Asian-American Poetry and Other Artistic Meanderings

A Review of Squash: Fascinations Upon an Understated Gourd

2009-07-01T00:44:00.000-07:00

"Quite seldom in life does fruit matter anymore." These words mark the epicenter of Squash: Fascinations Upon an Understated Gourd, the latest cookbook travelogue by horticulturist Samuel Wong Remalcoole and the third and final work in his "melon" trilogy (following Watermelon: A New Dawn Rises Over Sunset (1998, Amorphous Chicken Press, 285 pages) and Acorn: The Fast and Recognized Frontier (2002, Two Hundred Grand Piano Books, 293 pages)).

Whereas Remalcoole’s Watermelon found an eloquence in seedless descriptions of Oregonian-Taiwanese gardens in the 1950s and 1960s, and Acorn tended towards self-indulgence with its two hundred fifty-eight snapshots of an oak tree leaf, Squash captures that perfect balance of summer and winter.

From the opening chapters of Squash, as the aptly named Ann and Dave meander through the vegetable section of the second largest flea market in Tucson, we are compelled to wonder whether their marriage will outlast dinner.

Dave, 41, chooses each squash with such care and Ann, 39, speaks so endearingly of November, that we can almost picture them as psychology graduate students at the New London Graduate School of Artifacts and Gourds. Remalcoole has a knack for capturing the passion that Ann and Dave share for squash, their mutual disdain for broccoli and celery sticks, and their fierce lobbying for ordinances to put a squash on every dish in town. (In fact, rumor has it that the first title of the book was The Carrot Lobby.)

This passion jump starts the unlikeliest of festivals -- a three day feast in Tintleabre Square, attended by the most discrete gardeners and chefs of all thirty-one political parties. Many edicts were signed and comprehended. But it is only through Remacoole's description of honeydew that we know love is possible. Seven stars.

Kundiman - Letter from Executive Director Sarah Gambito

2009-03-28T04:33:00.000-07:00

As you (may) know, Kundiman is playing an important role in the literary world of the U.S. By initiating a summer retreat for Asian American poets five years ago, it has opened doors of opportunity that were previously closed to young poets of the Asian diaspora. Through intensive workshopswith renowned poets and the enthusiastic support from staff and peers, the amount and excellence of their output is phenomenal.

Kundiman Fellows have published poems in The Virginia Quarterly Review,The Colorado Review, Pleiades, Black Warrior Review and Crab Orchard Review. They are attending MFA and doctoral programs at The Iowa Writers' Workshop, New York University, Stanford University, The University of Houston, and The University of California, Berkeley. Three Kundiman fellows have gone on to publish full-length collections of poetry.

What you may not know is how important this program has been in the development of lives of the poets themselves. I'd like to share quotes from just two of the Fellows and I invite you to read the testimonies of others on our website http://www.kundiman.org/. Also, please see Janine Oshiro's essay on her experience at the Kundiman retreat here: http://www.oregonhum.org/i-spy.php

Months after this year's Kundiman retreat, I am still left wondering whether the most intensely beautiful experience, short of falling in love, was an accidental happenstance of a meeting of more than 20 poet-minds atvarious stages of our writing development; or the intricate design of the driven and artful, purposeful and generous, tactical and loving staff, guest faculty and board of Kundiman. The camaraderie, peer review, professional insight and instruction, mutual support, lack of sleep and utter kindness and friendship fired up the most remote synapses of mybrain and my deepest heartstrings. But why qualify the impact of Kundiman? I did fall in love with my fellow poets, their exquisite analyses of my work and each of their unique poetic voices. I'm both humbled and proud to be a small part of this growing family of writers whoeven today, are shaping the poetry of tomorrow.--Debbie Yee

As soon as I arrived, I was greeted so warmly as if I was among old friends! I felt at home among complete strangers. Here was a group of dynamic people who shared both my struggles being a writer of color inAmerica and my passions: a deep devotion to the art of poetry. I've always heard, read, and spoken about the importance of community in anyartistic endeavor. The poet's road can be a lonely one; the drifting heart needs its anchors. But I never realized how empowering a community of artists could be until I spent four days at UVA with the Kundimanstaff, teachers, and fellows. I found there what I failed to in any other poetry workshop I've taken: a deep respect and honor among poets; a desire to talk about race, identity, and history, in conjunction with one's composition process; and a willingness to be brave. --Brynn Saito

We are turning to you to ask for your help in insuring that the 6th Kundiman Summer Retreat can take place, to replace funds that we received in the past but that are not available this year because of budget cuts. The $4,000 we need will go toward direct costs of the retreat's faculty and staff travel and faculty honoraria. Again this year, Kundiman staff members will donate their time to coordinate and administer all the stages required to carry out the five day session.

