Wu Wei Eats an Egg: Poems by Lucas Hirsch

Wu Wei Eats an Egg introduces fascinating Dutch poet Lucas Hirsch. Alternatingly enraged at and bemused by the 21st century, with its traps of bourgeois excess, addiction, and ＂hollow language,＂ Hirsch regularly explores the interior self, familial history, and the physical world (in which a tree ＂writ[es] a poem＂ each day in front of the speaker’s window). Both personally expressionistic and socially engaged, Hirsch’s poems feel like some combination of Allen Ginsberg, Adrienne Rich, and later Franz Wright. There’s also an exhilarating mix of reverence and irreverence, popular culture and ＂high literature＂-something translator Donna Spruijt-Metz captures brilliantly in her English versions of Hirsch’s poems. This book offers a unique and exciting enlargement of our understanding of 21st century poetry.

-Wayne Miller, author of The End of Childhood

What to admire most in Lucas Hirsch’s Wu Wei Eats an Egg? It’s hard to say since I admire so much. Certainly I was caught first by Hirsch’s cool read of contemporary culture: its automation and stresses, the poet’s ambivalent investment. Then I thought about emotion, the keen raw precision of the book’s evocation of grief-and also, alongside grief, love, joy and wonder, hope, even indifference. I’m struck by the structure of both of the book and its poems and by the poet’s controlled restlessness through various forms, so many crucial ideas. But evidently what I like best about this book is that I know I’ll come back to it again and again. Wu Wei Eats an Egg is profound, provocative and beautifully done.

-Dave King, author of The Ha-Ha