How to Survive a Hotel Fire

Poetry. Asian American Studies. "A princess starts a hotel fire. How to survive? Become a poet. Become Angela Veronica Wong. 'How we remember is formed like glass,' she writes. How we remember—survive and remember. 'I placed a book upside down on your piano,' the poet writes. It is this book, formed like music. Read it."—Honor Moore

"Asphyxiation, falling plants, and abandoned buildings—this is just the beginning of Angela Veronica Wong's debut collection which is both an exploration and a meditation of intimacy and its fracturing. Playing children 'scream like death,' there are 'black cliffs' and traces of mascara on pillowcases the day after. These poems embrace mythologies and enact fairy tales as a stand-in for disappointment and rejections. As the collection moves through scenes of domesticity and urban life, there's a subtle shifting away (but never a complete departure) from youthful naivete into a quiet violence and desperation of one who knows too much. HOW TO SURVIVE A HOTEL FIRE is our tender riot and slow sad swan song, as we lie awake watching an empty street fill with sleet."—Steven Karl

"I love the way each section in Angela Veronica Wong's HOW TO SURVIVE A HOTEL FIRE shifts from form to form. There's a protean urgency in the way her work flickers on the page and morphs from section to section. What this collection offers isn't so much the answer to its title, but a type of slow burning inferno. One that reminds us our lives are interminably, inescapably, beautifully burning down."—Ben Mirov