What we ask, we ask for the program itself and for the brave and gifted poets it serves.Poet by poet, Kundiman is helping to change the face of American literature and what it means to document an important part of the American story. We need the certain light of poetry all the more in these uncertain times. With your help, we will continue to light the way for the next generation of Asian American writers.

Please click here to donate: http://www.kundiman.org/%5BCLB%5D_Brightside/1.Source/donate.html Please, also, do forward this widely.

Sincerely,
Sarah Gambito

On Bamboo Ridge Press

2009-03-20T23:02:00.000-07:00

As anyone who has run a small to mid-sized publishing press will tell you, it is not the easiest endeavor. The successful ones are real labors of love. One of the most successful publishing presses in the field of Asian-American poetry is Bamboo Ridge Press, which was founded in 1978 and focuses on literature by and about the people of Hawaii.

I particularly like Bamboo Ridge Press's website. Like the most ambitious websites, this one is multifaceted, containing useful features such as an online bookstore, upcoming literary events in Hawaii, blogs by Bambook Ridge Press staff and site members, podcasts, videos, a photo gallery and news about the press itself. In my humble opinion, it is definitely worth checking out!

Review of Language for a New Century: Contemporary Poetry from the Middle East, Asia, and Beyond

2008-04-26T22:55:00.000-07:00

Over the past year, I have eagerly anticipated the publication of Language for a New Century: Contemporary Poetry from the Middle East, Asia and Beyond (edited by Tina Chang, Nathalie Handal, and Ravi Shankar, W.W. Norton, 2008, 734 pp.). Sometimes when you eagerly anticipate the delivery of a new book on the virtual doorstep of your local transnational online bookseller, the work itself does not meet your lofty expectations, but I am happy to say that I am delighted with Language for a New Century, which is a triumph on so many levels.

I think that the anthology greatly benefits from Carolyn Forche's foreword, Tina Chang, Nathalie Handal, and Ravi Shankar's preface, and each of Tina Chang's, Nathalie Handal's, and Ravi Shankar's short personal essays before each section, which are elegantly written and effectively contextualize the geographical, linguistic, national, and thematic terrain of the poetry. The preface thoroughly outlines the selection criteria for poems in the anthology: 1) a broad definition of "the East", 2) representation of a broad selection of countries and nationalities, 3) the definition of "contemporary poetry" as post-1946, 4) a broad representation of various schools/styles of poetry, 5) a balance of emerging and established poets from different generations, 6) the selection of many different aesthetic sensibilities, 7) the publication of at least one book, with limited exceptions, and 8) the inclusion of translations. In the preface, the editors also explain the organization of the poems into nine major thematic sections -- characterized by Forche in her excellent foreword as "childhood, selfhood, experimentation, oppression, mystery, war, homeland and exile, spiritual life, love and sexuality, from Afghanistan to Yemen" (p. xxxi). Elegant touches like the inclusion of a country index and language list, along with more traditional features like author, translator, and editor biographies, permissions acknowledgments, and a general index (along with an explanation of the rationale behind the inclusion of a country index) further exemplify the wonderful editing. In short, I think that the editors have organized the anthology clearly, intelligently, and thougtfully.

Yet while clear, intelligent, and thoughtful, the anthology is also bold, ambitious, and makes major claims about the natures and meanings of Asian and Asian-American poetry. A reader should not simply dismiss the book as a coffee-table anthology. Each of the eight criteria for inclusion noted above, though I tend to agree with all of them, raises such difficult questions as, 1) why does the "East" not include more of Europe or Africa?, 2) what about Caucasian or African-American poets who were raised in Asia or have lived in Asia for a long time, who write about Asia extensively in their poetry, or who have written poems in such forms as haiku, ghazals, or pantoums?, 3) does the inclusion of poets from so many different nationalities necessarily exclude certain poets from "overrepresented" nationalities (like Indian and Chinese poets) from having a poem appear in the anthology? I think that the editors correctly do not raise such questions in the preface, as it would have probably lengthened and disrupted the flow of the preface, but I think that such questions are worth considering in a careful reading of the anthology.

