Given that there are two kinds of readers in English, those who are passionate fans of the poetry of Linh Dinh and those who have yet to read his writing, All Around What Empties Out is a major event, too long overdue. These are works without waste, with the driest sense of humor and, throughout, an underlying feel for the pain of living that calls to mind Kathy Acker as much as Kafka.
ISBN-10: 978-1930068193
Published January 2003
Available at Amazon.com
–Ron Silliman
From Publishers Weekly
Following up on the short stories of Fake House, Linh Dinh compiles three coveted, lacerating chapbooks in All Around What Empties Out. From the hilarious and horrific rhetorical questions of “Drunkard Boxing” (“My hump for your glasses?”) to the withering stanzas and paragraphs of “A Small Triumph Over Lassitude” (“wildlife frolicking at ground level”) and the definitely half full “A Glass of Water” (“Baby I’m not a dictionary bloated I-Ching”), the cover’s translucent toilet seat is just the beginning.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Dinh was born in Saigon, Vietnam, came to the US in 1975, and is living in Philadelphia. In 2005, he was a David Wong fellow at the University of East Anglia, in Norwich, England. He spent 2002-2003 in Italy as a guest of the International Parliament of Writers and the town of Certaldo. His books include the story collections Fake House (Seven Stories Press, 2000) and Blood and Soap (Seven Stories Press, 2004), and the poetry chapbook Drunkard Boxing (Singing Horse Press, 1998) and the collections American Tatts (Chax, 2005), Borderless Bodies (Factory School, 2006), Jam Alerts (Chax, 2007), and Some Kind of Cheese Orgy (Chax, 2009).
Published by Subpress/A’A Arts/Tinfish.