Mom, You Once Spoke of a River

Yupang Hanna Han's Mom, You Once Spoke of a River sings forth the garden paths and soupy ghosts and leafy exoskeletons conjured by a talented young poet. Han's poems dive into the sensory spaces of memory with lyrical precision, startling images, and narrative care. Each line is viscerally felt, vulnerably so: "I carry you in small things: / knuckles that stiffen in winter, / a way of pausing before I speak." This is a debut from a marvelous poet and I'm so grateful to linger among these poems which traverse such vast distances, daughters, and diasporas.

-Jane Wong, author of Overpour and How to Not Be Afraid of EverythingSome mothers change your language. Yupang Hanna Han's Mom, You Once Spoke of Rivers uses the lyric to explore "the tender things / that hold us" by plunging to the sources like inheritance and myth. Han treats mothering as a shifting target and a role worth heaving oneself into narrating. This haunting and gorgeous debut extends elegy into many rooms and many stanzas. - Michelle Taransky, author of Abramowitz-Grossberg