Perhaps all of these questions point to, in my opinion, one of the most interesting and provocative elements of the anthology, which is the "effort to include as many crucial voices as possible" and to do so by "cho[osing] one poem per poet" (xxxvii). I think that the editors do successfully accomplish the important goal of including as many poets as possible, though at times, that causes the anthology to have the effect of feeling like The New Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics in the sense that the inclusion of just one poem -- as opposed to several poems per poet, as was done in The Open Boat (ed. Garrett Hongo) and Asian-American Poetry: The Next Generation (ed. Victoria Chang) anthologies -- may limit our understanding and appreciation of the work of any particular poet. But I feel for the editors here, as the inclusion of more than one poem from a given poet would probably have led either to a volume of an unmanageable size or to the exclusion of certain poets from the anthology. I think that the editors made a justfiable decision in limiting the number of poems per poet, but it must not have been easy. One almost wants this anthology, as in the tradition of the first Star Wars trilogy, to have a volume II and volume III. At any rate, just as The New Princeton Encyclopedia remains a comprehensive and necessary work for any poet or student of poetry, at least partly by virtue of its thoroughness, so does Language for a New Century.

As far as the poems themselves go, I would make the highly subjective and throughly unjustifiable claim that they generally are quite terrific. This claim is "highly subjective and thoroughly unjustifiable," because there are just so many poets and poems! There are over 400 poems in the anthology, and I think that any generalization of the poems as a whole would be an overgeneralization. But I have already greatly enjoyed reading many of the poems and will probably be discussing at least a few of them on this blog. I would add that I think that the fact that there were three different editors with different tastes really strengthens this anthology by allowing for an even more diverse array of poetic styles and sensibilities. Language for a New Century possesses the beauty of a freshly assembled five-thousand piece jigsaw puzzle.

So, in short, I highly recommend Language for a New Century, which I think is an essential work for anyone, and not just anyone interested in Asian-American poetry, to have on their bookshelves.

Brief Thoughts on Premonitions: the Kaya anthology of new Asian North American poetry

2008-04-25T22:36:00.000-07:00

On his blog, Glenn Ingersoll recently made a few nice posts on various poems in Premonitions: the Kaya anthology of new Asian North American poetry (1995), edited by Walter Lew. Premonitions is one of the most ambitious Asian-American poetry anthologies out there and a landmark collection in Asian and Asian-American poetry.

The Price of Language for a New Century

2008-04-20T00:52:00.000-07:00

I have to give props to W.W. Norton & Company for pricing the 734-page anthology, Language for a New Century: Contemporary Poetry from the Middle East, Asia, and Beyond, at the very reasonable price of $27.95. In fact, Amazon is currently selling the book for $18.95. I feel that Norton made a smart decision in publishing the anthology as a paperback, and I think that the relatively inexpensive price of the anthology will encourage more people to buy it.

Even though I imagine (just as I imagine that the grass is green) that not every publisher has the financial resources of a W.W. Norton, it always irks me a little when a publisher does something like price a fifty-page chapbook for $39.95 or a hardcover anthology for $79.95. There is a legitimate argument that the "free market" can dictate the pricing of books, but I think that it's better not to price out potential readers (e.g., college students with tens of thousands of dollars of student loans) by overpricing a book of poems in the first place.

It Is a Real Gift to Love

2008-04-19T22:35:00.000-07:00

After close to a twelve month hiatus from my blog, I am back! In my absence, here is a lesson that I have learned: it is a real gift to love. To love Asian-American poetry, any kind of poetry, or any kind of art is a blessing. It is to feel that indefinable joy that most of us crave but can experience only fleetingly. Some of us try to grasp at this je-ne-sais-quoi by resorting to the deification of consumer goods, theme park vacations, or cliches like cigarettes or alcohol. But, at least in my humble estimation, these temporal stopgaps can never quite compete with that ethereal love of art.

It is a real gift to be able to share my thoughts on Asian-American poetry through this blog. I feel lucky to be living in a time of blogs. When I started this weblog way back in December 2004, I was greatly inspired to blog by the then-recent publication of Asian-American Poetry: The Next Generation (edited by Victoria Chang, 2004). Similarly, my return has been greatly motivated by the recent publication of Language for a New Century: Contemporary Poetry from the Middle East, Asia and Beyond (edited by Tina Chang, Nathalie Handal, and Ravi Shankar, 2008), which I plan to comment upon extensively in the days and weeks ahead. Also, hark, methinks that Li-Young Lee has a new collection of poems out as well, his first in seven years and his fouth overall, and I plan on getting around to blogging about it as well.

On Elizabeth Bishop's "Filling Station"

2007-04-30T23:55:00.000-07:00

Whenever I want to experience the life force that poetry can provide, I often turn to the poems of Elizabeth Bishop. While a poem like Bishop's "The Moose" may be grander in scope, and a poem like Bishop's "One Art" may be more technically ambitious, I find a poem like Bishop's "Filling Station" more emotionally rich and satisfying. In a way, it is kind of like the As Good As It Gets of Bishop's poetry.

