To Compare

by Xuela Zhang

A bracing and variegated debut, Xuela Zhang’s To Compare inhabits the fraught condition of living in and through translation in the age of globalization, social media, and the Chinese-American neo-Cold War. In To Compare, Zhang navigates the quagmire of transnational life, where one is always both here and away. “Has language/passed you by/like a curvy city/or shielded/and isolated you,/an illuminated vehicle/against the flooding/tenors of light?” Zhang writes in To Compare, reflecting on the nature of translation—both linguistic and otherwise— as a way of life. Disjunctive, alluring, To Compare poetically represents our contemporary age.

Genres: Poetry

81 pages, Paperback

Expected publication April 28, 2026

Reviews

[Brianna · Rating 3 out of 5]

The main beauty of these poems is in their clarity. The poet shows a strong talent for distilling complex experience into simple language and she works with language itself as part of her subject matter in a thoughtful way. Initially, this book left me unimpressed. Again, the quiet clarity of the language is consistently a strong point but only rarely did a line stand out as particularly meaningful, poignant, or well-written. The poems do interest me in their unassuming thoughtfulness when it comes to translation and crosscultural exchange. The poet seems to be writing from a natural place with a real earnest connection to her subject matter. The material gets stronger as the book goes on and by the end I appreciated how well the poems comment on and respond to other art as well as how their thought-provoking focus on language offers incisive understanding of the world as this poet experiences it. The poems feel very immediate and resonant, so for that I do recommend this book to readers of modern poetry.

Thank you to NetGalley for a free ebook ARC in exchange for an honest review.

[Kuu · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for this ARC!

Poetry on language and translation? Sign me up!

this was both stylistically well done and appealed to me specifically content-wise, as I love ponderings on language, translatability, and everything related, which featured heavily in several of the poems here. It was a quick but pleasant read, and definitely a poetry collection I'd recommend.

[Ambi · Rating 5 out of 5]

These poems are beautiful, lush, and thought-provoking. With lyrical prose, Xuela Zhang’s debut collection, To Compare, reflects on transnationalism and the often jarring experience of living in translation. Some of my favorite poems from this collection were:

Quarantine (1)
To Compare (2)
To Compare (3)
Prelude to Translators Note
Interview: Pig
Translators Note (3)
Translators Note (5)

—Many thanks to NetGalley and NYU Press for the ARC! I can’t wait to see what Zhang writes next.

[JoAnne O'Brien-Wallace · Rating 3 out of 5]

Short book of poems

I just wish it was a little bit longer