Books
Transverse
Lindsay Choi
Transverse weaves between languages and forms, cultivating the questions and lacunae that emerge in their encounter. In the three parts that make up the book, music, mathematics, philosophical logic, and lyric convention come in and out of relation to press upon questions of form and meaning-making, and attend to the moments when coherence appears to take place or dissolve. Following sonic and visual echos, practices and plays upon citation, Transverse traces and distorts logics of allegory, repetition, and representation, moving towards an inquiry into the nature of our encounter with and recognition of the world.
Praise for Transverse
Language is never static; it flows. And as it flows it effects changes. Meaning undergoes metamorphosis, significance shifts. The message mutates; it decays, is erased, or it escapes. All of this is obviously true of literary translations, but it is true more generally of the language of poetry and therefore of poetry itself. Both desperately philosophical and tenderly present, 최 Lindsay in the writing of their book length Transverse recognizes language as both limit and threshold, impasse and passage. As the poetry unfolds, a reality comes into being. And that reality is, in turn, a realm of existence from which the language of the poetry can speak, however indirectly, to us, the readers of the book. An inevitably indirect, incomplete and yet excessive communication transpires, one that can’t help but reveal an incomplete and yet overflowing existence. One might term it a realm of the ghostly sublime, but it’s a realm of social and physical materiality, too, requiring both linguistic invention and answerability. There are few poets capable of rendering difficult and complex thinking into a work of rigorous and exquisite beauty, but this is exactly what 최 Lindsay has done. Transverse is magnificent.
—Lyn Hejinian
I have been experiencing something new, that I do not remember experiencing before, while reading Transverse, by 최 Lindsay: the experience of reading a book as a process of experiencing the process of a book being written. And I am returned, through the exacting coordinates of this experience, to the sensation—and to the sensitivity—of leaving a space—i.e. an exhibition of unraveled weavings or glass cryptids or morphosyllables corporealized or sonic ghoul representations—a different person than I was when I entered. People, I mean: desynchronized, therefore multiplied, homographic and conversant, and finally accomplice to our selves.
—Brandon Shimoda
Taking after the geometries of Adrian Piper and Madeline Gins, 최 Lindsay's mathematics are not cruel or causal frictions but forms made kinetic, eloquent. Like air flexing in a wrist joint, light glancing off a pupil, 최 posits fractal inflections of hangul, braided disruptions of lyric, as a means towards permeability. No fossil here, instead, transitive speech act. Charting as the dented foundation that belies a changing consciousness; I slide in and out. I touch ghost, an egg, carnage, a flower. Precarious diagonal of arms, holding; like this I can almost hold it all.
— Trisha Low
About the Author
최 Lindsay | Lindsay Choi is a poet and translator working between English, Korean, and Swedish. In addition to Transverse, they are the author of a chapbook, Matrices, (speCt! books, 2017). They are a Kundiman Fellow and a Ph.D. student in English Literature at UC Berkeley. Their work can be found in Omniverse, Amerarcana, Aster(ix) Journal, and elsewhere. They are a founding co-editor, with Noah Ross, of the chapbook press MO(O)ON/IO. Their work has been translated to French, and appears in NIOQUES, 22/23: Nouvelle Poésie Des Étas-Unis (New U.S. Poetry), edited by DoubleChange Collective, and translated by Abigail Lang.
Fall 2021
96 pages, 6 × 8 inches
Paperback Poetry
978-1733038430
$19 U.S.
Buy
Fall 2021
96 pages, 6 × 8 inches
Paperback Poetry
978-1733038430
$19 U.S.
Buy
Transverse weaves between languages and forms, cultivating the questions and lacunae that emerge in their encounter. In the three parts that make up the book, music, mathematics, philosophical logic, and lyric convention come in and out of relation to press upon questions of form and meaning-making, and attend to the moments when coherence appears to take place or dissolve. Following sonic and visual echos, practices and plays upon citation, Transverse traces and distorts logics of allegory, repetition, and representation, moving towards an inquiry into the nature of our encounter with and recognition of the world.
Praise for Transverse
Language is never static; it flows. And as it flows it effects changes. Meaning undergoes metamorphosis, significance shifts. The message mutates; it decays, is erased, or it escapes. All of this is obviously true of literary translations, but it is true more generally of the language of poetry and therefore of poetry itself. Both desperately philosophical and tenderly present, 최 Lindsay in the writing of their book length Transverse recognizes language as both limit and threshold, impasse and passage. As the poetry unfolds, a reality comes into being. And that reality is, in turn, a realm of existence from which the language of the poetry can speak, however indirectly, to us, the readers of the book. An inevitably indirect, incomplete and yet excessive communication transpires, one that can’t help but reveal an incomplete and yet overflowing existence. One might term it a realm of the ghostly sublime, but it’s a realm of social and physical materiality, too, requiring both linguistic invention and answerability. There are few poets capable of rendering difficult and complex thinking into a work of rigorous and exquisite beauty, but this is exactly what 최 Lindsay has done. Transverse is magnificent.
—Lyn Hejinian
I have been experiencing something new, that I do not remember experiencing before, while reading Transverse, by 최 Lindsay: the experience of reading a book as a process of experiencing the process of a book being written. And I am returned, through the exacting coordinates of this experience, to the sensation—and to the sensitivity—of leaving a space—i.e. an exhibition of unraveled weavings or glass cryptids or morphosyllables corporealized or sonic ghoul representations—a different person than I was when I entered. People, I mean: desynchronized, therefore multiplied, homographic and conversant, and finally accomplice to our selves.
—Brandon Shimoda
Taking after the geometries of Adrian Piper and Madeline Gins, 최 Lindsay's mathematics are not cruel or causal frictions but forms made kinetic, eloquent. Like air flexing in a wrist joint, light glancing off a pupil, 최 posits fractal inflections of hangul, braided disruptions of lyric, as a means towards permeability. No fossil here, instead, transitive speech act. Charting as the dented foundation that belies a changing consciousness; I slide in and out. I touch ghost, an egg, carnage, a flower. Precarious diagonal of arms, holding; like this I can almost hold it all.
— Trisha Low
About the Author
최 Lindsay | Lindsay Choi is a poet and translator working between English, Korean, and Swedish. In addition to Transverse, they are the author of a chapbook, Matrices, (speCt! books, 2017). They are a Kundiman Fellow and a Ph.D. student in English Literature at UC Berkeley. Their work can be found in Omniverse, Amerarcana, Aster(ix) Journal, and elsewhere. They are a founding co-editor, with Noah Ross, of the chapbook press MO(O)ON/IO. Their work has been translated to French, and appears in NIOQUES, 22/23: Nouvelle Poésie Des Étas-Unis (New U.S. Poetry), edited by DoubleChange Collective, and translated by Abigail Lang.