In "Filling Station," Bishop details the everyday particularities of "a family filling station" with Norman Rockwellian precision in six stanzas with six or seven lines each and an ending couplet. Aside from the second stanza, which alludes to a father and his "several quick and saucy/ and greasy sons," the poem is focused on setting and, more specifically, the objects in that setting, including "a cement porch/ behind the pumps," "a big dim doily/ draping a taboret," and, of course, as only Bishop would phrase it, "a big hirsute begonia."

I like the "Filling Station," in particular, because it embodies many different, overlapping yet conflicting, ideas and emotions. It demonstrates the richness of humanity, optimistically suggesting that people can enact their love through quotidian rituals and, as the final line goes, that "Somebody loves us all."

First -- and I want to highlight this point first, because I think that critics typically have not noted it -- the poem is not only serious but humorous as well. Some might not think of Bishop as a humorist, but I think that the poem shows that she clearly has a sense of humor. There are the lines with the overtly witty double meanings to demonstrate the cleverness of the speaker herself -- "quick and saucy/ and greasy sons," comic books that "provide the only note of color --/ of certain color," "somebody waters the plant/, or oils it, maybe." Then there is Bishop the poet herself with her use of vivid, over-the-top adjective-noun combinations like "oil-soaked, oil-permeated to a disturbing over-all black translucency," "high-strung automobiles," and of course, our lovely "hirsute begonia."

Then there is Bishop making that certain kind of smart, poet inside-joke with her characterization of "the doily" -- "Embroidered in daisy stitch with marguerities, I think, and heavy with grey crochet" -- as if proclaiming, "I am an Elizabeth the Poet," with the talent and ability to write circles around other poets. Indeed, I would characterize this description of "the doily," which is as "extraneous" as the "extraneous plant" (i.e. the begonia) and as "extraneous" as the depiction of the begonia itself, as the equivalent of a Michael Jordan wagging his tongue while leaping from the foul line for a slam dunk. No real need for it, but you've got to give your props -- if only we could all write like Bishop.

Second, and related, Bishop consciously infuses the speaker of the poem with a voice that is at once haughty and humble, which is as difficult a combination to pull off as serious and humorous. Bishop is clearly aware of issues of class and gender here. Her speaker self-consciously partakes in an upper/upper-middle class, stylized, self-consciously feminine way of talking, using phrases and words like "all quite thoroughly dirty," "crushed and grease-impregnated wickerwork," "a taboret," "embroidered in daisy stitch with marguerites," "embroidered the doily," and, of course, let us not forget our "hirsute begonia." These fancy objects -- e.g., taboret, begonia, and doily -- seem almost out of place in an oil-soaked family filling station.

But the key word is almost. The speaker never states that they are out of place, instead posing the questions of "Why the extraneous plant?," "Why the taboret?," "Why, oh why, the doily?" and answering that "somebody" put them there and that "Somebody loves us all." Essentially, Bishop is saying that they do have their place in the filling place, and their presence exemplifies the presence of love. Love is exemplified through the simple particularities of everyday life -- a wicker sofa, a dirty dog, comic books, a taboret, and yes, even a hirsute begonia.

It is like what John Ashbery says in "Some Trees" -- "That their merely being there/ Means something," except that Bishop uses the anaphora, "somebody," in suggesting the importance of the things having been "embroidered," "water[ed]" or "arrange[d]" there by someone -- perhaps the mother or grandmother of the household. The poem thus suggests that the presumption that there are "male" settings that may exist without women, or the presumption that classes of upper class and working class people may be discretely separated, is wrong. "Somebody," a presumably upper class woman, has helped fashion the space of the filling station and at least coexists with the working class men there. Furthermore, this "Somebody," in her own particular way, brings a different kind of generative love that enlivens the filling station, just as the father and his sons enliven it in their own way, and thus "the rows of cans/ [may] softly say: ESSO--SO--SO--SO."

At any rate, what does this poem have to do with Asian-American poetry? (Why, just about everything!) But in all seriousness, transitioning from the previous couple paragraphs and making my third and last point here, I think that "Filling Station" deals profoundly with questions of identity and belonging. Practically every noun in the poem is trying to find its place in the filling station, and by extension, I would say that Bishop is suggesting that we are all trying to find our own niche in a flawed but beautiful world. Our beauty, and the beauty of the world around us, comes from funny, silly, quirky, charming, vivid specificities that make us diverse and unique. We are often both out of place and in place at the same time, as "the dirty dog" and the "greasy sons" exist in the same space with a "doily/ draping a taboret" and the "Somebody" who "embroidered" it. While the taboret, begonia, and doily may seem out of place at first glance, they actually have their own place and are essential to the existence of the filling station.

