Thanks for Letting Us Know You Are Alive

Crafted with lines from her late fathers letters, Jennifer Tsengs Thanks for Letting Us Know You Are Alive is a portrait of an immigrant, a rootless person whose unspoken lossthat of his native geography, family, traditions, languageunderlies every word. Though her fathers first language was Mandarin, for more than twenty years he wrote these letters in English,so that she could understand them. Someare riddled with errors, some nearly unintelligible. Lines from his letters appear as titles and are scattered throughout the poems, blending voices of father and daughter. This collection enacts what it means to lose someone and commune with them simultaneouslythe paradox of grief and all it gives us.