Bone Symphony

Michelle Phương Hồ’s Bone Symphony mines the wreckage of colonialism and imperialist warfare in Vietnam and attempts to reassemble the bones. Told in three movements spanning lyric, documentary, and hybrid forms, Bone Symphony uncovers a world turned upside-down by war: evil is good, saviors are toddlers, children die before their mothers, and civil servants—like the poet’s grandfather—become enemies of the state. The detritus of a shattered nation, family, and psyche serve as building blocks Hồ rearranges with playful irreverence, giving rise to healing poetic turns. One can surrender not just to military powers, but to love. The prison cell where a dissident is held transforms into the womb of God. In a world where no symbol is stable, Bone Symphony reorients us toward curiosity, kinship, and the kind of mercy that sets free those held captive within our imaginations: “Every face / I’ve ever held / hostage,” the poet beholds, “is beginning to bleed.”

Praise for Bone Symphony

“Searingly erudite, formally restless, and wrought with marrow-deep care, Bone Symphony marks the astonishing arrival of a voice I’ve been waiting for for as long as I can remember. Hồ shows us not only what the poem can do, but in doing so tests the very limits of language itself. Simply one of the finest debuts in many years.” —Ocean Vuong, author of Night Sky with Exit Wounds

“I love the intense searching throughout Bone Symphony. The integrity of the inquiry here creates an extraordinary sense of restlessness and openness, musicality and discord. Michelle Phương Hồ’s diverse, richly researched poems unfold with toughness and vulnerability, invention and tradition. By turns intimate and historical, wild and prayerful, Bone Symphony sings what it means to survive one’s own story. This is a monumental debut.” —Terrance Hayes, author of Lighthead

“In Bone Symphony, a ‘neon trickle’ conjoins a ‘seminal text,’ a mode of proximity that connects what can never die with everything that’s already over. ‘Writing books / when I should be dead,’ writes Michelle Phương Hồ, to devastating effect that devastates in turn.” —Bhanu Kapil, author of How to Wash a Heart

“Bone Symphony is a major work which carries into print more than I knew could be carried into print. I am startled, actually, by the immediacy of the voices here and the breathtaking ways that Michelle Phương Hồ works in language to contend with the ongoing catastrophes, as she describes it, of colonialism and imperialist war in Vietnam. Reckoning with what is unutterable, this poet makes a sound that swerves—unruled, capacious. I am breaking into something else to read these paths.” —Aracelis Girmay, author of GREEN OF ALL HEADS