Don't Go Back to Sleep [Paperback]

Don’t Go Back To Sleep answers the Sufi call to wake up to this life in the here and now where ecstasy serves its summons, inviting us to break out of the mundane quotidian. Timothy Liu winds the clock back to the Nanking Massacre in 1937, then traces its consequences on his family of origin, his mother’s mental illness, his father’s religious fundamentalism, and Liu’s obsessive search for love. As trauma begets trauma the poems slowly accrete, and Liu takes on a legacy of poetic witness where carnal violence ultimately turns to spiritual joy.What keeps us up at night? Love? Death? God?TIMOTHY LIU is the author of nine books of poems, including Of Thee I Sing (2004 Publishers Weekly Book-of-the-Year), Vox Angelica (1992 Norma Farber First Book Award from the Poetry Society of America) and Polytheogamy, an artistic collaboration. Translated into many languages, his works are archived in the Berg Collection at the New York Public Library. A professor of English at William Paterson University, Liu makes his home in Manhattan with his husband.