A Bell Curve is a Pregnant Straight Line
By Vi Khi Nao
2021
First Published
4.00
Average Rating
94
Number of Pages
A tragic first date. An evicted fetus. A restaurant called Sapphở. The flu. Argiope spiders. A room. The sea. Body parts as clothing. A long poem. A short one. A long one. Flipping like Morse signals, the poems in this collection gather under the pregnant arc of the bell curve in four quadrants that gestate desire. They scatter and sprawl across the page, or shrink in demure bundles, become pen-and-ink drawings, become lists, perform a termite insurrection against style.
Avg Rating
4.00
Number of Ratings
30
5 STARS
37%
4 STARS
37%
3 STARS
20%
2 STARS
3%
1 STARS
3%
goodreads
Author
Vi Khi Nao
Author · 16 books
Vi Khi Nao holds an MFA in fiction from Brown University, where she received the John Hawkes and Feldman Prizes in fiction and the Kim Ann Arstark Memorial Award in poetry. Her work includes poetry, fiction, film and cross-genre collaboration. She is the author of two novellas, Swans In Half-Mourning (2013) and The Vanishing Point of Desire (2011), and her poetry collection, The Old Philosopher, was the winner of 2014 Nightboat Poetry Prize. Her manuscript, A Brief Alphabet of Torture, won the 2016 Ronald Sukenick Innovative Fiction Contest. In Fall 2016, Coffee House Press will publish her novel Fish in Exile. She lives in Iowa City, Iowa.
