Nomad of Salt and Hard Water: Poems

This second edition of nomad of salt and hard water is evidence of how language that is fixed, as in a traditional publication, or unmoored, as in this new and revised edition, is made up of malleable meaning. Over time our relationship to language changes. While Cynthia Dewi Oka's thematic concerns—displacement and exile, the weight of identity and its inevitable fragmentation, and what she eloquently calls difficult beauty—remain, her language needs have shifted, and the resulting book is both ambitious and seemingly effortless. Because of course poems can adapt.

nomad is Oka's response to the conventions and commodifications of poetry; it is a search for a more resilient text. As she outlines in her introduction, when the original version of nomad sold out, Oka saw it as an opportunity to "honor a longing for refuge with the audacity to set out again in search of its source" by reengaging with the original work. nomad of salt and hard water is an essential new book. It is what happens when a poet listens to her poems.