Overview

A series of poetic remixes, WAR IS NOT MY MOTHER might be considered a form of spirit possession. Each poem in this manuscript takes up another poet's work- a selection that ranges from Lorca to CD Wright, H Xun Hng to Sappho, Agha Shahid Ali to Ishrat Afreen- and alters its DNA, infusing it with an other idiolect. This is an idiolect of pleasure (the wordplay, puns, and cadence of the Vietnamese language) and of pain (the long shadow of the Vietnam war in the lives of those who survived, barely survived, and became refugees). Like any possessing spirit, WAR IS NOT MY MOTHER speaks in tongues: using others' words to articulate a personal pain. Shorn of their original context and content, the poems in this collection- mutant-hybrids who retain a trace of their skeleton while dressed in entirely other clothes- become a play of voices that call into question notions of authenticity and self in poetic production, a postmodern twist for the classical craft.

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9781955904766

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Once again, VI KHI NAO models an achievement of possibilities in A Bell Curve is a Pregnant Straight Line that is nothing short of a miracle for the future of the body: an avalanche of the imagination that disintegrates the lines separating feelings from thought, the spirit from the natural world, and reveals how language, light and touch thread us into fuller sense of ourselves. Reading this book is to be shrouded in her magic and to experience the likelihood of floating, especially at the level of the eye and desire. - MAJOR JACKSON, AUTHOR OF THE ABSURD MAN Imagine turning yourself-your whole body-inside-out, all the way, so that the you inside of you, i.e. every connected, reclusive, and/or unfathomable organ, cell, humor, sense, memory, affection and idea, became your new skin, profile and comportment. Then imagine looking and feeling, in that quasi-moebius and uncannily porous transposition, more like yourself than you ever felt before. VI KHI NAO's A Bell Curve is a Pregnant Straight Line is, for me, the transcendent, coruscating art of that sensation. - BRANDON SHIMODA, AUTHOR OF THE GRAVE ON THE WALL VI KHI NAO is such a wildly singular writer, it's always a breathless romp. I would give her the last pen in my quiver and know that she'll jolt us right out of our shirts, our pants, our sweaty and shimmering skin. - SAWAKO NAKAYASU, AUTHOR OF SOME GIRLS WALK INTO THE COUNTRY THEY ARE FROM With formal experimentation and direct beckoning, VI KHI NAO, draws us into this collection ripe with sound, sorrow, and sensuality. A Bell Curve is a Pregnant Straight Line is a lyric calendar punctuated with playful wit and answers to questions you hadn't even thought to ask. The queer erotic is savored here-slurped like 'sappho.' NAO builds an anthropomorphized architure, and within it we find a certain uncanny order to things. 'but even intimate objects move.' in a bell curve is a pregnant straight line, NAO shows us that strangeness, amplified, can midwife new clarity and light up our dark mortal corners. - ALICIA MOUNTAIN, AUTHOR OF HIGH GROUND COWARD The inimitable genius of VI KHI NAO is on full display in A Bell Curve is a Pregnant Straight Line. Once immersed in her sensorium perception is heightened to the point of ecstatic convergence. The dramatic details are resplendent, volatile. Insight flashes like a searchlight. The poignancy of scintillation is an iridescent hallucinogen in dappled lines of brilliance. Interspersed throughout are Vi's enigmatic line drawings; the totality of this book is mesmerizing and astounding. - BRENDA IIJIMA, AUTHOR OF ANIMATE, INANIMATE AIMS

