The sunflower cast a spell to save us from the void

The sunflower cast a spell to save us from the void

Jackie Wang

Book - 2021

"The poems in The Sunflower Cast A Spell To Save Us From The Void read like dispatches from the dream world, with Jackie Wang acting as our trusted comrade reporting across time and space. By sharing her personal index of dreams with its scenes of solidarity and resilience, interpersonal conflict and outlaw jouissance, Wang embodies historical trauma and communal memory. Here, the all-too-familiar interplay between crisis and resistance becomes first distorted, then clarified and refreshed. With a light touch and invigorating sense of humor, Wang illustrates the social dimension of dreams and their ability to inform and reshape the dreamer's waking world with renewed energy and insight."--Publisher's description.

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Subjects
Dreams > Poetry.
Poetry.
Genres
Poetry
Published
New York : Nightboat Books [2021]
Language
English
Main Author
Jackie Wang (author)
Other Authors
Kalan Sherrard (illustrator)
Physical Description
131 pages : illustrations ; 19 cm
Awards
National Book Award Finalist for Poetry, 2021.
ISBN
9781643620367
  • Life Is a Place Where It's Forbidden to Live
  • Death as a Survival Technique
  • The Evil Noodle
  • Companion Species
  • Instead of Thickening My Skin I Buy a Neon Balaclava
  • Refuge
  • The Future Is Between Us
  • Without Tongue
  • The Band of Insurgent Angels
  • The Resurrection of Angela
  • Survivor Trauma
  • Wounded Adjudication
  • Panic at the Disco
  • The Chase
  • Preliminary Notes on the Marxist White Boy Recognition System
  • My Dream Ate My Homework
  • The Museum of Cacography
  • The Sewer Rat Counter-Haunts the Prison by Nesting in Society's Collapsing Aorta
  • Dead Letter Day
  • The Pink Phallus
  • An Inventory of Oneirogenic Herbs and Substances
  • An Inventory of Scenes from Oneirogenic Herb Dreams
  • The Covert Apocalypse
  • Sowers of Discord
  • Cunt River
  • A Difficult Apprenticeship
  • Why Grieving People Are Drawn to Water
  • How the Egg Loses Its Shape
  • Damnation
  • Willow Sisters
  • What Will You Eat?
  • How to Shed the World
  • The Phantasmagoria of Failure
  • Creatures Abandoned by Time
  • How to Measure Use Value
  • Waiting for Godel
  • The Death of Thurston Moore
  • Creation Story
  • Dreaming in Papyrus
  • The Coral Tree
  • The Storm
  • Being Is Without Shelter
  • Masochism of the Knees
  • Fucking on the Cow
  • What Did She Want to Prove?
  • Because There Is Silence
  • The Vernacular of Our Bodies
  • Natura Non Facit Saltus
  • [A Moment Breaking Loose from the Past Becomes the Voice Inside Your Head]
  • The Sunflower Cast a Spell to Save Us from the Void
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

In this extraordinary debut, Wang (Carceral Capitalism) creates a symbolist dream diary for catastrophic times. A cross between Mei-mei Berssenbrugge's elliptical poetic treatises and Marosa di Giorgio's fevered fables, Wang tells stories that begin in clarity but unfurl into complex landscapes, exploring the role of projection and imagination in our relationships. "People don't believe that the butterfly stays with me and their disbelief makes me crazy," Wang writes in "Companion Species." "They think I'm making it up so I take my foot out of my shoe and there she is, little yellow wings." In "The Resurrection of Angela," the familiar scene of the overlong poetry reading pivots as the speaker takes the stage "carrying Angela, my decapitated angel... She is dead but I do not know why or how she passed." The book engages with climate change and the apocalyptic, asking, "Can a book parry catastrophe?" At another point, Wang observes, "I have been having such strange and beautiful dreams lately," and readers will be grateful for these potent, dreamlike reflections. (Jan.)

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