{"id":5005,"date":"2013-09-26T17:57:41","date_gmt":"2013-09-26T17:57:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/fourwaybooks.com\/site\/?page_id=5005"},"modified":"2022-12-20T15:35:09","modified_gmt":"2022-12-20T20:35:09","slug":"sediment","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/fourwaybooks.com\/site\/sediment\/","title":{"rendered":"Sediment"},"content":{"rendered":"

[column col=”1\/4″]\"Sediment<\/a><\/p>\n

paper \u2022 84 pages \u2022 15.95
\nISBN-13:\u00a0978-1-884800-93-1<\/p>\n

Add to Cart<\/a>
\n[\/column]<\/p>\n

Sediment<\/em><\/h1>\n

Sandy Tseng<\/h2>\n

\u00a0A Stahlecker Series Selection<\/em><\/p>\n

In Sandy Tseng’s finely-honed debut collection, Sediment<\/em>, leaving is both what remains\u2014the marks of our
\npresence once we\u2019ve gone\u2014and the act of going to another place, a different culture, an unknown afterlife.
\n\u201cThe island rebuilds itself over the loft and we rebuild over it,\u201d eroding and erasing as we raise, replacing
\nrote traditions with new mantras. Sediment<\/em> asks what it means to belong and to possess in a time of
\nupheaval, a time \u201cin between languages,\u201d when we \u201cchange the advisory from yellow \/ to orange, orange to
\nyellow\u2014\/ we do not plan on running to the house \/ to get our belongings.\u201d This book explores the pleasures
\nand terrors of transition and translation, suggesting that language itself does not belong to us but waits,
\nwanting a body: \u201cSome words are better left gathering in the wind. \/ But we speak them.\u201d Tseng writes, \u201cWe
\ncan never go back. I\u2019ve wanted to pack everything into a box, ship it back overseas with a note explaining,\u201d
\ncaught in the middle of competing cultures. In brittle, etched couplets, in poised, staccato sentences, and in
\nsearching lines that look back questioningly even as they forge ahead, Sediment<\/em> seeks purchase on that
\nshifting world. \u201cSome things \/ we were never meant to keep,\u201d suggests one poem, pondering what we should
\ncling to, what let slip away, and how to make sense out of the possessions we\u2019re left with.<\/p>\n

Sediment<\/em> is at once haunted, vivid, clinical: \u201con your white coat, the blood \/ of a stranger,\u201d \u201cthe moon is the silver of stainless steel that sews your bone back together.\u201d Through these accounts of immigration and migration, of family loss and being at a loss for what to do, we experience disjuncture in its unsettling familiarity, the way \u201cthere are people in restaurants eating their meals and people walking around crying. People washing out to sea.\u201d These poems argue the need to emulate \u201cthe birds \/ that leave and come back with nothing. How content they are. \/ The beauty of having nothing.\u201d They argue, too, that possessions might shore us, if only because \u201cThere\u2019s something \/ premeditated in the way \/ an object is broken\u2014\u201d Having traveled with Tseng through the imaginary, lived, and left cities of Sediment<\/em> , we learn not to forget nor to hold on but to read \u201cnegative space. The displacement of dust and roads.\u201d We learn that the sediment of our lives\u2014not just dust and past cities, but received traditions, half-recalled memories, accrued possessions\u2014is also the fragment by which we recognize a future life, here or elsewhere. Sediment is an assured, challenging debut from a poet of great promise.<\/p>\n

About the Author<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[column col=”1\/4″] paper \u2022 84 pages \u2022 15.95 ISBN-13:\u00a0978-1-884800-93-1 Add to Cart [\/column] Sediment Sandy Tseng \u00a0A Stahlecker Series Selection In Sandy Tseng’s finely-honed debut collection, Sediment, leaving is both what remains\u2014the marks of our presence once we\u2019ve gone\u2014and the act of going to another place, a different culture, an unknown afterlife. \u201cThe island rebuilds […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-5005","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fourwaybooks.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/5005","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fourwaybooks.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fourwaybooks.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fourwaybooks.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fourwaybooks.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5005"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/fourwaybooks.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/5005\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18826,"href":"https:\/\/fourwaybooks.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/5005\/revisions\/18826"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fourwaybooks.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5005"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}