Vanishing Line

        —from "Yennecott"

Jeffrey Yangs second collection of poems is an exploration of the various lines—horizon line, time line, blood line, poetic line—beyond which so much vanishes from sight, from memory. With historical documentation, lyrical association, and artistic virtuosity, Yang creates a collage of elegies, losses that are private and those that define our nation. Vanishing-Line is an ambitious book by one of the most fascinating new poets in America.

"Jeffrey Yang speaks in tongues as if touched with a Pentecostal flame." —The New York Times Book Review

PRAISE FOR AN AQUARIUM

"Here is a first book written from a very high floor of the Tower of Babel, and the view is exhilarating. Not since D. H. Lawrences Birds, Beasts and Flowers! or the bestiary written by Kenneth Rexroth for his daughters has a poet wrung so much human meaning from the natural world." —Karl Kirchwey, The New York Times Book Review

"The quickness with which this poet can shift among eras of human history, civilizations, and languages is graceful, exhilarating, dizzying." —from the citation for the PEN/Joyce Osterweil Award for Poetry

Praise for Vanishing-Line:"[Yang] tries to find forms tight enough to seem original, but loose enough to encompass the horrors of our still recent past; his attempts are leavened, and brightened, by a moving family elegy set in East Asia and by the scenes and moments in which Yang seems to see just where he stands." —Publishers Weekly

Praise for Jeffrey Yang:

"Jeffrey Yang speaks in tongues as if touched with a Pentecostal flame." —The New York Times Book Review

Praise for An Aquarium:

"Here is a first book written from a very high floor of the Tower of Babel, and the view is exhilarating. Not since D. H. Lawrences Birds, Beasts and Flowers! or the bestiary written by Kenneth Rexroth for his daughters has a poet wrung so much human meaning from the natural world." —Karl Kirchwey, The New York Times Book Review

"The quickness with which this poet can shift among eras of human history, civilizations, and languages is graceful, exhilarating, dizzying." —from the citation for the PEN/Joyce Osterweil Award for Poetry"Yang's debut is as full of surprises as it is full of fish. . . . Those who read the collection quickly may find it witty but gimmicky; those who bring more attention will take more away from this rare first book that combines a simple theme (poems as sea life, the book as their tank) with clear, sharp thought at the level of sentence and line." —Publishers Weekly

Night garden, moon
calendar, soft mint scent.
Warm wind, silent. Gold,
silver debris.
--from "Yennecott"

Jeffrey Yang's second collection of poems is an exploration of the various lines--horizon line, time line, blood line, poetic line--beyond which so much vanishes from sight, from memory. With historical documentation, lyrical association, and artistic virtuosity, Yang creates a collage of elegies, losses that are private and those that define our nation. Vanishing-Line is an ambitious book by one of the most fascinating new poets in America.

Jeffrey Yang is the author of An Aquarium. He is an editor at New Directions Publishing Corp. and lives in Beacon, New York. His translation of the Nobel Peace Prize recipient Liu Xiaobos June Fourth Elegies is forthcoming.