Written primarily over the course of four months in the fall of 2018, when Aisha Sasha John spent time in her native Vancouver, TO STAND AT THE PRECIPICE ALONE AND REPEAT WHAT IS WHISPERED sees the poet reckoning with narrative in the wake of returning to a place at once familiar and strange: “The other name for this work is DAUGHTERHOOD. What if instead of shaming your parents about their need to grow up, you went on ahead and did it yourself? I used the money I got from being shortlisted for this big poetry prize to spend what would become four months in Vancouver. I went to impose my will on the earth: to be secretary to my mom on a personal business matter. It was entirely my idea. I lived in three different sublets, was so confused, wished for something to fix me. I thought ok I’ll write a novel—or, like, the story of the day—so as to feel organized by occurrences. I did an Event at every university in the area. Centrally I was confronted with growth as a function of daughterhood. My parents lived separately in the suburban townhouse where I spent my adolescence and from which I was banned. Also they lived in a castle of my delusion as perpetual caterpillars—on the verge of transfiguring into the butterfly of new people, a change to be initiated by my careful and robust articulation of their flaws. My lucidity would save them and me; my intelligence would redeem us. I went to Vancouver I guess to more closely consider my exile. It was terrible: a beautiful time.”

This second edition includes a new letterpress cover as well as a poem written by the author over 5 months in 2021.