In this Book
- The Same-Different: Poems
- Book
- 2015
- Published by: Louisiana State University Press
- Series: Walt Whitman Award of the Academy of American Poets
Deceptively straightforward and subtly pyrotechnic, the poems in Hannah Sanghee Park's debut collection captivate with their wordplay at first glance, then give rise to opportunities for extended reflection. "If / truth be told, I can't be true," she writes, but her startling juxtapositions of sound and meaning belie that claim, necessitating a search for the truth behind her semantic games.
Here are dozens of brief sentences that can serve as epigrams to undermine our ordinary ways of seeing, as Park's playfully deployed puns recall the sly paradoxes of Oscar Wilde. The Same-Different ranges from the wonders of the natural world to close human relationships, occasioning the kind of explorations offered in "And A Lie": "The asking was askance. / And the tell all told. / So then, in tandem // Anathema, and anthem."
Table of Contents
- I. The Same-Different
- Another Truth
- p. 4
- Telling Time
- p. 13
- No Man Is an Island
- p. 15
- You Dear Specter—
- p. 16
- Some History of Calamity
- pp. 18-19
- The Same-Different
- pp. 23-24
- II. A Mutability
- Narcissus in January
- p. 27
- Norroway in February
- p. 28
- Ammit in March
- p. 29
- Baba Yaga in April
- p. 30
- The Fox Bead in May
- p. 31
- Naga in July
- p. 33
- Qilin in August
- p. 34
- Nommo in September
- p. 35
- Nagual in November
- p. 37
- III. Fear
- “Yet . . .”
- p. 43
- Acknowledgments
- pp. 57-58