{"product_id":"9781935717263","title":"First Contact","description":"\u003cp\u003eA formally experimental and absurdist mock-epic poem that melds speculative fiction and travel writingSomething on the horizon inches toward the drunken villagers of Zonal Beach, but what-or who-could it be? In First Contact, Warren Liu presents a hilarious, polyphonic poem that narrates the agonizingly slow-motion progress of a first contact encounter between coastal natives and shipwrecked would-be colonizers. Liu's wry, humorous poetry uses three distinct voices to highlight the inherent farce of coming up against a world entirely different from one's own. Slipping between tropes of colonial myth-making and alien encounters, Liu animates the strange, slanted rhymes of history with a voracious wit and deft ear. Whether narrating the choral chatter of the bewildered villagers or a mystic's pop-culture-informed oracular visions or the epistolary reminiscences of a lost exile, Liu demonstrates again and again how colliding with a new culture always happens first as farce, then as farce once more.   Warren Liu is a professor of English at Scripps College in Claremont, California.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"The Bookmonger","offers":[{"title":"Paperback","offer_id":60011645796686,"sku":"9781935717263","price":15.5,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0874\/5795\/6174\/files\/9781935717263.jpg?v=1782936572","url":"https:\/\/thebookmongerbearsden.co.uk\/products\/9781935717263","provider":"The Bookmonger","version":"1.0","type":"link"}