Oculus: Poems - Paperback
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Award-Winning Poetry Collection Exploring Exile, Technology, and Representation
FINALIST FOR THE LOS ANGELES TIMES BOOK PRIZE FOR POETRY
Oculus is Sally Wen Mao's brilliant second poetry collection that examines exile as both physical displacement and temporal migration. This acclaimed work confronts the violence of spectacle through innovative verse that bridges historical narrative and speculative imagination.
About This Poetry Collection
The title poem follows a nineteen-year-old girl in Shanghai who documented her suicide on Instagram, launching an exploration of how technology mediates our existence. Mao's poems traverse animated worlds, examine robot culture, and navigate an electronic waste necropolis, creating a unique intersection of contemporary concerns and poetic craft.
A fascinating sequence throughout the collection channels the voice of Anna May Wong, the international icon and first Chinese American movie star. Wong travels through cinema history with a time machine, moving past her own death into film's future, where she discovers she has no progeny. This innovative approach resurrects a cultural figure while interrogating representation in media.
Themes and Poetic Vision
With speculative imagination and sharpened wit, Mao confronts the paradoxes of seeing and being seen. The collection examines intimacies made possible and destroyed by screens, addressing how women of color navigate roles and representations imposed upon them. Oculus interrogates survival within a culture that seeks to consume marginalized identities.
Critical Recognition
This collection earned finalist status for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Poetry, cementing Mao's position as a vital contemporary voice. Published by Graywolf Press in 2019, Oculus builds on her acclaimed debut Mad Honey Symposium.
Sally Wen Mao has won a Pushcart Prize and received fellowships at Kundiman, George Washington University, and the New York Public Library Cullman Center. Her work addresses diaspora, cultural identity, and the complexities of Asian American experience through innovative poetic forms.
This paperback edition presents Mao's complete vision for a collection that redefines how poetry can engage with technology, history, and representation in the 21st century.
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