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Umbilical Hospital book cover
Umbilical Hospital
2017
First Published
3.88
Average Rating
84
Number of Pages

Poetry. Asian & Asian American Studies. Film. Art. UMBILICAL HOSPITAL is a poetic ekphrasis of Leslie Thornton's Sheep Machine, part of her Binocular Series. Filmed in Saas-Fee, it shows a flock of sheep grazing next to the structural support of cable car system. Leslie Thornton views her video installation as film paintings. "Imagine an entity composed of sheep, wheat, assholes, clitorises, stars. Why not? That would be this poem, this world—a perfectly recognizable post-human world which is also post surreal. Vi Khi Nao is making it new, no, she is doing the old job of making us see what's already here in a new way. We're already part of the bunny-frog and the sheep machine and we're feeling fine. This is bold, fresh, necessary work."—Rae Armantrout "In this book—a vision of a vision—to see is to become. To count, or be counted, is to transform. Vi Khi Nao promises her readers to 'split in half, to spread-eagle, to alter/the delirium of grass.' Heady, dreamy, painful and acute, the images in these poems recombine to digest, rather than describe, Leslie Thornton's Sheep Machine . Certainly, one must look at the body from two very different eyes at once for it to become an umbilical hospital."—Sophia Dahlin

Avg Rating
3.88
Number of Ratings
17
5 STARS
41%
4 STARS
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3 STARS
24%
2 STARS
6%
1 STARS
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Author

Vi Khi Nao
Vi Khi Nao
Author · 12 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.
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