Song of the Cicadas

In this striking first collection of poems, the grainy strangeness of the modern world is transformed into a place at once knowable and enduring. Mong-Lan conveys the certainty that even when the world stops making sense, decency and beauty somehow survive. From Saigon to San Francisco, she combines the earthly and the ecstatic, the animal and the sublime, to create lyrics that tempt and haunt.