{"schema_version":"bf_book_companion_v1","release_id":"20261010T034321Z-reviewed-full-unique-works","book":{"amazon_purchase_url":"https://www.amazon.com/dp/1555978029?tag=bookfrontie00-20","asin":"1555978029","authors":["Jenny Xie"],"book_id":"9781555978020","canonical_url":"https://bookfrontier.com/books/eye-level-9781555978020","cover_image_url":"https://img.bookfrontier.com/9781555978020.jpg?v=610f76ca631ccf85","description":"FINALIST FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FOR POETRY Winner of the Walt Whitman Award of the Academy of American Poets, selected by Juan Felipe Herrera For years now, I’ve been using the wrong palette. Each year with its itchy blue, as the bruise of solitude reaches its expiration date. Planes and buses, guesthouse to guesthouse. I’ve gotten to where I am by dint of my poor eyesight, my overreactive motion sickness. 9 p.m., Hanoi’s Old Quarter: duck porridge and plum wine. Voices outside the door come to a soft boil. —from “Phnom Penh Diptych: Dry Season” Jenny Xie’s award-winning debut, Eye Level , takes us far and near, to Phnom Penh, Corfu, Hanoi, New York, and elsewhere, as we travel closer and closer to the acutely felt solitude that centers this searching, moving collection. Animated by a restless inner questioning, these poems meditate on the forces that moor the self and set it in motion, from immigration to travel to estranging losses and departures. The sensual worlds here—colors, smells, tastes, and changing landscapes—bring to life questions about the self as seer and the self as seen. As Xie writes, “Me? I’m just here in my traveler’s clothes, trying on each passing town for size.” Her taut, elusive poems exult in a life simultaneously crowded and quiet, caught in between things and places, and never quite entirely at home. Xie is a poet of extraordinary perception—both to the tangible world and to “all that is untouchable as far as the eye can reach.”","forthcoming":false,"isbn13":"9781555978020","publication_date":"20180403","publisher":"Graywolf","slug":"eye-level","subtitle":"Poems","title":"Eye Level"},"discovery":{"categories":{"all":[{"bisac_code":"POE005060","confidence_band":"medium","label":"Asian American Poetry","score":0.8098,"source":"bisac_hint_model"},{"bisac_code":"POE023050","confidence_band":"medium","label":"Family Poems","score":0.785,"source":"bisac_hint_model"},{"bisac_code":"POE023040","confidence_band":"medium","label":"Place Poetry","score":0.7775,"source":"bisac_hint_model"}],"hint":[{"bisac_code":"POE005060","confidence_band":"medium","label":"Asian American Poetry","score":0.8098,"source":"bisac_hint_model"},{"bisac_code":"POE023050","confidence_band":"medium","label":"Family Poems","score":0.785,"source":"bisac_hint_model"},{"bisac_code":"POE023040","confidence_band":"medium","label":"Place Poetry","score":0.7775,"source":"bisac_hint_model"}],"publisher":[{"bisac_code":"POE005010","confidence_band":"high","label":"American Poetry","score":1,"source":"onix_publisher_code"},{"bisac_code":"POE005060","confidence_band":"high","label":"Asian American Poetry","score":1,"source":"onix_publisher_code"}]},"genres":[{"label":"Asian American Poetry","score":0.8098,"slug":"asian-american-poetry"},{"label":"Family Poems","score":0.785,"slug":"family-poems"},{"label":"Place Poetry","score":0.7775,"slug":"place-poetry"}],"reader_fit":["Readers drawn to searching poems about travel, solitude, and inner questioning.","Good for readers interested in poems that explore perception through sensory landscapes."],"related_lists":[],"series":null,"similar_books":[{"authors":["Jenny Xie"],"book_id":"9781644452011","cover_image_url":"https://img.bookfrontier.com/9781644452011.jpg?v=cafd29ccdb14140e","score":0.7455,"title":"The Rupture Tense","url":"https://bookfrontier.com/books/9781644452011"},{"authors":["Joanna Ho"],"book_id":"9780062915627","cover_image_url":"https://img.bookfrontier.com/9780062915627.jpg?v=369bc0d66dcc8b1f","score":0.6935,"title":"Eyes That Kiss in the Corners","url":"https://bookfrontier.com/books/9780062915627"},{"authors":["Jeffrey Yang"],"book_id":"9781644450864","cover_image_url":"https://img.bookfrontier.com/9781644450864.jpg?v=8568a6535fbb4a38","score":0.682,"title":"Line and Light","url":"https://bookfrontier.com/books/9781644450864"},{"authors":["Li Qingzhao"],"book_id":"9780374612757","cover_image_url":"https://img.bookfrontier.com/9780374612757.jpg?v=0ea493f322f1b52f","score":0.68,"title":"The Magpie at Night","url":"https://bookfrontier.com/books/9780374612757"},{"authors":["Monica Youn"],"book_id":"9781644452219","cover_image_url":"https://img.bookfrontier.com/9781644452219.jpg?v=dea62e3a16827b30","score":0.677,"title":"From From","url":"https://bookfrontier.com/books/9781644452219"},{"authors":["Jenny Zhang"],"book_id":"9781947793811","cover_image_url":"https://img.bookfrontier.com/9781947793811.jpg?v=b4d681d8c88087fc","score":0.6737,"title":"My Baby First Birthday","url":"https://bookfrontier.com/books/9781947793811"},{"authors":["Oliver De La Paz"],"book_id":"9781324095170","cover_image_url":"https://img.bookfrontier.com/9781324095170.jpg?v=49a2750d8244d2e9","score":0.6715,"title":"The Diaspora Sonnets","url":"https://bookfrontier.com/books/9781324095170"},{"authors":["Joanna Ho","Liz Kleinrock"],"book_id":"9780063057777","cover_image_url":"https://img.bookfrontier.com/9780063057777.jpg?v=9ba01e2b4f4fa27a","score":0.6659,"title":"Eyes That Weave the World's Wonders","url":"https://bookfrontier.com/books/9780063057777"}],"topics":[],"what_you_get":["Themes: Solitude, Travel and displacement, Self-perception.","Pacing: reflective, voice-and-character forward.","Reading lane: Asian American Poetry and Family Poems."]},"llm_signals":{"confidence":0.92,"pacing":"reflective","reader_fit":["Readers drawn to searching poems about travel, solitude, and inner questioning.","Readers interested in poems that explore perception through sensory landscapes."],"themes":["Solitude","Travel and displacement","Self-perception"],"tropes":[]},"source_presence":{"amazon":true,"book_detail":true,"goodreads":true,"llm_signals":true,"similarity_seed":true},"stats":{"amazon_ratings_count":88,"goodreads_ratings_count":1577,"goodreads_reviews_count":247,"quality_score":0.9354}}