Tung-Hui Hu

The militarized legacy of the digital cloud: how the cloud grew out of older network technologies and politics.

A Prehistory of the Cloud

"Perplexity and wonder are integral parts of Tung-Hui Hu's poetry, which is as elegant as it is surprising."—Rain Taxi "This fresh and unexpected poet extends the lyric into the social space without losing any of song's intensity or mystery."—Mark Doty "Tung-Hui Hu works magic on the page."—Linda Gregerson Weaving between the personal and cosmic I, Tung-Hui Hu's lyrics seek the "greenhouse"—a place of saturation, growth—as a poetic space to cultivate new modes through which our common language can once again illuminate and guide—"lighthouse." With minimalism and control, Greenhouses, Lighthouses draws subtly from photography, cinematography, and history to create haunting and memorable connections. from "Cosmos Revealed behind a Dense Curtain of Poppies": Greenhouses, Lighthouses. The first astronomers tended on hands and knees the soil of the universe, smoothing away moss, seeding by night. Now our galaxy has the sixfold symmetry of ornament on the tower of Alhambra, shoots curled from stem looping heaven and earth together. Trace curlicues and rosettes with your finger. The chamber sealed off to mortals but open above, like a poppy. Tung-Hui Hu, author of three books of poetry, earned his MFA in creative writing from the University of Michigan and a PhD in film from University of California Berkeley. He teaches at the University of Michigan and lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

Greenhouses, Lighthouses

Something has happened here: an empire has gone to seed, an entire country goes on strike, people begin eating dirt and flowers, and a couple lives on a riverboat to avoid the ground. In Mine, Tung-Hui Hu makes myths out of the personal. He speaks of desire and awkwardness and the earth that contains both. Resonant, blunt, and sharply intelligent, this is writing that excavates.
 
As history unfolds over and over the same geography, these poems become, as Hu has written, “practice for the living.” The book grows out of the poet’s interest in how the histories we extract from the land become interlaced with our identity. The book asks, Where do we come from? But also: How do we make amends?

Mine

Dispatches from an Age of Disconnection

Digital Lethargy

This debut collection explores memory, cities, motion. Tung-Hui Hu's tone has some of the swampy wit that recalls Calvino or Michaux: A man swaps bodies with his lover; a mapmaker holds captive a city, which needs his crystal telescope to navigate through streets "unreadable as palm lines"; a car pushed off a cliff in a fit of anger becomes home for a school of fish. Anchored by the sequence "Elegies for self," Hu's poetry brings a quiet sophistication to syntax, diction, and form.

Tung-Hui Hu

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