Lost, Hurt, or in Transit Beautiful

Poetry. Asian & Asian American Studies. Winner of the Kundiman Prize for exceptional work by an Asian American poet. In Rohan Chhetri’s LOST, HURT, OR IN TRANSIT BEAUTIFUL, inherited literary forms–the ode, the lyric, and pristine tercets–are juxtaposed with gorgeously fractured and stylistically daring hybrid pieces. The end result is a work in which poetic technique is brought to bear on lingering questions of identity, artistic tradition, and the cruelty implicit in language itself. Here, form, grammar, and syntax function as a kind of containment, but also, a ‘ruined field’ that is rife with possibility. Chhetri dramatizes and resists the ways language, and its implicit logic, limit what is possible within our most solitary reflections, defining even those ‘vague dreams’ that in the end we greet alone. ‘This is how violence enters / a poem, ’ he explains, ‘through a screen / door crawling out & Mother asleep on the couch.’ These pieces are as lyrical as they are grounded, and as understated as they are ambitious. ‘In my language, there is a name for this music, ’ he tells us. As his stunning collection unfolds, Chhetri reminds us, with subtlety and grace, that the smallest stylistic decisions in poetry are politically charged. This is a haunting book.–from the Kundiman Prize Citation