" These] accumulated poems are] a smoldering tragedy, a heady descent, songs from a pit where what glints may be gems or the moon off snake scales."--Douglas Kearney

Sun Yung Shin's poems animate the elements of the epic poem and Korean history across a dystopian dreamscape of fairy tale and folklore. Filled with pithy observations and striking lyrics, this collection explores alienation, moral isolation, and nationhood.

Sun Yung Shin is the author of Skirt Full of Black, which won the 2008 Asian American Literary Award for poetry, and the children's book Cooper's Lesson, and is the co-editor of Outsiders Within: Writing on Transracial Adoption. Raised in Chicago, Illinois, Shin currently lives near Minneapolis, Minnesota, and frequently returns to Korea.