Master - (Kathryn A. Morton Prize in Poetry) by Simon Shieh (Paperback)

About the Book

This collection follows the writer's struggle with masculinity from a small town in upstate New York to a boxing academy in Beijing. As much as it is the story of pain, it is also a journey to healing. For violence is our patrimony, but it is not our destiny. These poems challenge masculinity narratives, and master narratives in general, by reaching toward vulnerability and beauty.--Publisher.

Book Synopsis

Winner of the 2022 Kathryn A. Morton Prize in Poetry, selected by Terrance Hayes.

The debut collection from Simon Shieh, Master is a stark, surreal, and imagistic reckoning with a traumatic past. Master follows the speaker's struggle with masculinity from a martial arts school in upstate New York to a boxing academy in Beijing. Language emerges in this collection not as a neutral witness to a boy's subjugation, but as the very tool of hegemony, though one which also holds the key to its own undoing, and therefore to freedom. As much as Master is the story of pain, it is also a journey to healing, illuminating that while violence can be our patrimony, it does not have to be our destiny.

Review Quotes

2024 Norma Farber First Book Award Winner

2024 Los Angeles Times Book Prize Finalist

Poets & Writers, "Performing the Future: Our Nineteenth Annual Look at Debut Poets"

Literary Hub, "A Month of Poetic Acrobatics: 7 New Poetry Books to Read in September"

Featured in Poetry Daily

"The phenomenal debut from Shieh is a stark and extraordinary investigation of a painful past, traversing the intricacies of violence and the journey toward healing."

--Publishers Weekly, starred review

"Simon Shieh presents a poetics of emancipation, grappling with and deconstructing the memory of a master figure's misused power. "
--Poets & Writers, "Performing the Future: Our Nineteenth Annual Look at Debut Poets"

"Simon Shieh's Master is astonishing. . . . Shieh approaches childhood trauma by weaving a series of interconnected lyrics that interrogate power and control. The 'master, ' the 'he' of these poems, runs the martial arts academy where the speaker is a child student. Small gestures shape a trajectory: he 'ties ropes around my wrists, blindfolds me' and 'moves my hand / to the left, moves my foot / to the right.' . . . [But] to extract from this intricate tapestry of a book is to sell it short: read it."

--Rebecca Morgan Frank, Literary Hub, "7 New Poetry Books to Read in September"

"This book feels like one of a kind. . . . Master grapples with dream and memory: the song of hands in motion and the story of hands in action. This lyric and spare work is like the poet's image of a Rottweiler holding butterflies in its mouth before letting them free. The poems can feel solitary and deliberate as 'a sparring partner dancing to his own music.' They can feel sensual and are poetic as 'the water dripping off his body like missed syllables.' Yes, I could introduce this book using nothing but dazzling excerpts. They reckon with the inexpressible. Beauty is set free from a mouth with fangs. I'm proud to select Master for the Kathryn A. Morton prize."

--Terrance Hayes, from the Introduction

"Simon Shieh 'speak[s] the cadence of rain, ' reminding us that 'each of us is a scorched page, part narrative, part dream.' A gifted poet, each line is 'an elegant lure.' Master is a must-read, and Shieh is one of our most exciting and promising emerging poets."

--Sherwin Jay Bitsui, winner of the American Book Award and the PEN Open Book Award for Flood Song

"This is one of the best collections I've read in a while. Simon Shieh's voice is at once crisp and singular. His lines are tight, complex, and layered; his language unspools in powerful movements, so controlled and yet full of the devastating grace that precedes a final blow: 'shattering the bone around my left eye/the doctors called it orbital//my mistake: resting my head/on his shoulder--letting him cradle it in his arms.' The beauty in this book is heartbreaking, brutal. Unsparing in its analysis and deconstruction of power, Master is a startling and stunning debut collection."

--Sally Wen Mao, author of The Kingdom of Surfaces

"If you surrender to Simon Shieh's Master, if you let your eyes grow accustomed to its voluptuous and troubling dark, you will be rewarded with a singular reading experience: merciless in its vision and craft, dripping with muscularity and sweat, Shieh's thrilling debut will leave you breathless."

--Ama Codjoe, author of Bluest Nude

About the Author

Simon Shieh is a Taiwanese American poet and essayist. He has lived in upstate New York and Beijing, China, where he co-founded Spittoon Literary Magazine, which translates the best new Chinese writing into English. From 2008-2014 he competed as an amateur and professional Muay Thai fighter in China, Brazil, Argentina, Thailand, and the U.S. Simon's work has been awarded a National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellowship and a Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Fellowship from the Poetry Foundation. He lives in the U.S. with his wife, Charlotte, and their dog, Momo. Master is his first collection of poems.