Title: Sediment /
Authors: Tseng, Sandy.
Publisher: Four Way Books ; Distributed by University Press of New England,
Year: 2009
Subjects: Change Poetry.; American poetry
Abstract: In Sandy Tseng's first collection, leaving is both what remains and the act of going to another place, a different lifestyle, an unknown afterlife. This book recounts the pleasures and terrors of transition, of being "in between languages." We travel with Tseng, learning that the sediment of our lives--received traditions, half-recalled memories, accrued possessions--might also be fragments by which we recognize a future life, here or elsewhere.
Contents: Ocean perimeter. East window -- A state of drowning -- Genealogy -- Songs of Barnacles -- Each season -- Babel -- From the first generation -- Scarlet handprint -- Like ash -- Trespasses of the city -- Solar storm on Henry Street -- Before -- Dust. Notes from Hsin Chu -- The merchants have said it -- Dust to dust -- Night shift -- The altitude -- October -- Elegy -- Within sleep -- The bypass -- City sirens -- Last we saw -- Delivery -- The decades between. Harvest -- City view -- Paperless story -- Days were cut short -- notes from the waiting room -- Prophecy -- After all -- Sent -- Juncture -- August -- The green and the burning -- Afterwards -- Final letter -- Avalanche -- Northeast winter -- Ash. Dark endings -- Fragments of another city -- Unseasonable -- Between cities -- Although I did not come -- Floodwaters -- Days I still answer yes -- Postscript -- Sediment -- Imagined hours -- the many times I return -- Departure -- Leaving the city -- Mosquito hour.