Poetry. Women's Studies. Film Studies. Via two alternating voices—interior (observed) and narrative (observer)—that speak to one another, the striking, image–rich poems in SCORE AND BONE's two sections delve into the subjects of film and perception, body and memory, and lead the reader through a visceral cinematic landscape.

Score and Bone

Literature & Fiction

Win, Maw Shein

Poetry

Nomadic

With sharp focus and startling language, the poems in Maw Shein Win's second book, Storage Unit for the Spirit House, look through physical objects to glimpse the ephemeral, the material, and the immaterial. Vinyl records, felt wolverines, a belt used to punish children, pain pills, and "show dogs with bejeweled collars" crowd into Win's real and imagined storage units. Nats, Buddhist animist deities from her family's homeland of Burma, haunt the book's six sections. The nats, spirits believed to have the power to influence everyday lives, inhabit the storage units and hover around objects while forgotten children sleep under Mylar blankets and daughters try to see through the haze of a father's cigarette smoke. Assemblages of both earthly and noncorporeal possessions throughout the collection become resonant and alive, and Win must summon "a circle of drums and copper bells" to appease the nats who have moved into a long-ago family house. This careful curation of unlikely objects and images becomes an act of ritual collection that uses language to interrogate how pain in life can transform someone into a nat or a siren that lives on. Restrained lines request our imagination as we move with the poet through haunted spaces and the objects that inhabit them.

Storage Unit for the Spirit House

Omnidawn

In her first full-length collection of poems, Win depicts a colorful world imbued with unexpected paradoxes: nature is both comforting and savagely unnerving; love is permanent and fleeting; the accuracy and flaws of memory abound. Her experiences with illness and recovery intertwine with her identity as a Burmese American daughter of immigrant doctors, flowing in poems like “Hands”: My father’s hands, frail birds, shaking wings. / In Burmese, “win” means bright. / Hands that stitched skin together and brought back life. Win’s unique perspective and artful language offer readers insight into how the heart can bend and mend without breaking.

Invisible Gifts: Poems

Manic D Press, Inc.

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Win, Maw Shein. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Win, Maw Shein

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Win, Maw Shein. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Score and Bone

Storage Unit for the Spirit House

Invisible Gifts: Poems