Last Edited [Insert Time Here]

Poetry. Ya Wen Ho's poetry sits on the (pointed, unsturdy) edge of the spoken and the digitized word. In LAST EDITED [INSERT TIME HERE], she presents performance texts based on google searches, drawing out accidents that occur when words crack and blend together. In his work on Shakespeare, Garrett Stewart termed this process "lexical bucklings and permutations." Hence, for Ho, "18 is XVII- / '(aye)_-da'translated into English means 'to take a / sound / beating_two eggs and a wife together," or "anger / 'issues'_rhymes with 'tissues,' which can either refer to / a class of soft, absorbent, disposable papers or / an ensemble_of jazz musicians played at his mother's / funeral_home directors earn on average...." This short book is a romp through contemporary life, mining the spot where virtual and actual cannot be wrenched apart, except between the syllables of quickly streaming words.

"Ya-Wen Ho's LAST EDITED [INSERT TIME HERE] sits in a complex place, and how fortunate for us that this poet negotiates these intricacies with smooth turns between playful, intelligent, and funny. Ya-Wen Ho's poetry stream of conscious word play rushes us through everything from pop culture to population control in China to PhDs driving taxis asking us to try and not 'detonate the sleeping dog' and have a fabulous time while (not) doing it."—Lyz Soto, author of EULOGIES, Co-Executive Director of Youth Speaks Hawai‘i, and Co-Founder of Pacific Tongues