Habitual Prayer

The dreamlike poems of "Habitual Prayer" seek the strange beauty of unreliable memory. Stars, gardens, gods-this chapbook explores settings worn by the mind so much they become imagination, when even prayer becomes habitual. From the mundane, the surreal and mythological burst forth.

"In Ava Chen's Habitual Prayer, the "I" speaks but is not the subject. Its voices sound like people who've made listening an art. Each appeal is both intelligent and heart-forward, generously including an entire world in a single poem, sometimes a line. I'm inspired by the gentleness of these voices, how they highlight a thought or image and let it go without resistance, allowing the next moment to happen, and how tenderly they address the you in each poem. Habitual Prayer writes toward a love so steady I'm left with new possibilities of what poetry can provide: "a soft universe of our own.""

-K. Iver, author of Short Film Starring My Beloved's Red Bronco

"Chen's writing feels like the best kind of dream-vivid and surreal all at once, full of lines that transcends all bounds of the page. Habitual Prayer paints life as a constellation of wings and lightning, of "glass lungs" and "fishnet throat" slipping and surviving. "In these spaces between/going & leaving, briefly/I am unable to die," Chen writes, constantly drawing out the small, impossible truths of what is holy in our world. Reverent and intensely reactive, Habitual Prayer crystallizes expansive form, exquisite emotion, and Chen's distinctive voice into declaration and song."

-Ivi Hua, author of Body, Dissected (kith books, 2024)

"Ava Chen's Habitual Prayer is at once kaleidoscopic and keenly focused. Each poem is dioramic, a reenactment of scenes domestic and private, a museum of small griefs and loves. Reading this book, I felt that "briefly/I [was] unable to die.""

-Jenna Nesky

Ava Chen is a writer and editor from Massachusetts. Her work appears in The Rumpus, Diode Poetry Journal, Gigantic Sequins, The Penn Review, Sine Theta Magazine, and more.

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