[OUT OF PRINT]

“In her first full-length collection, Stacey Tran's poems navigate the complicated nature of memory in the present tense, gracefully exploring an immigrant history through the paradox of language and time. Never nostalgic yet always charged, Tran interchanges an ode that looks back, forward, up, and down all at once.”
—Gramma Press

"Bilingually laced and sensually pulled from the taut form of her enigmatic being, Stacey Tran’s Soap for the Dogs is a refreshing gastronomic architecture made of razor-sharp, ancestral ingredients, chic aphoristic haikus, and narratively charged self-contained imperial, experimental lines of terse, stark prose. It’s minimal without sacrificing depth and verve. It’s energetic and lush without resorting to prolixity. It has the ability to expand, surprise, and transform itself after your eyes and hearts leave the page."
—Vi Khi Nao, author of Fish in Exile and The Old Philosopher

"Sensual and precise, these poems reflect a keen and vivid perception at work, sampling sense impressions and imagery that is minimal and rich, restrained yet immersed, finding the personally monumental lodged imperceptibly inside the incidental—motel soaps, herbs without names, a head of lettuce balanced on the knees, the spine of a book in her mother’s closet. These are poems full of exquisitely rendered sounds, tastes, colors, and textures, that leave space on the page for the reader to fine-tune their senses."
—Dao Strom, author of The Gentle Order of Boys and Girls and We Were Meant To Be A Gentle People

“Soap for the Dogs feels like a collection of miniature fairy tales full of bewitching vegetables, silent contracts, and unlikely transformations. You’re seduced by the silliness of odd images, but the tenderness that peeks out at you between the lines is what keeps you reading.”
—Soleil Ho, author of Hungry Ghosts

Reviews & Features
Publishers Weekly
diaCRITICS
The Seattle Review of Books