Be it the speaker with the haughty vocabulary, the parent in a dirty monkey suit, Bishop herself, anyone of any race, and the reader of the poem, "Somebody loves us all." Sometimes, I think that this ending is too simple and pat, but at other times, I feel that this poem earns this ending by showing us the love in the previous six stanzas and one line. There is a kind of reconciliation of the diverse elements of the poem, and I enjoy the generosity of this line and the poem as a whole.

Asian American Writers' Workshop and Cave Canem Workshop

2007-02-24T08:17:00.000-08:00

Thursday, March 8th, 7pm

A Celebration of Poetry with Cave Canem and Asian American Writers' Workshop

The Asian American and African American communities gather for a night of brilliant poetry and music. Readings by Elizabeth Alexander, Justin Chin, Kimiko Hahn, Linda Susan Jackson, Gregory Pardlo, Vijay Seshadri and the musical stylings of Patrick Rosal in collaboration with Aracelis. Curated by Tina Chang and Tracy K. Smith

Elizabeth Alexander's collections of poetry include Antebellum Dream Book (Graywolf Press, 2001), Body of Life (1996), and The Venus Hottentot (1990). Her poems, short stories, and critical writing have been widely published in such journals and periodicals as The Paris Review, American Poetry Review, The Kenyon Review, The Southern Review, Prairie Schooner, Callaloo, The Village Voice, The Women's Review of Books, and The Washington Post, and her work is anthologized in over twenty collections. She has received a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, a Pushcart Prize, the Quantrell Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching at the University of Chicago, and the George Kent Award, given by Gwendolyn Brooks.

Justin Chin is the author of Harmless Medicine and Bite Hard, and three collections of essays, Burden of Ashes, Attack of the Man-eating Lotus Blossoms, and Mongrel: Essays, Diatribes and Pranks. His newest collection is Gutted (Manic D Press).

Kimiko Hahn's seven books of poems include The Unbearable Heart, which received an American Book Award, and most recently, The Narrow Road to the Interior. In this new volume, she collects work inspired by the Japanese forms, tanka and zuihitsu; the title, itself, comes from Basho's famous poetic journal, Okunohosomichi. She is a Distinguished Professor in the MFA program at Queens College, The City University of New York.

Linda Susan Jackson's first collection of poems, What Yellow Sounds Like, was a finalist in the 2006 National Poetry Series Competition and will be published by Tia Chucha Press in Spring 2007. She has published two chapbooks, Vitelline Blues and A History of Beauty. Her work has appeared in Crab Orchard Review, Brilliant Corners, Asheville Poetry Review, Gathering Ground, Heliotrope, Los Angeles Review, Rivendell, Warpland, and Brooklyn Review 21 among other journals and has been featured on From the Fishouse audio archive. She is an Assistant Professor and Deputy Chair of the English Department at Medgar Evers College/City University of New York and a Cave Canem graduate fellow.

Gregory Pardlo is the recipient of a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship in poetry and a translation grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. His poems, reviews and translations have appeared in Calalloo, Lyric, Painted Bride Quarterly, Ploughshares, Seneca Review, Volt, Black Issues Book Review and on National Public Radio. He teaches creative writing at Medgar Evers College, CUNY, and lives in Bedford-Stuyvesant with his wife and daughter. His manuscript, Totem, was chosen by Brenda Hillman for the American Poetry Review/ Honickman First Book Prize and will be published Sept. 2007.

Patrick Rosal is the author of two full length-collections of poetry, My American Kundiman and Uprock Headspin Scramble and Dive. The closest he got to conservatory was secretly struggling with first species counterpoint during the graveyard shift of his second job at 19. He once jammed with Max Roach -- and was terrible.

Vijay Seshadri's collections of poems include James Laughlin Award winner The Long Meadow (Graywolf Press, 2004) and Wild Kingdom (1996). He currently teaches poetry and nonfiction writing at Sarah Lawrence College.

@ The Workshop
16 West 32nd Street,
10th Floor (btwn Broadway & 5th Avenue)
$5 suggested donation

Reading at the Folger Shakespeare Library

2007-01-27T23:53:00.000-08:00

Tina Chang (Half-Lit Houses), Srikanth Reddy (Facts for Visitors), Victoria Chang (Circle, Asian American Poetry: The Next Generation) will be reading at the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington DC on January 29th. The event will be introduced and moderated by Joseph Legaspi of Kundiman. Please see http://www.folger.edu/woSummary.cfm?woid=329 for details.

