The Sunflower Cast a Spell to Save Us from the Void

"As the title suggests, this poetry collection – a finalist for the 2021 National Book Award – is full of surreal, whimsical images. They come from the mind of author Jackie Wang, who takes on the grand task of documenting her dreams through poetry. When I spoke to her earlier this year, she mentioned reading about people’s pandemic dreams working as a sort of “collective” expression of restlessness during lockdown; many were dreaming about “bugs,” “disease spreading” or “invisible senses of evil.” Using the motif of the sunflower as a guide to her subconscious, Wang shows us how social processes and traumas show up in our dreams and how we can better understand ourselves by tuning in to them."