Hsin

Availability:
Ebook in PDF format. Available for immediate download after we receive your order

DRM:
Watermark

Publication Year:
2022

ISBN-13: 9781771315746

<p><b>Nanci Lee’s debut explores 4th Century Su Hui’s palindrome of longing. Hsin arises from an ancient Chinese ethical philosophy, less a set of moral standards than an appeal to tune.</b></p> <p><i>Heart-mind</i> and <i>nothingness</i> are fair English translations of <i>Hsin</i>, but their tidiness risks losing some of the sharper, wider sides of absence and appetite. As a historical process, according to Hang Thaddeus T’ui-Chieh, <i>Hsin</i> frustrates, “the psychological fragmentation and compartmentalization of the West.”</p> <p>Born to a Syrian father and a Chinese mother, who gave her up for adoption, Lee explores her origins in a compendium of poem fragments where form embraces the process of its unfolding. These are Koan-like poems, resonant with tones at turns ageless and contemporary; <i>Hsin</i> holds silence in ways that both claim and keep at bay.</p>