Asterism

by Ae Hee Lee

$21.95

“I have been waiting quite a while for a poet to risk the elegance and gestural audacity of the Baroque upon issues of origin and identity. All too often, these issues vex and distort our poetry. But in Asterism, they amplify the language of Ae Hee Lee onto a ravishing spree of utterance and image. There is great breadth here, and heartening innovation.” Donald Revell

 

Format: Paperback
Published: February 2024

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Asterism is a strong debut. The tonal and formal variety in the collection is deft and delicate and does not sugarcoat the anxieties and economic pressures of immigration, which also lead to a world full of complexity and vivacity.”

—Ananya Kanai Shah, Los Angeles Review of Books

“What does it mean to seek a life beyond belonging? Traveling through rich landscapes of memory, Ae Hee Lee’s Asterism retraces the poet’s lineage from South Korea to Peru to the United States, restlessly seeking the self ‘at the edge of every edge.’ Words bloom and refract as they move across borders; uncertainties ring out in the gaps. Yet what is most powerful about this book is how it reaches again and again toward the reader, toward the possibilities that exist between ‘my air and your ear.’ A tender, finely-tuned collection, and a beautiful contribution to the canon of Korean diasporic literature.

—Franny Choi

“I have been waiting quite a while for a poet to risk the elegance and gestural audacity of the Baroque upon issues of origin and identity. All too often, these issues vex and distort our poetry. But in Asterism, they amplify the language of Ae Hee Lee onto a ravishing spree of utterance and image. There is great breadth here, and heartening innovation.”

Donald Revell

“Ae Hee Lee’s Asterism is a sweeping tour de force of a collection. In this stunning debut, mouths eat, name, translate, dream, kiss. If we are what we eat, then, in these pages, the poet is everything. The body is a chestnut, the country a walnut, and homesickness a woman licking a spoon. Moreover, the poet’s mouth is a conduit to ‘an inward- / stretching universe of lungs / and dark matter.’ And Lee’s breath, which moves visibly over these poems, carries us into constellations of possibilities and light.”

Wendy Chen, author of Unearthings

“I believe the poetics of heritage and belonging in this Asterism are transformative. But how does Ae Hee Lee do it? Follow the poet’s eye: ‘I show my mother the photo I’ve taken: a lone piece of winter light had landed / on her left cheek, as if it too could sense in her / a glint of its future.’ There is a sensuality that comes from kinship, and goes beyond it: ‘my mother teaches me that in Korean to forget is also expressed as to have peeled. Which is to say, there is a knowledge in this book that is both hidden, and in plain sight. Transformative, indeed. The attentive reader will find magic in how the message is delivered by language here: ‘you can / trust me, just in the beginning,’ the poet writes, ‘then translate / me for yourself, question me / unsparingly like a sparrow / to another sparrow  about breadcrumbs.’ A marvelous work, filled with terrific imagery and—perhaps more importantly—mystery, Asterism is a brilliant debut.”

Ilya Kaminsky, author of Deaf Republic and Dancing in Odessa

WINNER OF THE DORSET PRIZE

It is quite commonplace when describing a new volume of poetry to resort to stock, albeit wholly appropriate, descriptors.  “Stunning” and “dazzling” come immediately to mind.  So, too, “compelling.”  I’m sure I’ve used such phrases myself, and would now when writing about Asterism, were this book not so fresh that it makes one self-conscious of, and encourages the reader to want to lean away from, anything resembling the familiar.  The range in theme would be impressive enough on its own, but what sets this collection apart is how the author is able to pull off legitimate experimentation while remaining accessible.  The poems both invite and challenge the reader.  Here is a poet as intelligent as any other, but whose intelligence is never the point of the poem.  Not to mention the language is downright gorgeous.  Perhaps what is most striking about the collection is the apparent ease with which the author moves between registers and modes.  At times personal, at others political; slipping back and forth between lyric and narrative; drawing on various languages and geographies, Asterism is a collection of both grace and grit, the work of a mind at work—in, and on, a world that is simultaneously expanding and contracting.  

from the Judge’s Citation by John Murillo

Born in South Korea, raised in Peru, Ae Hee Lee currently lives in the United States. She holds an MFA from the University of Notre Dame, where she was awarded an Academy of American Poets Prize, and a PhD in Literature and Creative Writing from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. She is the author of the poetry chapbooks: Bedtime || Riverbed (Compound Press, 2017), Dear bear, (Platypus Press, 2021), and Connotary, which was selected as the winner for the 2021 Frost Place Chapbook Competition. Her poetry has been published or is forthcoming at Poetry Magazine, Poetry Northwest, The Georgia Review, New England Review, and Southern Review, among others.

Additional information

Weight 0.33 lbs
Dimensions 6 × 9 in

Click here to read an excerpt of Asterism by Ae Hee Lee.

Click here to access a suite of writing prompts and curricular materials, courtesy of the author.

ASTERISM_Readers Guide