Staying Still

“Explores queer desire, refugee inheritance, and generational loneliness in works that range between intimate memory and the forces shaping identity and longing.” —Publishers Weekly, a Top Ten Most Anticipated Poetry Collection for Fall

“Moments of intimacy, love, and beauty that light up the dark . . . Reminds us that amidst all the loss there can be rebuilding.” —Soapberry Review

“This Way to the Sugar, Not Here, Hieu Minh Nguyen is always leading us somewhere. Now, with the transcendent Staying Still, Nguyen is done being on the move and seems instead to be saying, “Come closer.” Though place and travel are still very much part of this master poet’s obsessions, here the soul is the location, and Nguyen, the poet laureate of movements both spiritual and physical, invites us into the depths of his own to show us—via exquisite poems that oscillate with a dancer’s grace between brutally honest confession and deeply witty humor—the depths and heights of loneliness, love, desire, kinship, and all the things that for this writer make up the living of life. With the sharp attention of a poet and the charisma of a drag queen, Nguyen returns with his best collection yet. Get in. Have a seat in the back. I am in the passenger seat heading wherever this poet wants to take me.” —Danez Smith

“Disarmingly plainspoken, haunted, and lyrical, these poems make a clear and devastating cartography of distance, of longing, of love. I love this book, these poems. I would follow them anywhere.” —Safia Elhillo

“Every time I read a poem by Hieu Minh Nguyen, I am left breathless and baffled by his sheer talent and capacity for storytelling. The poems in this collection are extraordinary—precise, curious, gutting, subtle, and witty. It is nothing short of a gift to be ruined again and again by the work of a once-in-a-lifetime writer.” —Olivia Gatwood