A Mere Rica, by Linh Dinh

Description

ISBN 9781946104045

Poetry/Literature: 234 pages

2017

Includes an interview with Linh Dinh.

Getting back to the theme of writing from the outside, I published this in the American Poetry Review in 2004, “I’ve come to realize that I much prefer to live on the periphery of the English language, so that I can steer clear of the tyranny of its suffocating center. In this sense, I am a quintessential American. A Unapoet, I like to homestead just beyond the long reach of Washington […] Hearing the rapid syllables of a foreign language, a bigot is infuriated because he’s reduced to the status of an infant. Poets, on the other hand, should welcome all opportunities to become disoriented. To not know what’s happening forces one to become more attentive and to fill in the blanks. Hence, poetry.”  (Linh Dinh, from the Interview with Tahseen Alkhateeb)

Linh Dinh is the author of five previous books of poems, plus two collections of short stories, a novel and a non-fiction account of the economic, social an political unraveling of the USA, Postcards from the End of America (Seven Stories Press 2017). His political essays are regularly published at Unz Review and other webzines.