Part protest against reality, part metaphysical reckoning, part internationale for the world-historical surrealist insurgency, and part arte povera for the wretched of the earth, Lynn Xu’s book-length poem, And Those Ashen Heaps That Cantilevered Vase of Moonlight, holds fast to our fragile utopias. Under the auspice of birth and the contingency of this beginning, time opens: Ecstatic, melancholy, and defiant, the voices of the poem flicker between life and death, gorgeous and gruesome, visionary and intimate.

“Lynn Xu’s second book of poetry, And Those Ashen Heaps That Cantilevered Vase of Moonlight, reads like the Book of Revelation. The first word of that text is apokalypsis, meaning “unveiling” or “revelation,” and Xu’s poetry feels like a report from the end of time . . .” —Angelo Mao