From Library Journal
As Richard Howard observes in his extravagantly mannered introduction, Liu is a religious poet, not as an apologist for his Mormon upbringing but in the spiritual longing that suffuses his work--a longing these votive, melancholy poems ("The yellow shirt of joy hangs/ like a ghost in the moth-eaten/ heart") unflinchingly serves. Though spare and elegant in tone, these poems contemplate disquieting subjects: incest, suicide, cancer, insanity, lovers dead and dying of AIDS. The suffering, mitigated only briefly by fleeting, often physical occasions of rapture, is always haunted by the author's loss of faith, "that swan song in our throats/ a falling cloud of ash." A gifted poet, an apostate who cannot stop praying, Lui strives to make secular sacraments out of actual experience, creating outward signs of inward grace.
- Thomas Tavis, San Francisco P.L.Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Review
"These poems do sing; they are candid, grateful for experience itself, and taken up from a mysterious depth."Jean Valentine. --
Publisher Comments911
Aphrodite As I Know Her
Ariel Singing
Awaiting Translation
Canker
Carcass
The City
Consolation
Eros Apteros
The Gates Of Hell
The Heat
His Body Like Christ Passed In And Out Of My Life
Indian Summer
The Kore
Labyrinth
Last Christmas
Leaving The Universe
Mama
More Than Half The Leaves Already Down
Neither Moth Nor Rust
On A Hill At Night In A Chair Under Stars
The Other Language
Passion
Patience
Pornography
The Quilt
A Room Without Doors
Separation
Sex
Sfo/hiv/jfk
She Sings In All Her Seasons
Sodom And Gomorrah
The Storm (2)
The Tree That Knowledge Is
Volunteers At The Aids Foundation
Vox Angelica
Walking In A World Where We Are Sometimes Loved
White Stone
Xian: 1
Xian: 2
Xian: 3
Xian: 4
--
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