In poems of memory, psychogeography, desire, and self-mythologization, then telling be the antidote is Xiao Yue Shan’s assertion against the malignancy of forceful silences.

By illuminating what has been left untold, these writings present the vivid landscape of a mind layering itself over the world, thinking and speaking its way through a myriad of places, objects, and visions. From rooms overlooking Tokyo rivers to Shanghai streets in the thrall of nighttime, Shan throws light on a nation’s quieted crevices, on the distances between the carnal and the eternal, and most pivotally, on the ability of language to elucidate fact with imagination.