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Solar Maximum
Poetry. Asian American Studies. "If SOLAR MAXIMUM's speculative fictions are more concerned with presents than futures, its rigorous calm is deeply disquieted, its systematic clarity vying with diffusion, blindness. Is it a reckoning of human success or error that the cannibalistic clouds over Lee's blanched landscapes are full of weather and information? That they break themselves down as a body and communications must? Why poetry otherwise? These are stunning poems written to haunt a house we're in the process of building or, in another light, gently dismantling."—Douglas Kearney
"A 'great disturbance.' A 'magnetic delivery.' Hold your breath in the 'alter weather patterns.' To a 'longing,' the 'discrepancy,' how the light itself accrues a 'stop-motion' brilliance in the moment, or era, before it arrives. How does the sun 'signal' to citizens and non-citizens below? What is happening? Lee has written a book that melts, freezes, then melts a set of 'kinetic potentials.' Both syntax and the animal body leave their residues throughout this work, becoming, in turn, modes of fluorescence, exposure, a way to time the 'solar maximum.' As Lee 'The prints in the ground I track for hours lead me to the place I was taught to call home.' Every page has something on it that was both 'severe instant' or 'coronal flare.' These extraordinary sentences or lines. But at the same time the work feels grounded in a kind of extraordinary praise for the excruciating beauty of planetary life, even as it- as it does—dissolves."—Bhan u Kapil
"…ablaze, abstract, abstruse, aching, acute, aerial, alien, all-encompassing, alluring, apocalyptic, astounding, beautiful, blinding, brave, cathartic, celestial, cerebral, chosen, cosmic, dazzling, defiant, devastating, diagrammatic, direct, divine, eccentric, economical, eerie, electrifying, elegiac, empathic, excruciating, extraordinary, extrasensory, extreme, fair, fierce, fiery, formidable, furious, futuristic, geometric, ghostly, gorgeous, haunting, human, hurt, incantatory, inspired, intense, jolting, just, keen, kneel-worthy, lightninglike, luminescent, lyrical, magnanimous, magnetic, mysterious, necessary, new, numinous, occult, oneiric, painful, peaceful, phenomenal, phosphorescent, posthuman, prehistoric, quantum, questioning, radiant, raw, relentless, reverential, rhapsodic, righteous, searching, severe, shattering, shimmering, shorn, silencing, singular, spellbinding, stark, sublime, telepathic, timeless, trenchant, unforgettable, unapproachable, uncanny, unearthly, unprecedented, visionary, vivid, vulnerable, weird, wild, wondrous, wrought, xenomorphic, yearning, yonder, zenithal…"—Seo-Young Chu
"A 'great disturbance.' A 'magnetic delivery.' Hold your breath in the 'alter weather patterns.' To a 'longing,' the 'discrepancy,' how the light itself accrues a 'stop-motion' brilliance in the moment, or era, before it arrives. How does the sun 'signal' to citizens and non-citizens below? What is happening? Lee has written a book that melts, freezes, then melts a set of 'kinetic potentials.' Both syntax and the animal body leave their residues throughout this work, becoming, in turn, modes of fluorescence, exposure, a way to time the 'solar maximum.' As Lee 'The prints in the ground I track for hours lead me to the place I was taught to call home.' Every page has something on it that was both 'severe instant' or 'coronal flare.' These extraordinary sentences or lines. But at the same time the work feels grounded in a kind of extraordinary praise for the excruciating beauty of planetary life, even as it- as it does—dissolves."—Bhan u Kapil
