Sidetracks

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A lyrical masterpiece by the renowned poet with a “Whitman-like rhetorical immensity coupled with a passionately eccentric sensibility” (Carol Muske Dukes, Los Angeles Times) A TIME MUST-READ BOOK OF 2024 A 2024 NPR BOOK WE LOVE A NEW YORKER BEST BOOK OF 2024 LONGLISTED FOR THE 2025 GRIFFIN POETRY PRIZE Sidetracks, Bei Dao’s first new collection in almost fifteen years, is also the poet’s first long poem and his magnum opus―the artistic culmination of a lifetime devoted to the renewal and reinvention of language. “As a poet, I am always lost,” Bei Dao once said. Opening with a prologue of heavenly questions and followed by thirty-four cantos, Sidetracks travels forward and backward along the divergent paths of the poet’s wandering life―from his time as a Young Pioneer in Beijing, through the years of exile living in six countries, back to the rural construction site where he worked during the Cultural Revolution, to the “sunshine tablecloth” in his kitchen in Davis, California, and his emotional visit home after a thirteen-year separation (“the mother tongue has deepened my foreignness”). All the various currents of our times rush into his lifelines, reconfigured through the “vortex of experience” and the poet’s encounters with friends and strangers, artists and ghosts, as he moves from place to place, unable to return home. As the poet Michael Palmer has noted, “Bei Dao’s work, in its rapid transitions, abrupt juxtapositions, and frequent recurrence to open syntax evokes the un-speakability of the exile’s condition. It is a poetry of explosive convergences, of submersions and unfixed boundaries, ‘amid languages.’”
ASIN: 081123844X
VSKU: DBV.081123844X.A
Condition: Acceptable
Author/Artist:Dao, Bei|Yang, Jeffrey
Binding: Paperback
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  • Used - Very Good: Item may have minor cosmetic defects (marks, wears, cuts, bends, crushes) on the cover, spine, pages or dust cover. Shrink wrap, dust covers, or boxed set case may be missing. Item may contain remainder marks on outside edges, which should be noted in listing comments. Item may be missing bundled media. 
  • Used - Good: All pages and cover are intact (including the dust cover, if applicable). Spine may show signs of wear. Pages may include limited notes and highlighting. Gently used ex-library books with library stickers and markings may be classified as good. Shrink wrap, dust covers, or boxed set case may be missing. Item may be missing bundled media. 
  • Used - Acceptable: All pages and the cover are intact, but shrink wrap, dust covers, or boxed set case may be missing. Pages may include limited notes, highlighting, or minor water damage but the text is readable. Item may but the dust cover may be missing. Pages may include limited notes and highlighting, but the text cannot be obscured or unreadable.

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  • Used - Good: Case may be damaged or come repackaged. Disc may have up to 1.5cm marking but is in great working condition. 
  • Used - Acceptable: A product with extensive external signs of wear, but is in great working condition. The case may be damaged. The cover art, liner, notes, or other inclusion may be marked, or one or all of these items may be missing.
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