father and trickster, friend and foe. He is part father, part trickster, part shadow, part guide, part foe. The student grapples with the master, the slave grapples with the master; intimately, attentively, and carefully we grapple with the master."
--Terrance Hayes, contest judge "If you surrender to Simon Shieh's Master, if you let your eyes grow accustomed to its voluptuous and troubling dark, you will be rewarded with a singular reading experience: merciless in its vision and craft, dripping with muscularity and sweat, Shieh's thrilling debut will leave you breathless."
--Ama Codjoe, author of Bluest Nude "This is one of the best collections I've read in a while. Simon Shieh's voice is at once crisp and singular: his lines are tight, complex, and layered; his language unspools in powerful movements, so controlled and yet full of the devastating grace that precedes a final blow: 'shattering the bone around my left eye/the doctors called it orbital//my mistake: resting my head/on his shoulder--letting him cradle it in his arms.' The beauty in this book is heartbreaking, brutal. Unsparing in its analysis and deconstruction of power, Master is a startling and stunning debut collection."
--Sally Wen Mao, author of The Kingdom of Surfaces
--Terrance Hayes, contest judge "If you surrender to Simon Shieh's Master, if you let your eyes grow accustomed to its voluptuous and troubling dark, you will be rewarded with a singular reading experience: merciless in its vision and craft, dripping with muscularity and sweat, Shieh's thrilling debut will leave you breathless."
--Ama Codjoe, author of Bluest Nude "This is one of the best collections I've read in a while. Simon Shieh's voice is at once crisp and singular: his lines are tight, complex, and layered; his language unspools in powerful movements, so controlled and yet full of the devastating grace that precedes a final blow: 'shattering the bone around my left eye/the doctors called it orbital//my mistake: resting my head/on his shoulder--letting him cradle it in his arms.' The beauty in this book is heartbreaking, brutal. Unsparing in its analysis and deconstruction of power, Master is a startling and stunning debut collection."
--Sally Wen Mao, author of The Kingdom of Surfaces