Once again, VI KHI NAO models an achievement of possibilities in A Bell Curve is a Pregnant Straight Line that is nothing short of a miracle for the future of the body: an avalanche of the imagination that disintegrates the lines separating feelings from thought, the spirit from the natural world, and reveals how language, light and touch thread us into fuller sense of ourselves. Reading this book is to be shrouded in her magic and to experience the likelihood of floating, especially at the level of the eye and desire. -- MAJOR JACKSON, AUTHOR OF THE ABSURD MAN Imagine turning yourself--your whole body--inside-out, all the way, so that the you inside of you, i.e. every connected, reclusive, and/or unfathomable organ, cell, humor, sense, memory, affection and idea, became your new skin, profile and comportment. Then imagine looking and feeling, in that quasi-moebius and uncannily porous transposition, more like yourself than you ever felt before. VI KHI NAO's A Bell Curve is a Pregnant Straight Line is, for me, the transcendent, coruscating art of that sensation. -- BRANDON SHIMODA, AUTHOR OF THE GRAVE ON THE WALL VI KHI NAO is such a wildly singular writer, it's always a breathless romp. I would give her the last pen in my quiver and know that she'll jolt us right out of our shirts, our pants, our sweaty and shimmering skin. -- SAWAKO NAKAYASU, AUTHOR OF SOME GIRLS WALK INTO THE COUNTRY THEY ARE FROM With formal experimentation and direct beckoning, VI KHI NAO, draws us into this collection ripe with sound, sorrow, and sensuality. A Bell Curve is a Pregnant Straight Line is a lyric calendar punctuated with playful wit and answers to questions you hadn't even thought to ask. The queer erotic is savored here--slurped like 'sappho.' NAO builds an anthropomorphized architure, and within it we find a certain uncanny order to things. 'but even intimate objects move.' in a bell curve is a pregnant straight line, NAO shows us that strangeness, amplified, can midwife new clarity and light up our dark mortal corners. -- ALICIA MOUNTAIN, AUTHOR OF HIGH GROUND COWARD The inimitable genius of VI KHI NAO is on full display in A Bell Curve is a Pregnant Straight Line. Once immersed in her sensorium perception is heightened to the point of ecstatic convergence. The dramatic details are resplendent, volatile. Insight flashes like a searchlight. The poignancy of scintillation is an iridescent hallucinogen in dappled lines of brilliance. Interspersed throughout are Vi's enigmatic line drawings; the totality of this book is mesmerizing and astounding. -- BRENDA IIJIMA, AUTHOR OF ANIMATE, INANIMATE AIMS

Once again, VI KHI NAO models an achievement of possibilities in A Bell Curve is a Pregnant Straight Line that is nothing short of a miracle for the future of the body: an avalanche of the imagination that disintegrates the lines separating feelings from thought, the spirit from the natural world, and reveals how language, light and touch thread us into fuller sense of ourselves. Reading this book is to be shrouded in her magic and to experience the likelihood of floating, especially at the level of the eye and desire. - MAJOR JACKSON, AUTHOR OF THE ABSURD MAN Imagine turning yourself-your whole body-inside-out, all the way, so that the you inside of you, i.e. every connected, reclusive, and/or unfathomable organ, cell, humor, sense, memory, affection and idea, became your new skin, profile and comportment. Then imagine looking and feeling, in that quasi-moebius and uncannily porous transposition, more like yourself than you ever felt before. VI KHI NAO's A Bell Curve is a Pregnant Straight Line is, for me, the transcendent, coruscating art of that sensation. - BRANDON SHIMODA, AUTHOR OF THE GRAVE ON THE WALL VI KHI NAO is such a wildly singular writer, it's always a breathless romp. I would give her the last pen in my quiver and know that she'll jolt us right out of our shirts, our pants, our sweaty and shimmering skin. - SAWAKO NAKAYASU, AUTHOR OF SOME GIRLS WALK INTO THE COUNTRY THEY ARE FROM With formal experimentation and direct beckoning, VI KHI NAO, draws us into this collection ripe with sound, sorrow, and sensuality. A Bell Curve is a Pregnant Straight Line is a lyric calendar punctuated with playful wit and answers to questions you hadn't even thought to ask. The queer erotic is savored here-slurped like 'sappho.' NAO builds an anthropomorphized architure, and within it we find a certain uncanny order to things. 'but even intimate objects move.' in a bell curve is a pregnant straight line, NAO shows us that strangeness, amplified, can midwife new clarity and light up our dark mortal corners. - ALICIA MOUNTAIN, AUTHOR OF HIGH GROUND COWARD The inimitable genius of VI KHI NAO is on full display in A Bell Curve is a Pregnant Straight Line. Once immersed in her sensorium perception is heightened to the point of ecstatic convergence. The dramatic details are resplendent, volatile. Insight flashes like a searchlight. The poignancy of scintillation is an iridescent hallucinogen in dappled lines of brilliance. Interspersed throughout are Vi's enigmatic line drawings; the totality of this book is mesmerizing and astounding. - BRENDA IIJIMA, AUTHOR OF ANIMATE, INANIMATE AIMS

Author Information

VI KHI NAO is the author of six poetry collections & of the short stories collection, A Brief Alphabet of Torture (winner of the 2016 FC2's Ronald Sukenick Innovative Fiction Prize), the novel, Swimming with Dead Stars. Her poetry collection, The Old Philosopher, won the Nightboat Books Prize for Poetry in 2014. A recipient of the 2022 Jim Duggins, PhD Outstanding Mid-Career Novelist Prize, her work includes poetry, fiction, film and cross-genre collaboration. She was the Fall 2019 fellow at the Black Mountain Institute: https://www.vikhinao.com

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