Books by Tung-Hui Hu
The Book of Motion: Poems (The Contemporary Poetry Ser.)
by Tung-Hui Hu
This debut collection explores memory, cities, motion. Tung-Hui Hu's tone has some of the swampy wit that recalls Calvino or Michaux: A man swaps bodies with his lover; a mapmaker holds captive a city, which needs his crystal telescope to navigate through streets "unreadable as palm lines"; a car pushed off a cliff in a fit of anger becomes home for a school of fish. Anchored by the sequence "Elegies for self," Hu's poetry brings a quiet sophistication to syntax, diction, and form.
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Greenhouses, Lighthouses (Lannan Literary Selections)
by Tung-Hui Hu
"Perplexity and wonder are integral parts of Tung-Hui Hu's poetry, which is as elegant as it is surprising."Rain Taxi
"This fresh and unexpected poet extends the lyric into the social space without losing any of song's intensity or mystery."Mark Doty
"Tung-Hui Hu works magic on the page."Linda Gregerson
Weaving between the personal and cosmic I, Tung-Hui Hu's lyrics seek the "greenhouse"a place of saturation, growthas a poetic space to cultivate new modes through which our common language can once again illuminate and guide"lighthouse." With minimalism and control, Greenhouses, Lighthouses draws subtly from photography, cinematography, and history to create haunting and memorable connections.
from "Cosmos Revealed behind a Dense Curtain of Poppies":
Greenhouses, Lighthouses. The first
astronomers tended on hands and knees
the soil of the universe, smoothing
away moss, seeding by night.
Now our galaxy has the sixfold
symmetry of ornament on the tower of Alhambra,
shoots curled from stem looping
heaven and earth together. Trace
curlicues and rosettes with your finger.
The chamber sealed off to mortals but
open above, like a poppy.
Tung-Hui Hu, author of three books of poetry, earned his MFA in creative writing from the University of Michigan and a PhD in film from University of California Berkeley. He teaches at the University of Michigan and lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
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Mine
by Delilah S. Dawson, Tung-Hui Hu
A twisty, terrifying supernatural mystery about twelve-year-old, her creepy new home in Florida, and the territorial ghost of the young girl who lived there before her.
"A fiendishly creepy ghost story."--Chuck Wendig, New York Times bestselling author of Dust & Grim
"Hide-under-the-covers terrifying, I loved it.”--Katherine Arden, bestselling author of Small Spaces
Lily Horne is a drama queen. It's helped her rise to stardom in the school play, but it's also landed her in trouble. Her parents warn her that Florida has to be different. It's a fresh start. No theatrics. But this time, the drama is coming for her.
Her new house is a real nightmare. . .
The pool is full of slime, the dock is rotten, and the swamp creeps closer every day. But worst of all, the house isn't empty . . . it's packed full of trash, memories, and, Lily begins to fear, the ghost of the girl who lived there before her.
And whatever is waiting in the shadows wants to come out to play.
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Mine
by Delilah S. Dawson, Tung-Hui Hu
Something has happened here: An empire has gone to seed, an entire country goes on strike, people begin eating dirt and flowers, and a couple lives on a riverboat to avoid the ground. In Mine, Tung-Hui Hu makes myths out of the personal. He speaks of desire and awkwardness and the earth that contains both. Resonant, blunt, and sharply intelligent, this is writing that excavates.
As history unfolds over and over the same geography, these poems become, as Hu has written, “practice for the living.” The book grows out of the poet’s interest in how the histories we extract from the land become interlaced with our identity. The book asks, Where do we come from? But also, How do we make amends?
Tung-Hui Hu lives in San Francisco, where he writes on film and new media. Previously, as a computer scientist, he worked on Internet architecture. His first collection, The Book of Motion, won the Eisner Prize and was published by The University of Georgia Press.
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A Prehistory of the Cloud (The MIT Press)
by Tung-Hui Hu
The militarized legacy of the digital cloud: how the cloud grew out of older network technologies and politics.
We may imagine the digital cloud as placeless, mute, ethereal, and unmediated. Yet the reality of the cloud is embodied in thousands of massive data centers, any one of which can use as much electricity as a midsized town. Even all these data centers are only one small part of the cloud. Behind that cloud-shaped icon on our screens is a whole universe of technologies and cultural norms, all working to keep us from noticing their existence. In this book, Tung-Hui Hu examines the gap between the real and the virtual in our understanding of the cloud.
Hu shows that the cloud grew out of such older networks as railroad tracks, sewer lines, and television circuits. He describes key moments in the prehistory of the cloud, from the game Spacewar as exemplar of time-sharing computers to Cold War bunkers that were later reused as data centers. Countering the popular perception of a new cloudlike political power that is dispersed and immaterial, Hu argues that the cloud grafts digital technologies onto older ways of exerting power over a population. But because we invest the cloud with cultural fantasies about security and participation, we fail to recognize its militarized origins and ideology. Moving between the materiality of the technology itself and its cultural rhetoric, Hu's account offers a set of new tools for rethinking the contemporary digital environment.
Copies
No copies available.
A Prehistory of the Cloud (The MIT Press)
by Tung-Hui Hu
The militarized legacy of the digital cloud: how the cloud grew out of older network technologies and politics.
We may imagine the digital cloud as placeless, mute, ethereal, and unmediated. Yet the reality of the cloud is embodied in thousands of massive data centers, any one of which can use as much electricity as a midsized town. Even all these data centers are only one small part of the cloud. Behind that cloud-shaped icon on our screens is a whole universe of technologies and cultural norms, all working to keep us from noticing their existence. In this book, Tung-Hui Hu examines the gap between the real and the virtual in our understanding of the cloud.
Hu shows that the cloud grew out of such older networks as railroad tracks, sewer lines, and television circuits. He describes key moments in the prehistory of the cloud, from the game “Spacewar” as exemplar of time-sharing computers to Cold War bunkers that were later reused as data centers. Countering the popular perception of a new “cloudlike” political power that is dispersed and immaterial, Hu argues that the cloud grafts digital technologies onto older ways of exerting power over a population. But because we invest the cloud with cultural fantasies about security and participation, we fail to recognize its militarized origins and ideology. Moving between the materiality of the technology itself and its cultural rhetoric, Hu's account offers a set of new tools for rethinking the contemporary digital environment.
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No copies available.