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Status Update
Finalist - Pat Lowther Memorial Prize Rarely does a writer surprise and delight her reader with such beauty, subtlety and subversive vulnerability. Status Update, Sarah Yi-Mei Tsiang's second book of poetry, ?is a collection of epigraph poems, each one composed in response to an entry pulled from a real status update posted on Facebook. Tsiang plays with a wide variety of subjects, from the deeply personal, to the banal, to the puzzling, to the philosophical. Her reverence for language, her playfulness and understanding, often mischievous, weave poems of rich diversity, irony and curiosity.
Status Update is a collision between one of today's most popular social networking websites and the seemingly rigid conventions of poetry. Through this juxtaposition, Tsiang explores the intimate, perverse, and endlessly compelling world of text that is sent out daily to strangers and friends alike.
Status Update is a collision between one of today's most popular social networking websites and the seemingly rigid conventions of poetry. Through this juxtaposition, Tsiang explores the intimate, perverse, and endlessly compelling world of text that is sent out daily to strangers and friends alike.
- GenresPoetry
88 pages, Paperback
First published December 1, 2013
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
May 23, 2022
Loved this book.
Loved that Sarah took inspiration from Facebook statuses. Love that the formatting of the statuses lives now as a little time capsule bringing one back to a simpler time on Facebook. Also love that Sarah has friends that post things like “Dave Hickey wonders if his tv misses him.”
There is this little blip of seratonin I get when I see a familiar thing from a new perspective and Sarah offered one of these moments in nearly every poem. Lots of metaphors that will stick in my brain forever.
A couple of my favourites include:
The coffee maker sits and watches
the strangled line of mourners visit its small alter.
and
Look: my stories unwind like ticker tape
thrown from a building. There is too much
to catch. You stand below and watch
a confetti of lives fall at your feet
Thank you Sarah!
Loved that Sarah took inspiration from Facebook statuses. Love that the formatting of the statuses lives now as a little time capsule bringing one back to a simpler time on Facebook. Also love that Sarah has friends that post things like “Dave Hickey wonders if his tv misses him.”
There is this little blip of seratonin I get when I see a familiar thing from a new perspective and Sarah offered one of these moments in nearly every poem. Lots of metaphors that will stick in my brain forever.
A couple of my favourites include:
The coffee maker sits and watches
the strangled line of mourners visit its small alter.
and
Look: my stories unwind like ticker tape
thrown from a building. There is too much
to catch. You stand below and watch
a confetti of lives fall at your feet
Thank you Sarah!
February 10, 2024
Liked: variety, innovative. Disliked: only a couple updates didn’t grab me.
December 19, 2014
A really beautiful and thoughtful collection of poems, based on Facebook status updates as the impetus. I found this book to be quite beautiful and I would like to read more of Sarah's work.
(Also, I'd like to meet her, because we have similar backgrounds)
(Also, I'd like to meet her, because we have similar backgrounds)
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews