Hey, Marfa: Poems (First Edition)

Jeffrey Yang (author); Rackstraw Downes (illustrator)

ISBN 10: 1555978193 / ISBN 13: 9781555978198

Published by Graywolf Press, Minneapolis, 2018

About this Item

First printing, with full number line. A fine copy. A clean, unmarked copy. Illustrations by Rackstraw Downes.

Seller Inventory # FLAHIVE-1801

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Hey, Marfa: Poems (First Edition)
• Publisher: Graywolf Press, Minneapolis
• Publication Date: 2018
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1555978193
• ISBN 13: 9781555978198
• Binding: Soft cover
• Edition: 1st Edition
• Condition: Fine
• Seller catalogs:
  • Poetry

About this title

Synopsis

An extraordinary lyric and visual meditation on place, nature, and art rippling out from Marfa, Texas

Situated in the outreaches of southwest Texas, the town of Marfa has long been an oasis for artists, immigrants looking for work, and ranchers, while the ghosts of the indigenous and the borders between languages and nations are apparent everywhere. The poet and translator Jeffrey Yang experienced the vastness of desert, township, sky, and time itself as a profound clash of dislocation and familiarity. What does it mean to survive in a physical and metaphorical desert? How does a habitat long associated with wilderness and death become a center for nourishment and art?

Out of those experiences and questions, Yang has fashioned a fascinating, multifaceted work―an anti-travel guide, an anti-Western, a book of last words―that is a lyrical, anthropological investigation into history, culture, and extremity of place. Paintings and drawings of Marfa’s landscapes and substations by the artist Rackstraw Downes intertwine with Yang’s texts as mutual nodes and lines of energy. Hey, Marfa is a desert diary scaled to music that aspires to emit particles of light.

About the Author

Jeffrey Yang is the author of two previous poetry books, Vanishing-Line and An Aquarium, winner of the PEN/Joyce Osterweil Award. He is the translator of the Nobel Peace Prize recipient Liu Xiaobo’s June Fourth Elegies. Yang lives in Beacon, New York.