All There Is to Lose (Four Way Books Levis Prize in Poetry)

ISBN: 1961897687

Author: Heung, Aiden

Condition: New

Marking Aiden Heungs debut collection, All There Is to Lose is the 2024 winner of the Four Way Books Levis Prize in Poetry. The selecting judge, National Book Award Finalist Ilya Kaminsky, praises the resonant particularities and depth of feeling found in these poems, which convert elegy [into] its driving force. Poet Esteban Rodriguez observes, With language that is as tender as it is narratively absorbing, Aiden Heung draws our attention to the tiny but never forgotten village of 915, tucked in the heart of Southwest China. Regardless of the harsh realities of seasonal drought, of the ever-present darkness lingering on the mountainside, of a river whose literal burdens become symbolic, and of the men and women who cycle on the periphery of our speakers childhood. The result is a stunning achievement of a first book, what Kaminsky identifies as an exemplar of that ages-old mode of poetry wherein the poet uses language to break bread with the dead, to bring them back to life, if only for the moment, for a portion of the moment, an instant, before the line breaks. Channeling the poet as medium, I am the tension on the bow that draws the arrow, Heung writes in Epilogue. To lose myself - that is my destiny.