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Book Title

Blackacre

Subtitle
Poems
Author 1
Monica Youn
Poem Excerpt
the trees all planted in the same month after the same fire
 
           each thick around
           as a man’s wrist
 
meticulously spaced grids cutting the sunshine
 
           into panels into planks
           and crossbeams of light
 
an incandescent architecture that is the home that was promised you

 
—from “Whiteacre”
Body
First coined in 1628, the term “blackacre” is a legal fiction, a hypothetical estate. It is also a password among lawyers marking one’s initiation into a centuries-old tradition of legal indoctrination. Monica Youn’s fascinating, multifaceted new collection, Blackacre, uses the term to suggest landscape, legacy, what is allotted to each of us—a tract of land, a work of art, a heritage, a body, a destiny. What are the limits of the imagination’s ability to transform what is given? On any particular acre, can we plant a garden? Found a city? Unearth a treasure? Build a home? Youn brings her lawyerly intelligence and lyric gifts to bear on questions of fertility and barrenness as she attempts to understand her own desire—her own struggle—to conceive a child. Where the shape-making mind encounters unalterable fact, Blackacre explores new territories of art, meaning, and feeling.

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List Price
$16.00
ISBN
ISBN
978-1-55597-750-4
Format
Format
Paperback
Publication Date
Publication Date
Subject
Subject
Pages
Pages
88
Trim Size
Trim Size
7 x 9
Keynote
The brilliant new collection by Monica Youn following Ignatz, a finalist for the National Book Award

About the Author

Monica  Youn
Credit: Beowulf Sheehan
Monica Youn is the author of From From, and three previous poetry collections: Blackacre, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, Barter, and Ignatz, a finalist for the National Book Award. The daughter of Korean immigrants and a former lawyer, she teaches at University of California, Irvine.
 
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Praise

  • “[Monica Youn is] one of the most consistently innovative poets working today.”—Tess Taylor, NPR “All Things Considered”
  • Blackacre stands as a gorgeous and intellectually scintillating addition to this esoteric and necessary tradition.”Chicago Tribune
  • “Youn reminds readers that poetry is essential because of how it says what can’t be expressed through prose.”The Washington Post
  • “[Blackacre] explores everything from racial identity to intfertility. . . . It’s grim, bleak, and haunting writing, and also beautiful.”Bustle
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