2007 Asian American Kundiman Poetry Retreat at the University of Virginia

2007-01-24T01:05:00.000-08:00

KUNDIMAN ASIAN AMERICAN POETRY RETREAT
The University of Virginia, Charlottesville
June 20 – 24, 2007

In order to help mentor the next generation of Asian-American poets, Kundiman is sponsoring an annual Poetry Retreat at The University of Virginia. During the Retreat, nationally renowned Asian American poets will conduct workshops and provide one-on-one mentorship sessions with participants. Readings and informal social gatherings will also be scheduled. Through this Retreat, Kundiman hopes to provide a safe and instructive environment that identifies and addresses the unique challenges faced by emerging Asian American poets. This 5-day Retreat will take place from Wednesday to Sunday. Workshops will be conducted fromThursday to Saturday. Workshops will not exceed six students.

Faculty

Myung Mi Kim’s books of poems include Commons (University of California Press), DURA (Sun & Moon), The Bounty (Chax Press), and Under Flag, winner of the Multicultural Publisher’s Exchange Award (Kelsey St. Press). Anthology appearances in Asian-American Literature: An Anthology, Moving Borders: Three Decades of Innovative Writing by Women, Premonitions: The Kaya Anthology of New Asian North American Poetry, Primary Trouble: An Anthology of Contemporary American Poetry and other collections. Honors include a residency at Djerassi Resident Artists Program and awards from The Fund for Poetry. She is Professor of English at SUNY-Buffalo.

Regie Cabico is a spoken word pioneer having won top prizes in the 1993, 1994 and 1997 National Poetry Slams. His work appears in over 30 anthologies including Aloud: Voices from the Nuyorican Poets Café, Spoken WordRevolution and Slam. He has appeared on two seasons of HBO’s Def Poetry Jam, PBS’ “In The Life” and MTV’s “Free Your Mind” Spoken Word Tour. Regie is the recipient of the 10th annual Writers for Writers Award sponsored by Poets & Writers and has received three New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowships for Poetry and Multi-Disciplinary Performance.

Prageeta Sharma is the author of Bliss to Fill (subpress books, 2000) and The Opening Question (Fence Books, 2004). Her work has also appeared in Agni, Art Asia Pacific, Boston Review, Combo, Fence, Indiana Review, Women’s Review of Books and other periodicals. She received her MFA in poetry from Brown University and an MA in Media Studies from The New School.

Fees

To keep the cost of the retreat low for all participants, fees are not charged for workshops or programming. Thus, all accepted applicants are given an automatic tuition scholarship. Room and Board for the entire retreat is $300.

Application Process

Send five to seven (5-7) paginated, stapled pages of poetry, with your name included on each page. Include a cover letter with your name, address, phone number, e-mail address and a brief paragraph describing what you would like to accomplish at the Kundiman Asian American Poets’ Retreat. Include a SAS postcard if you want an application receipt.

Manuscripts will not be returned. No electronic submissions, please.

Mail application to: Kundiman 245 Eighth Avenue #151 New York, NY 10011.

Submissions must be postmarked by March 1, 2007.

For more info, please visit: http://www.kundiman.org/index.php?id=4

Two Poems by Jake Ricafrente

2007-01-17T20:49:00.000-08:00

Before the most recent issue of MiPOesias, I don't think I quite appreciated the concept of "discovering" "undiscovered" talent in poetry, which many poetry editors have expressed as one of the most enjoyable aspects of choosing poems for publication. It wasn't that I thought that these editors were paying lip-service to the idea. I imagine that such "discoveries" must happen. All poets have to start somewhere, and there are many different kinds of beginnings, from a first publication in a literary journal to a first award/prize received to a first collection of poems.

But pretty much all the poets whose poems I have come across in literary journals, anthologies, or books were poets who had already had numerous publication credits before, if not one or a few collections of poems published. It is seldom that I read the poetry of a fairly new poet and come away feeling very confident that this poet will someday be published in many literary magazines, have an excellent first collection of poetry with a major publisher, and receive many accolades from various organizations and publications.

I had exactly such a feeling, however, upon reading the two poems of Jake Ricafrente published in the Asian-American issue of MiPOesias. While I'm familiar with the poetry of most of the poets in this issue, the Asian-American poetry world not being unimaginably large, I had never come across any of Ricafrente's work before. Now I think that there are many great poems in this issue, but I feel that Ricafrente's two poems achieve an unmistakable quality of transcendence, like the best poems of Adrienne Su -- and I chose to mention Su here, because Ricafrente's "White Plastics" reminds me of Su's "Savannah Crabs."

