West

In 2018, Utah Poet Laureate Paisley Rekdal was asked to write a poem marking the 150th anniversary of the transcontinental railroad. The commission grew into a hybrid collection of poems and essays that links the railroad's completion to the Chinese Exclusion Act, in effect from 1882 to 1943. The book was also named to the longlist for the 2023 National Book Award. At the Angel Island Immigration Station, where Chinese migrants to the United States were held during the Exclusion era, a poem was carved into the walls. It mourns a detainee who died by suicide. Rekdal works through this anonymous Chinese elegy one character at a time, and her translation becomes a haunting narrative shaped by the history of railroad workers. The book also offers a wide-ranging look at the railroad's influence on American culture. Historical images appear throughout, and the text speaks through many voices, several languages, and a range of literary forms and documents. Its central questions concern what unites and divides America, and how ideas about the nation's past carry forward even as the country seems at risk of sliding backward. Rekdal also examines the ways histories are composed and passed along. The book can be paired with a companion website that features video poems and invites readers to explore the railroad's history through an interactive, nonlinear structure.