Rain in Plural

The highly anticipated new collection from a poet whose previous book was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book PrizeRain in Plural is the much-anticipated fourth collection of poetry by Fiona Sze-Lorrain, who has been praised by The Rumpus as "a master of musicality and enlightening allusions." In the wholly original world of these new poems, Sze-Lorrain addresses both private narratives and the overexposed discourse of the polis, using silence and montage, lyric and antilyric, to envision what she calls "creating between liberties." With a moral precision embracing us without eschewing I, she rethinks questions of citizenship, the selections of sensory memory, and, by extension, the tether of word and image to the actual. She writes, "I accept the truth in newspapers / by holding the murder of my friends against my chest. // To each weather forecast I give thanks: / merci for every outdated // dusk/dawn." Agrippina the Younger, Franz Kafka, Bob Dylan, a butoh performance, an unnamed Raku tea bowl—each has a place here. Made whole by time and its alteration in timelessness, synchrony, coincidences, and accidents, Rain in Plural beautifully reveals an elegiac yet ever-evolving inner life.

"Shortlisted for the Derek Walcott Prize for Poetry, Arrowsmith Press", "A splendid follow-up to the LJ best-booked The Ruined Elegance with broader appeal.", "Fiona Sze-Lorrain’s fourth book of original poems, Rain in Plural . . . uses language to uncover questions of citizenship, memory, and image. We love Sze-Lorrain’s lush, musical sensibilities. . . . If you’ve enjoyed her work in the past, you’re sure to enjoy Rain in Plural, too!", "The poetry in her newest collection, Rain in Plural, is neither a mélange nor a mosaic of cultural, intellectual and linguistic referents, but a deeply intertwined layering . . . Sze-Lorrain seems at home and a visitor everywhere, connecting dots across cultures and continents, dipping into languages and cuisines. If there is a globalized future for English-language literature, this is perhaps an early glance at it."---Asian Review of Books, Peter Gordon, "Provocative . . . lyrical. . . . These lovely poems slide between equally compelling realities that don’t seem to belong together but ultimately unify and bring sense, compassion, and beauty."---Kyle Torke, Colorado Review

Fiona Sze-Lorrain is a poet, translator, editor, and zheng harpist. She is the author of three previous poetry collections, including The Ruined Elegance (Princeton), which was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. She has also translated more than a dozen books of contemporary Chinese, French, and American poetry. She lives in Paris.