Hsin

Heart-mind and nothingness are fair English translations of Hsin, but their tidiness risks losing some of the sharper, wider sides of absence and appetite. As a historical process, according to Hang Thaddeus Tui-Chieh, Hsin frustrates, 'the psychological fragmentation and compartmentalization of the West. Born to a Syrian father and a Chinese mother, who gave her up for adoption, Lee explores her origins in a compendium of poem fragments where form embraces the process of its unfolding. These are Koan like poems, resonant with tones at turns ageless and contemporary; Hsin holds silence in ways that both claim and keep at bay.