Hey, Marfa: Poems - Softcover

Yang, Jeffrey

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1555978193 ISBN 13: 9781555978198

Publisher: Graywolf Press, 2018

Synopsis

An extraordinary lyric and visual meditation on place, nature, and art rippling out from Marfa, Texas

Situated in the outreaches of southwest Texas, the town of Marfa has long been an oasis for artists, immigrants looking for work, and ranchers, while the ghosts of the indigenous and the borders between languages and nations are apparent everywhere. The poet and translator Jeffrey Yang experienced the vastness of desert, township, sky, and time itself as a profound clash of dislocation and familiarity. What does it mean to survive in a physical and metaphorical desert? How does a habitat long associated with wilderness and death become a center for nourishment and art?

Out of those experiences and questions, Yang has fashioned a fascinating, multifaceted work--an anti-travel guide, an anti-Western, a book of last words--that is a lyrical, anthropological investigation into history, culture, and extremity of place. Paintings and drawings of Marfa's landscapes and substations by the artist Rackstraw Downes intertwine with Yang's texts as mutual nodes and lines of energy. Hey, Marfa is a desert diary scaled to music that aspires to emit particles of light.

About this title

About the Author

Jeffrey Yang is the author of two previous poetry books, Vanishing-Line and An Aquarium, winner of the PEN/Joyce Osterweil Award. He is the translator of the Nobel Peace Prize recipient Liu Xiaobo's June Fourth Elegies. Yang lives in Beacon, New York.

Edition details

• Publisher: Graywolf Press
• Publication date: 2018
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1555978193
• ISBN 13: 9781555978198
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 184