Standing Water

Poems

Fiction & Literature, Poetry, American
Cover of the book Standing Water by Eleanor Chai, Farrar, Straus and Giroux
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Author: Eleanor Chai ISBN: 9780374714918
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux Publication: April 12, 2016
Imprint: Farrar, Straus and Giroux Language: English
Author: Eleanor Chai
ISBN: 9780374714918
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Publication: April 12, 2016
Imprint: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Language: English

A profound literary debut that recounts a child’s singular story

Since I made you, you may

imagine I set myself on fire
or better, say: you lit the funeral pyre
from ten thousand days away.

A young woman in Paris encounters an uncanny presence on a tour of a small museum. A study by Rodin of the dancer Little Hanako—titled Head of Sorrow—triggers in the young woman recognition of her mother, a mother erased from her life since childhood.

Thus begins Eleanor Chai’s Standing Water, one of the most remarkable first books of poetry in recent years. It is a journey into the past as well as the present—into the narrative hidden from the poet since birth, as well as the strategies that she has adopted to survive. It is a journey about how we learn to cope with, to perceive and describe, the world. It is a story about savage privilege and deprivation.

Haunting the whole is the figure of the real Little Hanako—Rodin’s model, a Japanese artist displaced in Europe, the medium through which other artists dream and discover the world.

View on Amazon View on AbeBooks View on Kobo View on B.Depository View on eBay View on Walmart

A profound literary debut that recounts a child’s singular story

Since I made you, you may

imagine I set myself on fire
or better, say: you lit the funeral pyre
from ten thousand days away.

A young woman in Paris encounters an uncanny presence on a tour of a small museum. A study by Rodin of the dancer Little Hanako—titled Head of Sorrow—triggers in the young woman recognition of her mother, a mother erased from her life since childhood.

Thus begins Eleanor Chai’s Standing Water, one of the most remarkable first books of poetry in recent years. It is a journey into the past as well as the present—into the narrative hidden from the poet since birth, as well as the strategies that she has adopted to survive. It is a journey about how we learn to cope with, to perceive and describe, the world. It is a story about savage privilege and deprivation.

Haunting the whole is the figure of the real Little Hanako—Rodin’s model, a Japanese artist displaced in Europe, the medium through which other artists dream and discover the world.

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