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Summary:

"From National Poetry Series winner Su Cho, chosen by Paige Lewis, a debut poetry collection about immigration, memory, and a family's lexicon. Language and lore are at the core of The Symmetry of Fish, a moving debut about coming-of-age in the middle of nowhere. With striking and tender insight, it seeks to give voice to those who have been denied their stories, and examines the way phrases and narratives are passed down through immigrant families-not diluted over time, but distilled into potency over generations. In this way, a family's language is not lost but continuously remade, hitched to new associations, and capable of blooming anew, with the power to cut across space and time to unearth buried memories. The poems in The Symmetry of Fish insist that language is first and foremost a bodily act; even if our minds can't recall a word or a definition, if we trust our mouths, expression will find us-though never quite in the forms we expect"-- [Provided by publisher]

Table of Contents:

• Machine generated contents note: How to Say Water
• I
• Thorn, splinter, fish bone
• Old Man in White Has Given My Mother a Ripe Persimmon Again
• Tonight I Discover Archipelagoes
• Hello, My Parents Don't Speak English Well, How Can I Help You?
• She Arose
• Diorama This
• Winters in Queens
• Abecedarian for ESL in West Lafayette, Indiana
• To Give Death; (n) chestnut, night
• After the Burial, the Dead Take Everything That Burns
• Gratitude for His Hands
• According to My Father, Peaches Ward Off Spirits
• We Are All Dying, Slowly
• II
• Through the Fissures
• Little Cheonyeo Gwishin Appears in My Kitchen
• Purlicues
• Tangerine Trees and Little Bags of Sugar

• Bowl of Fat
• Urgent Care
• Sun and Moon Began with a Mother Working
• Fermented
• Rice or Flesh
• My Bed Shakes and I Assume the Ghosts Are Finally Getting Me
• Ode to Putting in the Window AC Unit
• At an Apple Orchard in Door County, Wisconsin
• Aubade with Metal Spoon
• Cheonyeo Gwishin Marries Me
• Mug Club
• Ergonomics
• Open Diskectomy
• Symmetry of Fish
• III
• Remember This When You're Hungry
• Waiting in Line at the Outlet Mall
• Wisdom teeth
• Cheonyeo Gwishin Tells Me a Story
• Peach Blossoms
• Ode to the New York Heat Wave
• Garden Balsams, Touch-Me-Nots
• False Teeth
• Ode to Wanting to Run Over Other People's Children in the Church Parking Lot
• In the Middle of the Highway, There Is a Garden
• Loop Spurs
• New Year's on Rockland Avenue
• My Mother on the Lava Rocks of Jejudo.

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Author/Creator:

Cho, Su , author

Languages:

English

Language Notes:

Item content: English

Main Work:

Symmetry of fish (Compilation) [by Cho, S.]

Other Related Resources:

Print version: Symmetry of fish [by Cho, S.] (New York : Penguin Books, [2022] — ISBN 9780143137252; LCCN 2022008438)

Subjects:

Immigrants — United States — Poetry

Koreans — United States — Poetry

Families — Poetry

General Notes:

Description based on print version record and CIP data provided by publisher; resource not viewed.

Physical Description:

1 online resource

ISBNs:

9780593511206 (ebook)
0593511204
9780143137252 (trade paperback) [Invalid]

Library of Congress Control Numbers:

2022008439

OCLC Numbers:

1319010370

Other Control Numbers:

3137492 (source: EbpS)
[Unknown Type]: ybp303177884