Dream Elevator by Marisa Lin
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Employing visions, hauntings, and a dynamism of forms, DREAM ELEVATOR is an exploration of girlhood, displacement, and movement. The collection traces the trajectory of a daughter and mother from Quanzhou, China to the snowy plains of Rochester, Minnesota. Along the way, these poems traverse dreams and ancestors, silence and rupture, to examine the question: What happens when inheritance is not enough for survival?
Cover art by Salome Grasland
In this stunning debut chapbook, Marisa Lin delivers a vision that transcends distance and memory to examine race, gender, daughterhood, and the body politic. Drawing from diasporic themes, Dream Elevator expertly braids surrealist elements as it moves through streams, juxtapositions, linguistic and nonlinguistic devices, “orphaned memories, loose curses, [and] wandering phantoms” to render images that are unflinching, dissonant and spellbinding. These poems are a testament to Lin’s remarkable control of language, and how so much is “changed in small spaces.”
- Aileen Cassinetto, Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellow
Marisa Lin’s DREAM ELEVATOR takes you on a journey. What a pleasure to see a poet play and dance with language, image, and form, to feel the inner music of a young woman exploring herself, her family, and her culture, and to hear the longing, beauty, and wisdom of her words. Her lines are resonant notes that echo in my soul long after the poem is gone. “How even in grief,” Lin writes, “they hear music.” Reading this collection feels like flying into a surreal, lovely dream. Dear reader, open these pages and find “that the ascent will set you free.”
- Ishle Yi Park, Author of Angel & Hannah
Marisa Lin is a brave and beautiful writer. Lin writes with confidence, wit, and knowing. Her poetry sings—within these lines are stories and dreams, and the fragility and strength of memory. And like I do with poetry I love, I’ll be reading her words again and again.
- Stephanie Han, Author of Swimming in Hong Kong
- Aileen Cassinetto, Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellow
Marisa Lin’s DREAM ELEVATOR takes you on a journey. What a pleasure to see a poet play and dance with language, image, and form, to feel the inner music of a young woman exploring herself, her family, and her culture, and to hear the longing, beauty, and wisdom of her words. Her lines are resonant notes that echo in my soul long after the poem is gone. “How even in grief,” Lin writes, “they hear music.” Reading this collection feels like flying into a surreal, lovely dream. Dear reader, open these pages and find “that the ascent will set you free.”
- Ishle Yi Park, Author of Angel & Hannah
Marisa Lin is a brave and beautiful writer. Lin writes with confidence, wit, and knowing. Her poetry sings—within these lines are stories and dreams, and the fragility and strength of memory. And like I do with poetry I love, I’ll be reading her words again and again.
- Stephanie Han, Author of Swimming in Hong Kong
Reviews
- Review in Independent Book Review
- Review in The Racket
- Playlist at Largehearted Boy
- Review in Heavy Feather Review
- Review in The Racket
- Playlist at Largehearted Boy
- Review in Heavy Feather Review
Marisa Lin was born in Quanzhou, China and grew up in Rochester, Minnesota. She is a 2023 Poetry & the Senses Fellow at UC Berkeley's Arts Research Center and her work has appeared or is forthcoming in the Cimarron Review, Porter House Review, The Racket, Poetry South, and elsewhere. She graduates with a Master’s Degree in Public Policy from UC Berkeley in 2024.