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"The revolution is emotional.

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It calls me.

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I have to sing it out."

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One of those lines is
from Yanyi's first book,

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The Year of Blue
Water and the other

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from his second Dream
of The Divided Field.

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There are as many ways to
interpret a body of work

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as there are bodies,
as there are works.

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For me, reading
Yanyi's books felt

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like tracing the
textured cyclical routes

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of self-conception.

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When a life moves
into a present life,

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a transition marked each time by
love lost, sustained, abiding.

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Yanyi's poems sing of the
harmonies and dissonances

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of a full life teeming with a
multiplicity of beloveds, queer

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friend, immigrant mother,
fellow artist, romantic partner,

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and the self, inextricable
from all of the above.

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I quote again from Dream
of The Divided Field.

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"Where I wept, there
was transformation,

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and I did both
before and after I

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flew through the other worlds."

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Yanyi is the author of Dream
of The Divided Field published

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in 2022 by One
World Random House

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and The Year of Blue Water,
winner of the 2018 Yale

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Series of Younger Poets Prize
selected by Carl Phillips.

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Yanyi gives creative
writing advice

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at his newsletter, The Reading.

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It's very good.

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Amazing tips.

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Recommend.

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And Yanyi teaches poetry at
the Warren Wilson MFA program.

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In 2023, he founded the
Asian-American Literary

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Archive.

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Please join me in giving a
warm ecstatic welcome to Yanyi.

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