The Disordered
poetry by Anhvu Buchanan

BLURBS
“His ability to give poetic order to the disordered thoughts that swirl inside so many is nothing short of remarkable. Once inside those minds, once inside these poems, there’s no escaping the powerful effect on our psyches. Empathetic, deeply imagined, and very moving, The Disordered is an extraordinary debut collection.”
—Toni Mirosevich, author of The Takeaway Bin

“If John Ashbery and Georg Trakl had a son, his poems would look a lot like these. Of course they are astonishingly inventive, but they are also are smart, funny, searing, shocking, and most importantly, full of love. In The Disordered, Anhvu Buchanan has achieved something I would have thought impossible: he has managed to fuse surrealism with graciousness. This is a fantastic book.”
—Dean Rader, winner of the T. S. Eliot Prize

“To read Anhvu Buchanan’s exceptional first collection of poems, The Disordered, is to relinquish any preconception of what language can or should do. This book astounds in that it locates the reader solidly in worlds within the barely suggested. You will not encounter such concise depth and breadth elsewhere.”
—Katherine Soniat, author of The Swing Girl

“Melancholic, often beautiful and weirdly funny, this book is like Edward Hopper meets Hitchcock, meets David Lynch, but imbued with a very contemporary kind of blasé and media-abetted alienation.”
—Linh Dinh, author of Blood and Soap and Jam Alerts

“Anhvu Buchanan’s The Disordered is a long walk home in a breeze that smells of ocean. It’s everything that makes a heart a heart. Just listen to how these words sing.”
—Gregory Sherl, author of The Oregon Trail is the Oregon Trail

“The worst/best thing about Anhvu’s work is that it’s a catalog of everything you’ve ever felt and never wanted to. The Disordered is a ‘blind date with your red-faced memories. And all you can do is run,’ or turn around and embrace the glittering chaos.”
—Ben Mirov, author of Hider Roser

The Disordered, an impressive first book, awakens the haunted mind. In these hymns, songs, and mirrors, we learn that the ‘I’ is ‘us’ and memory is ‘burnt to the bone.’”
—Craig Santos Perez, author of from unincorporated territory[saina]