Poems

by
Zhihua Wang

Faraway Hometown is a poetry collection that captures the life experiences of a Chinese woman in the United States. Coming to study abroad, the speaker fulfills a long-held dream—but never anticipates the challenges in an entirely different place. The book’s three sections—Deciphering Mysteries, Faraway Hometown, and Seeking Happiness—trace a personal journey through the present, past, and future, culminating in the speaker’s final realization: the farther I go, the farther my hometown becomes.

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The Author

Zhihua Wang, born and raised in China, holds a BA in Writing and English from Drury University and an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Central Arkansas. She is a PhD student in Creative Writing at the University of Rhode Island. Her work has appeared in Across the Margin, Eunoia Review, Salamander Magazine, and elsewhere.

Praise

To read Faraway Hometown is to be bound in a spell of beauty and wonder. The directness of the language and the emotional availability of the speaker command your attention. This is a poet who does not fear to say what she means or to share with you who she is. And your attention is inevitably rewarded. Wang’s seemingly ordinary subjects–a run in the park, making bread in her kitchen, waiting impatiently for an email–are instantaneously transformed into moments of shocking lyricism and superhuman wisdom. You find yourself marveling not just at what the poet perceives but the precision with which she is able to say it. “How did she see that line?” you find yourself saying. “How does a person make that connection?” As with any natural magic, there is only so much we poor readers can know; our part—and our pleasure—is to simply experience the “honey, bread, milk—a feast after a fast,/nectar aged by time and yeast.”

—John Vanderslice, author of The Last Days of Oscar Wilde and Nous Nous

In this collection, Zhihua Wang crafts delicate poems that examine the speaker’s inner life with courage and humility. With a focus on everyday details, the poems provide an intimate portrait as the speaker wrestles with a question common to many of us today— “how far am I from home?” In the quest to establish roots both literal and figurative, the poet offers up hard-won wisdom nestled in well-penned words.

—Sandy Longhorn, author of The Alchemy of My Mortal Form

These poems are a gift. Faraway Hometown signals the arrival of an utterly original voice in poetry, one that will be captivating us for a long time.

—Stephanie Vanderslice, author of The Lost Son

Zhihua Wang’s beautiful first collection asks us to consider the urgent and the quotidian—often at once—in the cycles of nature, technology, medicine and the maternal.  The precision and candor of Wang’s voice provides warm humanity and always surprising insights.  Faraway Hometown also offers constant reminders of how essential poetry is in negotiating our landscapes.

—Kevin Henderson, Professor of English and Chair of Languages and Literature, Drury University

Contents