“There is no bystanding or idling in Shin Yu Pai’s propulsive new collection, No Neutral. With surgical precision of thought and word, Pai names our racial hypocrisies and brutality. Her poems accumulate power, emotional complication, and ultimately a hard-won sweetness that bathes even their hardest truths in hope.” – Kathleen Flenniken, Washington State Poet Laureate (2012–2014)

 “No Neutral is a museum in a box where you encounter ancient traumas, present injuries, a ghost, a stalker, blue gloves, an icy plunge, Buddhist rohatsu, cherry blossoms, a child’s questions, a library given away. Pai’s poems hold forth this gallery where wrongs endured are gentled by spells for survival. In two-line beats building toward a reckoning, right rage lights your way, then tenderness, then deft persistence for what must be said. No Neutral moves from witnessing wrongs in the world to cherishing the familial, from intrinsic hurts of being alive to ‘that errant / dream of taking flight.’” – Kim Stafford, author of Singer Come from Afar

A collection deeply occupied with the notion of voice and who gets to have one, No Neutral presents poet Shin Yu Pai’s perspective in its expansive range of concerns, reaching toward what’s most authentic. Pai dives into explorations of place and their histories: from Port Townsend and the Inland Empire of Southern California to the deserts surrounding Palm Springs, the poet contemplates one’s identity within these shifting spaces. Throughout the book, Pai weaves poems about social unrest, conflict, solidarities, friendships, the mindset of an activist, and her experiences as a woman, mother, artist, and daughter. She continues her lifelong engagement with the visual arts with poems inspired by site-specific works of Rana Begum, Andy Goldsworthy, Maya Lin, Richard Turner, and Tyre Nichols, while also turning her attention to the art of Degenerate Art Ensemble.

$16.00 ISBN 979-8-9883-7010-9 Available September 12, 2023 Order now