Unspooling from a mysterious and deeply discomforting encounter between the speaker and “K,” The only name we can call it now is not its only name slowly morphs into a long and impossibly personal examination of willfulness and ownership, mother tongue and mother earth, chronic illness (of body and soil), homelessness and exile, violence and place, severance and longing, private parts and public spaces, intimacy and institution, affliction and ardor, performativity, faciality, vernaculars, voice, filth, instinct, and clowning. Written in a suspended moment when Hsiung experienced a profound crisis of silence in her life, what begins as a truly hybrid interrogation of an interrogation between student and teacher contorts into an entangled and incantatory excavation of the origins of a poet’s psyche and relationship with the world itself. A work that was not composed but decomposed by way of worms and flies and a hazardous exposure to the elements of mythology, ecology, and epistemology, The only name we can call it now is not its only name is both a perennial coalescing convalescence between individual and societal specters and the tectonic documentation of a repeated attempt to endure.

THE THICH NHAT HANH POETRY COLLECTION: Over 50 inspiring poems from the world-renowned Zen monk, peace activist, and author of The Miracle of Mindfulness. “ . . . the antidote to our modern pain and sorrows. His books help me be more human, more me than I was before.” —Ocean Vuong, author of On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous Though he is best known for his groundbreaking and accessible works on applying mindfulness to everyday life, Thich Nhat Hanh is also a distinguished poet and Nobel Peace Prize nominee. This stunning poetry collection explores these lesser-known facets of Nhat Hanh’s life, revealing not only his path to becoming a Zen meditation teacher but his skill as a poet, his achievements as a peace activist, and his experiences as a young refugee. Through more than 50 poems spanning several decades, Nhat Hanh reveals the stories of his past—from his childhood in war-torn Vietnam to the beginnings of his own spiritual journey—and shares his ideas on how we can come together to create a more peaceful, compassionate world. Uplifting, insightful, and profound, Call Me By My True Names is at once an exquisite work of poetry and a portrait of one of the world’s greatest Zen masters and peacemakers.