Violet Energy Ingots

"What our lives permit us to perceive as givens, Nguyen reveals as mere conditions, inextricably tied to and guided by greater forces--from the economy to the environment, from the Mayan predictions to the menstrual cycle, from the weight of history to the burden of the future." --Michael Brodeur,The Boston Globe In her first collection sinceRed Juice: Poems 1998-2008, Nguyen returns to poems of dailiness and raw humanity. Her language hops and skips, vivid with color, in turn political, ecological, funny, spiritual, and tender. As grounded in the earth as in the stars, her poems are reminders of the possibilities of contemplation in every space and moment. A Brief History of War And what if Jupiter is your faith a balloon but I call you by the improper names I'm stained by the world here To be brave and endure the losing To be brave and be the losing Luck Brutal Born in the Mekong Delta and raised in the Washington, DC area,Hoa Nguyen studied Poetics at New College of California in San Francisco. With the poet Dale Smith, Nguyen foundedSkanky Possum, a poetry journal and book imprint in Austin, TX, their home for fourteen years. She is the author of several poetry collections, most recentlyRed Juice: Poems 1998-2008 andAs Long as Trees Last. She lives in Toronto, Ontario where she curates a reading series and teaches poetics privately and at Ryerson University.