A Personal Purpose

Why am I blogging about Asian-American poetry? I've touched upon it before, but I'd like to elaborate, since I may not have clearly articulated the relation of the blog to my own personal life. Basically, the reason is that I literally have no one else to share this interest of mine. No one in my family is really into poetry. Some of my friends are into poetry but not Asian-American poetry. A couple of my friends are into Asian-American poetry, but they've been busy and that's not what we usually talk about anyway. Actually, my whole journey into and through Asian-American poetry has largely been a lonely odysessy. You know, everyone at the cocktail party just loves to praise and slam Amy Tan, Maxine Hong Kingston, et al., but the guy who prefers Asian-American poetry to fiction just stands in the corner and talks to himself. So I could just whine about it. Or I could whine and do something about it, like I'm doing here.

Plus, I wonder if I'm the only one out there with a lot to say about Asian-American poetry but with no forum. I've searched for Asian-American poetry websites and blogs over the years, and I'd even started my own Yahoo! club a couple years back (where I had a riveting one-day dialogue with myself). I've always believed that there exists a community of people out there interested in intellectually and emotionally stimulating discussions about Asian-American poetry. And I'm hoping to reach out with this blog.