Cut to Bloom - by Arhm Choi Wild (Paperback)

About the Book

Book Synopsis

What does it take to unlearn the survival instinct of trauma? What does it take to choose our tools instead of wearing down the ones we've been handed? In Cut to Bloom, Arhm Choi Wild' poetry attempts to forge answers to these questions by navigating the hyphen, sometimes chasm, between the Asian and American identity, between queerness and the politics of belonging, between survival and the possibility of choice.

While talking back to the colonialism of strict poetic form, this book attempts to disrupt clear definitions and redefine the American identity as one that is constructed more by questions than answers. This book celebrates the self-made, rogue bouquet, the taking of what you were given and transforming it into something you could make a gift of, and examines what needs to be pruned in order to arrive at this transformation.

Review Quotes

Arhm Choi Wild shows us that when English falls away, what lies behind, underneath, within it are unseen languages and unseen histories--complicated, painful, and beautiful.

- Patrick Rosal, author of Brooklyn Antediluvian, Boneshepards

Cut to Bloom is neither delicate nor tidy. This immense work both elucidates and complicates ethnic, generational, and gender violence, examining women who fight for their humanity against those who seek to silence--indeed, erase--them.

- Jeanann Verlee, author of Prey, Said the Manic to the Muse

With keen eye, Wild carefully unpacks personal and political histories that the world would rather bury -- "a story with no mouth," as they beautifully put it.

- Phil Kaye, author of Date & Time