Cleave

"Tiana Nobile has created that rare gift: a collection of poems that not only springs from experiential knowledge but also offers insight on and says something new about the America in which we’re currently living. Cleave is a stunning debut that will help us, 'carry ourselves into the realms of light,' which we find ourselves searching for as we navigate our lives in the most challenging of times. Between the vulnerability in these poems and the music of their lines, Nobile proves a master at using her history and ours to make a better world for today. And love in every form—that which we cling to, and that which we separate from—resonates throughout." —A. Van Jordan, author of Cineaste  "I have been waiting with such anticipation for Tiana Nobile’s remarkable first book, Cleave, to make its way into the world. It is, to my mind, one of the most powerful examples of how poetry can cut to the heart of how a country’s vision of itself can wreak unimaginable harm on the lives and bodies of the people it purports to protect, value, and represent. With breathtaking lyric beauty and formidable formal range, Nobile details the intimate effects of the international adoption industrial complex on children and parents caught up in a system’s unrelenting hunger. This is a book of remarkable compassion and real horror. Its stories will be news to many and all too familiar to others. I cannot look away from these poems. We cannot look away from these poems." —Gabrielle Calvocoressi, author of Rocket Fantastic "In Tiana Nobile's wonderful Cleave, the condition of the Korean-American adoptee is that of a wandering orbitless moon. The speaker fills the absence of her birth mother with aching questions of home, motherhood, and selfhood. Using the scant documentation she has with her deeply felt imagination, Nobile obsessively revisits the mystery of her birth until she creates her own mythic origin story that is beautiful, melancholic and powerful. Tiana Nobile is a bright new talent." —Cathy Park Hong, author of Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning