Of Thee I Sing

In his fifth book of poems, Timothy Liu addresses a tripartite “Thee”: the Divine, the Beloved, and the State. A precarious dance between the spiritual and the material ensues, the lyric poem confronting a consumer culture overrun by rampant lust and greed yet finding itself unable to wholly stand outside of what it critiques. Any consolation found herein is short-lived. Even so, by extending the traditions of lyric poetry forward, these utterances seek to enlarge the conversation between art and life, anticipating whatever commerce the future might yet hold.