"…ablaze, abstract, abstruse, aching, acute, aerial, alien, all-encompassing, alluring, apocalyptic, astounding, beautiful, blinding, brave, cathartic, celestial, cerebral, chosen, cosmic, dazzling, defiant, devastating, diagrammatic, direct, divine, eccentric, economical, eerie, electrifying, elegiac, empathic, excruciating, extraordinary, extrasensory, extreme, fair, fierce, fiery, formidable, furious, futuristic, geometric, ghostly, gorgeous, haunting, human, hurt, incantatory, inspired, intense, jolting, just, keen, kneel-worthy, lightninglike, luminescent, lyrical, magnanimous, magnetic, mysterious, necessary, new, numinous, occult, oneiric, painful, peaceful, phenomenal, phosphorescent, posthuman, prehistoric, quantum, questioning, radiant, raw, relentless, reverential, rhapsodic, righteous, searching, severe, shattering, shimmering, shorn, silencing, singular, spellbinding, stark, sublime, telepathic, timeless, trenchant, unforgettable, unapproachable, uncanny, unearthly, unprecedented, visionary, vivid, vulnerable, weird, wild, wondrous, wrought, xenomorphic, yearning, yonder, zenithal…"—Seo-Young Chu
- GenresPoetry
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Published January 1, 2015
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
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March 5, 2026picked this up in the faculty lounge in the queens college english department. i was in a bad mood because the vending machine wasn’t working and i was hungry and wanted to have an oatmeal bar or a little bag of chips. i was suffering and filled w despair
i loooved this book though. i saw wavering light, the movement of bodies in space, an arctic darkness of the future. there’s gaming. “technology” in an early 2010s kind of way. i miss that time. lee succeeds at doing something i’m also interested in, which is to make technical language feel really intimate/personal. the density of the poems is astounding
made me realize that i like a multimedia poetry book when it is really simple
right after i finished this book noa arrived and shared w me some lentil stew and a delicious little orange. yes! poetry! i thought.
poem titles from the first section:
THE MEANEST LIGHT DEFENDS YOU
IF THERE’S A UNITY IN SENTIMENT
AS A MODE OF DAYLIGHT
A ROVING BRILLIANCE
AN ARRAY BECOMES AN ORGANIZATIONAL METHOD
THE DISTANT SUN IS NOT SO DISTANT AT ALL
WHEN THE TERRAIN IS A BODY OF WATER
A DEVASTATION OF UNKNOWN MAGNITUDE
EVEN THOUGH THE COMPLEX LANDING WAS ACHIEVED
A MANIFOLD BEHAVIOR
i loooved this book though. i saw wavering light, the movement of bodies in space, an arctic darkness of the future. there’s gaming. “technology” in an early 2010s kind of way. i miss that time. lee succeeds at doing something i’m also interested in, which is to make technical language feel really intimate/personal. the density of the poems is astounding
made me realize that i like a multimedia poetry book when it is really simple
right after i finished this book noa arrived and shared w me some lentil stew and a delicious little orange. yes! poetry! i thought.
poem titles from the first section:
THE MEANEST LIGHT DEFENDS YOU
IF THERE’S A UNITY IN SENTIMENT
AS A MODE OF DAYLIGHT
A ROVING BRILLIANCE
AN ARRAY BECOMES AN ORGANIZATIONAL METHOD
THE DISTANT SUN IS NOT SO DISTANT AT ALL
WHEN THE TERRAIN IS A BODY OF WATER
A DEVASTATION OF UNKNOWN MAGNITUDE
EVEN THOUGH THE COMPLEX LANDING WAS ACHIEVED
A MANIFOLD BEHAVIOR
December 6, 2015
"The poetry drips in the twilight of loss, a decimating emotional scourge that echoes in the fringes of language and physics. Lee’s words are a type of prose fusion that spans both the macroscopic and microscopic, a lyrical orbit that describes the planes of a fiery apocalypse." I reviewed Solar Maximum by Sueyeun Juliette Lee at Entropy.
http://entropymag.org/solar-maximum-b...
http://entropymag.org/solar-maximum-b...
April 7, 2023
there’s a line between being poetic and being obscure and sueyeun juliette lee made it really difficult to pinpoint exactly where the division is
May 6, 2024
Beautiful narrative. If you read this collection for nothing else, read it for the shark poems.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews