Phrasis by Wendy Xu

Wendy Xu articulates the whole world by freezing it all at once, looking closely at its parts, and zeroing in on the one image or phrase or feeling that makes the day seem possibly beautiful under all the scaffolding, sirens, and other natural (analog and online) interruptions that make up daily living.

The poems in this collection play word against words, expression against frame. Is language a form of thought-bondage? How can poems escape and bring us closer to the personal and the possibility of intimacy? Phrasis might form an answer; Xu writes: “My source text was unresponsive and so varying methods, slashed it / pink instead.” Her poems provide a way out and in: they slide in the making, a kind of sleight-of-hand inside the mind of language, freeing us to imagine and slice or “likewise lurch / and stutter”—marvelously so: “tenderly / a finger set / to music.” —Hoa Nguyen