Barter: Poems

"Barter exchanges history for myth, direct speech for epistles, activity for observation . . . breathtaking." ―Claudia Rankine

Felix the Rat's hind feet
could be Barbie hands―
same pink, same
injection-molded seaming.―from "Electronica"

The poems in Barter, Monica Youn's exciting first collection, negotiate transactions between scarcity and excess, pornography and abstraction, the thing and the thing seen. Rendered with a dazzling array of structures and allusions, these poems describe―and become―a strange gallery of paintings and portraits. She offers a Polaroid left on a windshield, step-by-step instructions for "Drawing for Absolute Beginners," a stereoscope with a box of slides. Both an homage to and a warning against nonexistent things, Barter introduces a vibrant new voice and a new way of seeing.