The Book of Motion

by Hu, Tung-Hui

• ISBN13: 9780820325682
• ISBN10: 0820325686
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2003-10-01
• Publisher: Univ of Georgia Pr

Summary

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.

Author Biography

Tung-Hui Hu, a doctoral student in architecture at the University of California, Berkeley, also has an M.F.A. from the University of Michigan. The Book of Motion, in addition to being chosen for the Contemporary Poetry Series, won an Avery Hopwood Award. Hu's current projects include translations of the German writer Paul Scheerbart.

Table of Contents

Some Arrivals	p. 1
A rock a fish	p. 3
The chess match	p. 4
The siege	p. 5
Story told to yourself	p. 6
Poem in memory of a house	p. 7
Vigilance	p. 9
The tree of conscience	p. 10
Maximum occupancy 38 persons	p. 11
Love poem to Moira	p. 12
Migrations at night	p. 13
Early morning in Denver	p. 15
Red wine: An advertisement	p. 16
Welcome back	p. 17
Some arrivals	p. 18
Elegies for self	p. 19
Fast Lives	p. 33
Hill climbing	p. 35
Overreactions & other professions of faith	p. 36
Fragile	p. 37
Impossible luxuries	p. 38
Pseudoephedrine	p. 39
Growing up	p. 40
Fast lives	p. 41
Killing flies	p. 42
The oracle grants a rare interview	p. 43
Dry	p. 44
You were born to live on an island	p. 45
The shore	p. 46
Snow over the cornfields	p. 47
The mapmaker	p. 48
What happens next	p. 49
Notes	p. 51
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