The lengest neoi

The lengest neoi

Stephanie Choi

Book - 2024

"The Lengest Neoi embraces and complicates what it means to err-to wander or go astray; a deviation from a code of behavior or truth; a mistake, flaw, or defect. Beginning with the collection's title, which combines a colloquial Cantonese phrase (Leng Neoi/'Pretty Girl') and the English suffix for the superlative degree (-est), these poems wander, deviate, and flaw across bodies, geographies, and languages. From the Nantucket Whaling Museum to the War Remnants Museum in Saigon, from childhood speech and bodily correction to the history of the American Chestnut Tree and anti-Asian sentiment and policies, from voicemails to experimental translations between English and Cantonese-this book asks: to wander or go astray from ...where? Who and what defines error? What is a right translation? Of language, of body, of self, of history? The speaker's insatiable desire for self-definition-to transform 'error' into poetic space and play-leaves her wondering if the process of creating and looking doesn't also embody a kind of projected, and potentially problematic, fantasy of self. Ultimately, the collection grapples with how one might be 'still of the histories that define me,' and able to locate sites of agency and self-creation. In this debut collection from Stephanie Choi, you'll find the poet's 'tongue writing herself, learning to speak'"--

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Location Call Number   Status
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Subjects
Poetry, Modern > 21st century.
American poetry > 21st century.
poetry.
Poetry
Poetry.
Genres
poetry
Poetry
Published
Iowa City : University of Iowa Press [2024]
Language
English
Main Author
Stephanie Choi (author)
Physical Description
90 pages : ilustrations ; 23 cm
Awards
Iowa Poetry prize, 2023.
ISBN
9781609389512
  • /
  • So Many Wet Feet Everywhere
  • To Error in Translation
  • A Voicemail from Grandma: When I Did Not Return
  • Spine / Vine
  • A Last Name That Fell from the Sky
  • Portrait of Louisa Cobb Thompson by an Unidentified Chinese Artist
  • My Name
  • Speech Derapy
  • //
  • My Last Tattoo
  • Spinebound
  • Open Wide
  • Trace Asymmetries
  • Autumn Thoughts
  • The Leng'est Neoi 5-2
  • Diaspora
  • The Key
  • On Cacti
  • Lipogram
  • Two-Winged Sunset in Penang
  • ///
  • American
  • ////
  • When I Watched In the Mood for Love at a Bar in Ipoh, Malaysia
  • Poem Written in My Grandmother's Dress
  • The dream was not about missing a train
  • To Write One's Name
  • Emails from Mom
  • Before We Summit Mt. Washington
  • Proof of Language Competency
  • Emails from Mom
  • Something, Not a Love Poem
  • Everything, Everywhere, All at Once
  • Return
  • /////
  • Hair (once was)
  • At Judy Chicago's Dinner Party
  • My Mother in My House
  • Girl Wrapped in Bitter Gourd Vine
  • Hair (variations)
  • Granddaughter
  • Where I Find Her / Where I Leave Her
  • Lightwell
  • Hair (now has)
  • A Tattoo for My Mother
  • Spring Reflection
Review by Booklist Review

Choi's debut collection examines self, identity, language, and what it means to meet or subvert expectations as well as what each might signal when in or out of alignment with one another. The poems map the body's flaws ("spine grew crooked") and interrogate what the flaws signify or carry when considering lineage and inheritance ("I'd lose too / if I wished the pain away"). Choi excavates language, peeling away layers of learned and unlearned rules and nuances of a history, from the poet's name ("mother tongue cannot pronounce the st, st sound in my name") to finding new meaning in words that are harder to access ("the lengest: the tongue writing herself, learning to speak"). This collection pushes against standard conventions of form and line, using crossword puzzles, emails, and voice messages to weave a wide and piercing translation of loss, seeing, and deep and persistent love. "I am the remnants of this this," Choi writes of the past, of what has been discarded, and everything to which she is connected.

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.

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