[04/21/26] Chen, Yongyu: Perennial Counterpart

Nightboat Books, paperback

Publication Date: April 21, 2026

Publisher Marketing: A poetic study in magical modes of connection over distance--how both friendship and reading are similar ways of being together while being alone.

Written over several years of solitude, study, and transformation, the poems in Perennial Counterpart trace an evolving, self-questioning practice of thinking-in-poetry where long, reflective lines--evoking both prose and photography--brush against elliptical, fractured modes of film and literary criticism. Anchored by the author's obsessive reading life, this is a book where lyric inquiry becomes its own form of company. Here, the poem is written to remake its writer through glittering connections to a personal lineage of thought.