Reading the first poem, "Concerning Glass," I perceive it as the more ambitious of the two poems, even though the latter is more technically accomplished. Consisting of four stanzas, the poem successfully takes on the difficult task of drawing out the different facets of a single word (glass, in this case) through an entire poem, while at the same time it is also an "Asian/Asian-American poem" in the sense that it makes oblique references to the Asian race/ethnicity/nationality of the speaker in various stanzas.

More specifically, I think that the second stanza is the poem's strongest, because it so deftly transitions from a broken glass to the speaker's "father's dog" to the "crass vet" to the speaker's "last good teacher" to a detailed description of the teacher's eye and the speaker's reaction to it. These shifts, akin to shifts in memory, are done through original turns of phrase and sharply detailed descriptions. Throughout the poem, there are many brilliant lines. I would say, however, that I think the first stanza should have started with the third line, as "Light's the thing that," instead of with references to bending light. Perhaps the sight of light bending through glass inspired the first draft of the poem, but the opening two lines distracted me a bit by self-consciously pointing to the notion that many other poems contain references to "bending light" and drawing attention to it as a cliche. My favorite lines in the poem are the final eight lines or so in the last stanza, which flow naturally from the rest of the poem, are well-earned, and make me think of the best work of Davis McCombs and Marilyn Chin.

I really like the second poem, "White Plastics," as well. It does two separate things together perhaps as well as I've come across in any poem -- it shows great skill in the use of classical forms, while at the same time, it is also a fascinating meditation on racial identity. First, I found the poem very techncially accomplished. It is written in blank verse, composed of rhyming couplets, and appears to be a kind of variation on the sonnet, though it contains eighteen lines. Second, the speaker of the poem seems to be someone of mixed race, and the poem basically deals with the experiences of the speaker upon encountering himself as "the other" by some members of his family.

Here is my reading of the narrative of the poem. Everything is superficially idyllic, but the speaker is aware of this superficiality. The speaker suddenly becomes aware of himself as a "half-breed, some percent/ of full." There is a festive dinner in Poughkeepsie, perhaps Thanksgiving dinner, with the "white" side of his family. The food is great and the speaker is enjoying himself, but the "white" members of his family "gather round to scout" him and his brown skin as if he were a foreigner. The speaker feels "other-ed" by this experience and presents the profound question of whether it is better to assimilate or to take pride in one's racial/ethnic heritage in a multicultural American society. To a certain extent, the speaker cannot fully answer this question on his own -- and by extension, none of us can fully answer this question on our own -- because our experiences as individuals are formed and mediated by our histories and communities. The "Pilgrims" are an essential part of the speaker's language of history, just as the aunts who may perceive him at least partly on the basis of his skin color are a part of his family. There are hugs, and there is some measure of acceptance, even though this acceptance is one that must be negotiated.

At any rate, that was my reading of "White Plastics." I thought that both of Jake Ricafrente's poems were quite successful, filled with heart and wit and effectively balancing narrative and lyricism, and I look forward to reading more of his poetry in the future.

MiPOesias Magazine 2007 - Asian-American Issue

2007-01-13T15:24:00.000-08:00

The Asian-American issue of MiPOesias Magazine has just come out, officially commencing what I think will be an exciting year in Asian-American poetry. Edited by Nick Carbo, it marks the first collection of Asian-American poets since the publication of Asian-American Poetry: The Next Generation (University of Illinois Press, 2004, ed. Victoria Chang) and, by the end of the year, we should see the publication of Contemporary Voices from the East: An Anthology of Poems (W.W. Norton, 2007, eds. Tina Chang, Ravi Shankar, and Nathalie Handal) as well.

This issue also represents the continuing efforts of MiPOesias, run by publisher Didi Menendez, to feature the work of a racially, ethnically, and geographically diverse range of poets with aesthetically diverse styles of writing. In my admittedly biased opinion, MiPOesias represents the best of independent poetry publishing. Through the dedication of Didi Menendez, Amy King, Jenni Russell, and many guest editors, poets, and readers, it has remained open to an incredibly broad range of contemporary poets and become increasingly successful over the past seven years. I'm highlighting this point, because it is never easy to run a great poetry publication, and I think that the people "behind the scenes," so to speak, seldom get sufficient recognition and credit, which they deserve, because they play such an important role in shaping the present and future of poetry.

Examples of Poems by Cathy Song

2006-12-20T00:11:00.000-08:00

The Poetry Foundation has a nice sampling of poems by Cathy Song. I think that poems like "Ikebana," "Leaving," and "The White Porch" are especially good examples of Song's ability to render precise and original images.

