Eye Level

Consisting of prose poems, sonnet variations, and haiku alternates, Xie's debut poetry collection (winner of the Walt Whitman Award) focuses on humankind's utter solitude. In the poems, a narrator—Xie herself—returns to Phnom Penh, where she was born, and tries but fails to connect with the inhabitants and their customs. In other sections, the poet reminisces about her family and years growing up in New Jersey while still feeling alone. Some of the pieces become lost in their own surrealistic twists, as in "Long Nights," reminiscent of Emily Dickinson's "Wild Nights, Wild Nights" but without the passion. Overall, the poems resemble segments from a dream in which one's emotional state remains after awakening. As Xie puts in "Bildungsroman," one of a group of prose poems, "You plant an alphabet in your sleep and wake to acres and acres of radios," suggesting the relationship between sleeping (or the interior life) and waking explored throughout the collection.