From the publisher:
In Mythical Man, David Ly builds, and then tears down, an army of men in a quest to explore personhood in the 21st century. Tenderness, toxic masculinity, nuances of queer love, and questions of race and identity mix in Ly’s poetry, casting a spell that enters like “a warm tongue on a first date.” Mythical Man is an authentic and accomplished debut.

FINALIST 2021 ReLit Award

NOW AVAILABLE:

selected press

• The Ottawa International Writers Festival Podcast Interview
• Quill & Quire: Five Debut Authors Share the Stories Behind Their Work
• It Gets Better Canada: Dissecting Moments through Poetry
• Can’t Lit Podcast Interview
• The CBC Books Writers to Watch List: 24 Canadian Writers on The Rise in 2020
• CBC Books: 17 Books to Celebrate Asian Heritage Month in Canada

Praise for Mythical Man

Mythical Man walks out of the dreamscape and plunges straight into your heart. David Ly’s debut collection is a shimmering mirage, a shapeshifting vision that bares both its fangs and its throat to deliver the sexiest, most exciting gay poetry you’ve read in years. Fairytale themes, contemporary gay culture, and the emotional geography of diaspora come together to form a marvellous beast that challenges mainstream notions of male beauty, gay sex, and Asian identity. Ly’s voice is as raw as the cry of a wolf, but his use of language is as meticulous as the construction of a honeybee’s hive. These are poems that snarl, whine, gurgle, hiss, and rattle like the wild longing that’s lived in your soul for as long as you can remember. Read them.

—Kai Cheng Thom, author of a place called No Homeland

In his aching debut, David Ly shatters any myth that racism doesn’t continue to pervade queer spaces. Thick with desire, and self-interrogation, these poems reject normative ideas of manhood to create something new.

—Vivek Shraya, author of I’m Afraid of Men

_{In Mythical Man, every word is chosen with immense thought. Words are used with new meanings, and repetition is used with powerful irony. Every page turned from the book, I was amused, charmed and surprised. This debut collection proves that Ly is an unforgettable voice that we need in literature. His writing is raw, eloquent, and authentic.
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PRISM international

_{The poems collected in Mythical Man are filled with compelling, chthonic imagery that can both stir and alarm the reader, calling for a courageous willingness to confront the darkness on the screen, in the world and in our own depths….Highly recommended.
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vancouver sun

_{By digging up and overturning society’s and social media’s myth-making, Ly illuminates just how loaded the very notion of a “mythical man” is, how what has been deemed both ideal and unattainable is also so often a function of society’s systems of oppression. Instead, Ly subverts this kind of myth-making. He pulls his speaker out into the spotlight, and ultimately into themselves, where they sparkle, where they can know love.
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the Ex-puritan