Salvage

Part blasphemous prayer, part stand-up comedy, wholly unique, this breathtaking collection is by turns devastating, funny, and startling. “Some things happened to me in my formative years that I don’t want to tell you about,” writes Hedgie Choi, “but some things happened to you too.”

Whether the site of exploration is Star Trek, Leonard Cohen, roadkill, or etymology, sublime bewilderment rubs shoulders with half-buried humiliations and accidental salvations. The voice in these poems tenderly and tenaciously inquires into how to survive—not how to survive violence but how to survive surviving. Choi is the rare poet who can elicit laughter, sober reflection, and wry bemusement all within the space of a few lines—or sometimes only one.

This is a collection that you can read through in a single sitting, then return to again and again. “I’m half teenage girls / and half grown men,” she writes—to which we can only wonder, aren't we all?