Sandman

About the Collection

Sandman peers into the slumbering worlds of desire and memory. The collection takes the Sandhills of Nebraska as a storied place for exploring queerness and Asian American experience, dispersed across environments “to see if the earth remembered too, / this time, or the next.” Giving form to “shapes out of air,” the lines reside in the multiple valences of a breath, finding resonances across migrant histories of labor and pleasure.

Praise

“The poems in Huan He’s Sandman are tender observations, evocative myths, and poetic pursuits that gently nudge readers to enter into an intimate dance with the world and ourselves. Through lyrical verve, astute intelligence, and evocative imagination, He’s poems are all at once dream songs and gentle lessons that subtly radiate poetics and politics from the mundane every day and prompts wonder. He’s poetry intervenes in the hum of the capitalistic world by offering a different kind of bestiary that draws from mythology, coming of age themes, and the Asian immigrant diaspora. Reminiscent of the poetic and political writing by Li Young Lee, D.A. Powell, and Maxine Hong Kingston, He’s Sandman marks the debut of a stunning new and important voice in contemporary poetry. He’s quietly daring and transformative poems teach us what we did not know we were hungry for, and these extraordinary poems make us see and feel anew.”
—Margaret Rhee, author of Love, Robot