DENVER - ColoradoDesk -- As Covid-19 spread across the globe, Deborah Jang's poetry collection, FLOAT TRUE (Shanti Arts /March 2020), was published, coinciding with rolling shutdowns worldwide. People were distracted and anxious, commerce curtailed, and traditional promotional opportunities postponed or cancelled. The drama has escalated and expanded. Unprecedented crises now scream for this book's visibility as Jang looks unflinchingly at perplexities behind the multiple angsts sweeping U.S. and the world. A few examples that illustrate the book's eery prescience:

+ Of police brutality, Jang confronts the "twitchy trigger finger punctuating murder with a slur." (Witness, p37)

+ Re quarantine and climate change, she metaphorically instructs herself to "Shelter here in place". (Climate change, p53)

+ She praises Colin Kaepernick, who is recently experiencing potential redemption through public opinion and NFL policy correction around player protest: "I, with you, protest the mood / where people of the darker hues / get broken, battered by some suits / whose promise to protect and serve / fails to deliver." (Crush, p62-63)

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+ Of racism, she recalls childhood trauma, wondering, "had they rehearsed / Or was it spontaneous humiliation?" (Welcome, with hand gestures, p34-35); stories of "Angel Island, where my grandma wept." (White man burden, p46-48); and grief "when women dark and dusky wail into silence made of sons / and daughters missing." (Why not? p38)

+ On behalf of immigrants, BIPOC, and marginalized others, she pleads, "Welcome the stranger at the end of the block with words that heal, not bleed." (Welcome, with hand gestures, p34-35)

+ Of authoritarianism-on-the-rise, she imagines hiding from the Nazis asking, "Would I not go gentle, without hiss or fight?" (Marching orders, p43-45)

+ Of democracy, she warns Lady Liberty, "Rising waters swamp the cries / of humankind's undoing." (Guanyin to Lady Liberty, p18)

+ And of hope, she reflects "Waters yet are rising. Horrors / hulk horizons. Stroke strong / deep while keeping time / to the heart's own beating." (Dwell, p11)

Through personal story, reflection, and emotion, Jang seeks to make meaning of life's crushing parts and mysteries, while imparting moments of serenity and outbursts of ecstatic joy in nature, especially water. FLOAT TRUE is a must-read for our times, and for all time.

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AUTHOR QUOTE: "Releasing these poems during the catharsis of racial reckoning and into the trauma of a pandemic is auspicious in timing... may the words meet the moment with sufficient grace."

Link to publisher listing

Electronic review copies of the book, high-resolution images, and this release are shared online at https://bit.ly/3cS6nid. Print copies are available from the author.