West: A Translation

"Paisley Rekdal has always been a breathtakingly ambitious poet, and this is her most ambitious book so far – a work of seamlessly blended poetry and history. In lyric poems in many forms and spoken through many voices, as well as in corresponding essays, Rekdal traces and grieves the sorrowful politics that link the building of the transcontinental railroad and the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 (“Congress had to pass an act/ to make the building stop”). She excavates an American shame that has yet to be reckoned with, though this extraordinary book, which finds a fresh purpose for poetry as a reliquary of evidence, perhaps makes a start."