Mad Honey Symposium

Mad Honey Symposium

by Sally Wen Mao
Mad Honey Symposium

Mad Honey Symposium

by Sally Wen Mao

Paperback

$15.95 
  • SHIP THIS ITEM
    Qualifies for Free Shipping
    Choose Expedited Shipping at checkout for delivery by Thursday, April 4
  • PICK UP IN STORE
    Check Availability at Nearby Stores

Related collections and offers


Overview

"Like Sylvia Plath's poems, these visionary poems are not only astute records of experience, they are themselves dazzling, verbal experiences. Worldly, wily, wise: Mad Honey Symposium is an extraordinary debut."—Terrance Hayes

"[Mad Honey Symposium] has all the delicacy of [Mao's] earlier writing—but now there's also a gritty, world-wise sense of humor that gives her work heavyweight swagger."—Dave Eggers

Mad Honey Symposium buzzes with lush sound and sharp imagery, creating a vivid natural world that's constantly in flux. From Venus flytraps to mad honey eaters, badgers to empowered outsiders, Sally Wen Mao's poems inhabit the precarious space between the vulnerable and the ferocious—how thin that line is, how breakable—with wonder and verve.

From "Valentine for a Flytrap":

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .There's voltage
in your flowers—mulch skeins, armory
for cunning loves. Your mouth pins every sticky
body, swallowing iridescence, digesting
light. Venus, let me swim in your solarium.
Venus, take me in your summer gown.

Sally Wen Mao was born in Wuhan, China, and grew up in Boston and the Bay Area. She is a Kundiman fellow and 826 Valencia Young Author's Scholar. Her poetry is published or forthcoming in Colorado Review, Gulf Coast, Hayden's Ferry Review, Indiana Review, Passages North, Quarterly West, and West Branch, among others. She holds a BA from Carnegie Mellon Universityand an MFA from Cornell University, where she's currently a lecturer.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781938584060
Publisher: Alice James Books
Publication date: 05/06/2014
Pages: 128
Product dimensions: 6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)

About the Author


Sally Wen Mao was born in Wuhan, China and grew up in Boston and the Bay Area. She is a Kundiman fellow and 826 Valencia Young Author's Scholar. Her poetry is published or forthcoming in Colorado Review, Gulf Coast, Hayden's Ferry Review, Indiana Review, Passages North, Quarterly West, and West Branch, among others. She holds a BA from Carnegie Mellon University and an MFA from Cornell University, where she is currently a lecturer.

Table of Contents

I

Valentine for a Flytrap 1

Apiology, with Stigma 2

XX 5

Mellivora Capensis 7

Mad Honey Soliloquies 1-3 10

On the Sorrow of Apiary Thieves 13

Sonnets for Kudryavka 15

Flight Perils 18

The White-haired Girl 21

The Pickpocket 23

II

Searching for the Queen Bee 33

Hurling a Durian 35

Monstera Ddiciosa 37

The Azalea Eaters 38

Capsaicin Eclogue 41

Mad Honey Soliloquies 4-6 42

The Spring of Terrible Fevers 47

The Bullies 50

Lessons on Lessening 51

Song, with Caution Tape 53

Suspension Theory 55

Honey Badger Palinode 61

III

Migration Suite 65

IV

Honey Badger Duct 85

Yellow Fever 87

The Unraveling 88

Sartor 89

Mad Honey Song 91

Homunculus Survival 92

Lawrenceville Night 95

Haibun for Thawing 97

Drop-kick Aria 98

Inviolacy 105

From the B&N Reads Blog

Customer Reviews