Dream's Hold

Dream's Hold, by Emily Saunders Nguyen, is very much a 21st century undertaking. Aware of the fragility of our existence and probing consciousness in any way she can, the poet turns over and over in her mind the nature of both day dream and night dream. A psychic review of the last few decades--not for some blend of trends composite, but for a single very alive human deeply influenced by new-wave as well as old-wave Asia, and from the actual, not the mythical, Midwest. Influenced by late 20th c. Korean Drama as well as Japanese lyric and Vietnamese lyric and narrative poetry, these poems have close links with the three major outlying cultures surrounding China. That is to say the heart, at least, is intact, the mind subtle. David Sten Herrstrom writes "...a great experience, exhilarating, moving, disturbing"; "lyric probing wonderfully alive, wise, and canny". "In this deeply distinguished manuscript, the transience and permanence of identity and experience as well as visions of the natural world rise like holographic images, evanescent and arresting before our eyes. Emily Nguyen has married eastern and western attitudes and philosophy and combined her insights with profound and long study to create a volume of poems that is both unique and unforgettable. (Elizabeth Anne Socolow)