Emily Luan

Oct 18, 2023 | poets.org | Emily Luan |Claire Wahmanholm |Arthur Sze

OOnce there was an opening, an operation: out of which oared the ocean, then oyster and oystercatcher, opal and opal-crowned tanager. From ornateness came the ornate flycatcher and ornate fruit dove. From oil, the oilbird. O is for opus, the Orphean warbler’s octaves, the oratorio of orioles. O for the osprey’s ostentation, the owl and its collection of ossicles. In October’s ochre, the orchard is overgrown with orange and olive, oleander and oxlip. Ovals of dew on the oatgrass.

May 3, 2023 | brooklynrail.org | Emily Luan

Contributor Emily Lee Luan Emily Lee Luan is the author of 回 / Return (April 2023), a winner of the Nightboat Poetry Prize, and I Watch the Boughs, selected for a Poetry Society of America Chapbook Fellowship.

Apr 19, 2023 | yalereview.org | Emily Luan

Emily Lee Luan She’s the only one who hears me sing. The only one who hears me singing, she. Only one, who hears my song? One hears me sing—no, she’s the only. Who, me? I’m my only. Hear me sing her only song. I sing, and there’s my only, hearing. Sing her to only. Sing me into hearingI who is my only. Hearing why my onlys, she sings. Whose hearing ones to singing? One, the only one,Only my only sing me. The she who sings, hearing all the way to one. She’s singing, in it I hear my onely.

Mar 14, 2023 | poetryfoundation.org | Emily Luan |Cindy Juyoung Ok

By Emily Lee Luan Emily Lee Luan’s distinctive debut does, again and again, what the title both describes and commands: Return. It returns to places, arranging words like blueprints so that the lines “A child // in yellow / in the courtyard” are positioned on the edge of a courtyard, with words serving as walls.