How to Survive a Hotel Fire

By Angela Veronica Wong

Poetry. Asian American Studies. "A princess starts a hotel fire. How to survive? Become a poet. Become Angela Veronica Wong. 'How we remember is formed like glass, ' she writes. How we remember--survive and remember. 'I placed a book upside down on your piano, ' the poet writes. It is this book, formed like music. Read it."--Honor Moore

"Asphyxiation, falling plants, and abandoned buildings--this is just the beginning of Angela Veronica Wong's debut collection which is both an exploration and a meditation of intimacy and its fracturing. Playing children 'scream like death, ' there are 'black cliffs' and traces of mascara on pillowcases the day after. These poems embrace mythologies and enact fairy tales as a stand-in for disappointment and rejections. As the collection moves through scenes of domesticity and urban life, there's a subtle shifting away (but never a complete departure) from youthful na vet into a quiet violence and desperation of one who knows too much. HOW TO SURVIVE A HOTEL FIRE is our tender riot and slow sad swan song, as we lie awake watching an empty street fill with sleet."--Steven Karl

"I love the way each section in Angela Veronica Wong's HOW TO SURVIVE A HOTEL FIRE shifts from form to form. There's a protean urgency in the way her work flickers on the page and morphs from section to section. What this collection offers isn't so much the answer to its title, but a type of slow burning inferno. One that reminds us our lives are interminably, inescapably, beautifully burning down."--Ben Mirov

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1938055004
• ISBN13: 9781938055003
• Release Date: June 2012
• Publisher: Coconut Books
• Length: 124 Pages
• Weight: 0.45 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.4" x 7.5" x 7.5"