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ABOUT THE BOOK
Michelle Phương Hồ’s Bone Symphony mines the wreckage of colonialism and imperialist warfare in Vietnam and attempts to reassemble the bones.
Told in three movements spanning lyric, documentary, and hybrid forms, Bone Symphony uncovers a world turned upside-down by war: evil is good, saviors are toddlers, children die before their mothers, and civil servants—like the poet’s grandfather—become enemies of the state. The detritus of a shattered nation, family, and psyche serve as building blocks Hồ rearranges with playful irreverence, giving rise to healing poetic turns. One can surrender not just to military powers, but to love. The prison cell where a dissident is held transforms into the womb of God. In a world where no symbol is stable, Bone Symphony reorients us toward curiosity, kinship, and the kind of mercy that sets free those held captive within our imaginations: “Every face / I’ve ever held / hostage,” the poet beholds, “is beginning to bleed.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Michelle Phương Hồ is the author of Bone Symphony (Boa Editions, 2026), chosen by Aracelis Girmay as a Blessing the Boats Selection. Her work appears in Nat Brut, The Offing, POETRY, Poetry Northwest, and elsewhere. Her honors include a Friends of Literature Award from POETRY, a Connecticut Artistic Excellence Award, a BRINK Literary Journal Award for Hybrid Writing, and fellowships from the Asian Cultural Council, the I-Park Foundation, and Vermont Studio Center. She received her MFA in poetry from NYU. Born to Vietnamese refugees in San Jose, CA, she lives in New Haven, CT, where she teaches poetry in university classrooms, community book spaces, and living rooms.
IN CONVERSATION WITH
Monica Sok is the author of A Nail the Evening Hangs On (Copper Canyon Press, 2020) and Year Zero, winner of a 2015 Poetry Society of America Chapbook Fellowship. She has received support from the Anderson Center, Art Omi, Hedgebrook, Kundiman, MacDowell, National Endowment for the Arts, Storyknife, and the Wallace Stegner Fellowship at Stanford University. She earned her MFA in Creative Writing at NYU and recently graduated from an acting program at the William Esper Studio. Her latest poems have appeared in The Believer Magazine, Best American Poetry, Michigan Quarterly Review, New England Review, POETRY, The Paris Review, and others. She has taught poetry at Barnard College, Stanford University, and the Center for Empowering Refugees and Immigrants. She is based in New York City.
