Ghost Of [Paperback]

Ghost Ofis a mourning song, not an exorcism or un-haunting of that which haunts, but attuned attention, unidirectional reaching across time, space, and distance to reach loved ones, ancestors, and strangers. By working with, in, and around the photographs that her brother left behind (from which he cut himself out before his death), Nguyen wrestles with what remains: memory, physical voids, and her family captured around an empty space.

Ghost Of was selected by Terrance Hayes to win Omnidawn’s Open Poetry Book Contest. It was also a finalist for the National Book Award and L.A. Times Book Prize.
 

Born in Los Angeles, DIANA KHOI NGUYENis a poet and multimedia artist whose work has appeared widely in literary journals such as Poetry, American Poetry Review, Boston Review, PEN America, and The Iowa Review, among others. She was a winner of the 92Y's Discovery / Boston Review 2017 Poetry Contest and was a finalist for the National Book Award in Poetry.

"A death creates both an absence—the hole left by the departed—and a presence—the weight of that hole. Nguyen’s beautiful debut collection,Ghost Of, finds myriad ways to embody this seeming paradox. . . . The collection’s story is ultimately not just of a sister’s grief, but of a family’s, of broad loss born from the Vietnam war and deep loss born from suicide. The book’s wildly inventive forms show the power struggle anyone who has experienced great loss can understand: the attempt to find a suitable container for mourning, and the acceptance that mourning dictates the shape of everything around it."

"Ghost Of is truly a brilliant book. Amazing poetry happens inside visual innovations where 'There is nothing that is not music, the pouring of water from one ló&