Jenny Xie has published poems in Harvard Review, the Literary Review, The New Republic, Tin House, and elsewhere. She teaches in the Expository Writing Program at New York University and lives in Brooklyn.
"The poems in [Xie's] crystalline debut . . . are ever alert to the
complex relationship between geography and the self."--The New York
Times Book Review "Xie comes across as a magician of perspective
and scale. . . . [Eye Level] suggests a kind of Fodor's or Lonely
Planet guide to inner life."--The New Yorker "Xie's poems take us
on a journey to new places . . . in such vivid detail that you'll
feel as if you really traveled, as well as to new questions about
immigration, identity, and loneliness."--BuzzFeed "A discerning eye
is at work in this debut collection; Xie has a voice at once ironic
and poised, restless and deeply meditative. . . . Stealthily
beautiful, Eye Level is one of those immersive books that changes
you as you read it."--Vulture "For a poet so capable of taking
readers on far-flung journeys to places like Corfu, Cambodia, and
New York, Xie is perhaps most remarkable for her ability to take
readers deeper inside themselves than they have ever been. . . .
Xie's work is just a thing of pure, piercing beauty."--Nylon "Jenny
Xie's Eye Level . . . is a master class in shifting perspectives. .
. . With her sweeping, exact language, watching the world with Xie
is nothing but a pleasure."--Vox "Despite Xie's wide-ranging
adventures, we remain burrowed in the mind of this magnificent
poet, who braids in the lonesomeness and sorrow of being unmoored
and on your own."--The Paris Review, Staff Picks "An excellent
debut. Xie is particularly gifted with precise description."--The
Millions "The effect of reading through [Jenny Xie's] work, whether
languorously or in sudden bursts, is recognition--you wander, and
then come to the waypoint you've sought all along."--Shondaland.com
"A stunning collection--part travel narrative, part kaleidoscopic
autobiography. . . . Xie's lively formal approach incorporates many
styles. . . . That's what makes Eye Level such an enchanting read:
its ability to be everywhere and do everything at once. It draws
its energy from all over and then finds its way directly to the
heart."--BookPage
"An exquisite interrogation of perspective and selfhood."--Michigan
Quarterly Review "Jenny Xie's breathtaking debut is a sharp blade
that opens the world like the ripe persimmon pictured on its cover
and offers us the halves to savor. Beauty and loneliness comprise
those halves, and the delicious tension between the two propels the
collection forward."--The East Bay Review "Sublime language and
keen observations."--Publishers Weekly "In Eye Level, Jenny Xie
fashions a crystalline travelogue of restlessness. The poet's
wanderings, through cities as disparate as Phnom Penh and New York,
make manifest the communion between inner and outer worlds. It is
against those dissimilar backdrops that Xie discloses, with
precision, the dissoluble mystery of the self. Her delight in
paradox reveals, like a rain shower, a world washed clean of
habitual perception."--Judges' Citation for the National Book Award
in Poetry
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