{"product_id":"is-a-door-fred-wah-9780889226203","title":"Is a Door","description":"\u003cp\u003eIncluding poetry projects, a chapbook and incidental poems previously published in magazines and by small presses, \u003ci\u003eis a door\u003c\/i\u003e makes use of the poem's ability for \"suddenness\" to subvert closure: the sudden question, the sudden turn, the sudden opening--writing that is generated from linguistic mindfulness, improvisation, compositional problem-solving, collaborative events, travel, investigation and documentary--in short, poetry as practice.\u003cbr\u003ePart one, \"Isadora Blue,\" is grounded in the author's encounter with the smashed and broken doors along the hurricane-devastated waterfront of Telchac Puerto, a small village on the north coast of the Yucatán Peninsula. It resonates throughout the other three sections of the book, with its attention to hybridity and \"between-ness\"--a poetic investigation of racialized otherness--and the composition of \"citizen\" and \"foreigner\" through history and language. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003ePart two of this series of poems, \"Ethnogy Journal,\" written during a trip to Thailand and Laos in 1999, hinges around aspects of \"tourist\" and \"native.\" Here the poems play in the interstices of spectacle, food and social sightseeing. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eMuch of this poetry is framed by Wah's acute sense of the marginalized non-urban local \"place\" and coloured by his attempt to articulate senses of otherness and resistance, or writing the \"public self,\" particularly in the book's third section, \"Discount Me In\"--a series of sixteen poems from his discursive poetic essay \"Count Me In.\" \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eThe fourth section, \"Hinges,\" is tinted with portraits of the social subject mired in a diasporic mix, a metanarrative trope in Fred Wah's work that began with \u003ci\u003eBreathin' My Name With a Sigh\u003c\/i\u003e. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eCharacteristically playful and compositionally musical, this is poetry that watches both sides of the doorway: unsettled, unpredictable, closed and open. Sometimes the door swings and can be kicked. Sometimes it's simply missing. Sometimes it's a sliding door.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAuthor:\u003c\/b\u003e Fred Wah\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN-10:\u003c\/b\u003e 0889226202\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN-13:\u003c\/b\u003e 9780889226203\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublisher:\u003c\/b\u003e Talonbooks\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eLanguage:\u003c\/b\u003e English\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublished:\u003c\/b\u003e 09\/08\/2009\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePages:\u003c\/b\u003e 120\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eFormat:\u003c\/b\u003e Paperback\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eWeight:\u003c\/b\u003e 0.44lbs\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eSize:\u003c\/b\u003e 8.90h x 5.90w x 0.30d","brand":"Fred Wah","offers":[{"title":"Paperback","offer_id":44054876061951,"sku":"9780889226203","price":17.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0662\/2982\/9887\/files\/img_aab42475-0ef2-4442-b674-865d2aa59513.jpg?v=1685032497","url":"https:\/\/www.whiterainbookhouse.com\/products\/is-a-door-fred-wah-9780889226203","provider":"WR Book House","version":"1.0","type":"link"}