The Poetry of Cathy Song

2006-12-15T17:21:00.000-08:00

In comments on a previous post, Glenn Ingersoll mentions the Asian-American poet Cathy Song, perhaps most well-known for winning the Yale Series of Younger Poets Award with Picture Bride (Yale University Press, 1983). At the time, no Asian-American poet had received such a prestigious honor, and the selection of her book by poet Richard Hugo represents a kind of landmark in Asian-American poetry. But I think that Song's place in Asian-American poetry, and contemporary American poetry, has remained at least somewhat puzzling, and in this post, I would like to discuss it.

In many respects, Song has had a remarkably successful career in poetry. She has continued to publish steadily since the publication of Picture Bride. She has come out with three books of poetry after Picture Bride -- Frameless Windows, Squares of Light (W.W. Norton, 1989), School Figures (The University of Pittsburgh Press, 1994), and The Land of Bliss (The University of Pittsburgh Press, 2001) -- with major publishers. (At the current rate, I would not be too surprised if her fifth book of poetry comes out within the next couple years or so.) She has received such accolades as the Poetry Society of America's Shelley Memorial Award, the Hawaii Award for Literature, and a National Endowment of the Arts Fellowship. She has played a key role in the success of Bamboo Ridge Press, which was founded "to publish literature by and about Hawaii's people."

But even as the publications and accolades have piled up, Song has received comparably less recognition in Asian-American poetry and contemporary poetry. I want to look historically here for a possible explanation. Cathy Song's Picture Bride (1983), Li-Young Lee's Rose (1986), and Garrett Hongo's River of Heaven (1982) were perhaps the three most prominent Asian-American books of poetry published in the 1980s. I think that there were many similarities between these three books. The poems in each of these volumes drew heavily on a narrative style, used concrete images, tended not to be surreal, discussed immigrant experiences in America, seemed at least somewhat concerned with identity politics, and sought to develop an "Asian-American" poetics by evoking the race/ethnicity of the poet/narrator/protagonist.

I think that most people would agree that, for better or worse, Asian-American poetry did not adhere to this relatively unified schemata but instead has fragmented into many different poetries among many different schools of poetry over the past couple decades. In other words, Song's vision of "Asian-American poetry," at least as expressed through her poetry, has not become the dominant one but one of many visions. In my opinion, Asian-American poetry, as it currently stands, is fairly kaliedoscopic.

However, I think that the general move away from narrative poetry does not completely explain Song's lack of popular and critical recognition. I now want to compare and contrast Cathy Song and Li-Young Lee. They are about the same age. They were both educated at universities in parts of the United States with relatively small Asian-American populations -- Lee attended the University of Pittsburgh, the University of Arizona, and the State University of New York at Brockport, while Song received her B.A. from Wellesley College and her M.A. in creative writing from Boston University. Their first books came out at about the same time. Most importantly, at least in my opinion, the best poems in Picture Bride (1983) are as powerful as the best poems in Rose (1986), with an exuberance, originality, and attention to detail that has not been surpassed in Asian-American narrative poetry since that epoch of belief and incredulity known as the 1980s.

So why has Li-Young Lee received more popular and critical attention than Song? I can think of at least three reasons. First, Lee has publicized his poetry more to Americans on the mainland. While Song returned to her native state of Hawaii after receiving her M.A. in creative writing and has remained there, Lee has toured many parts of the United States, teaching at different universities and taking part in various speaking engagements. Second, Song has never quite been able to "escape" the labels of "female," "Asian-American," and "Hawaiian" poet, which can often piegonhole a woman poet of color. I put "escape" in quotes there, because I think that Song has not attempted to avoid but actually, to her credit, embraced her diverse identitites -- for example, read her remarks in this Honolulu Star-Bulletin article, http://starbulletin.com/2001/02/05/features/story1.html.

Third and related, Song's poetry and Lee's poetry have taken different directions since the publication of their first volumes. While Lee's poems have shifted away from the identity-oriented concerns of his earlier works, Song's poems have consistently remained in the realm of identity politics. One might say that Song remains comfortable with the ideas and themes of her previous poems and, perhaps unlike Lee, has basically continued to write the same types of poems as in that well-known first volume.

While I think that Song's poetry may not quite be in vogue among some contemporary Asian-American poets, I respect Song's adherence to a consistent vision and style of poetry, believe that her poetry still has a lot of relevance, and feel that her poetry should receive greater popular and critical attention. I also think that that there are some Asian-American poets who have been, and will continue be, influenced by her various poems -- especially since her poems have been oft-anthologized and have an important place in American poetry.

A Review of The Ethics and Poetics of Alterity in Asian-American Poetry

2006-11-08T01:10:00.000-08:00

If you keep a blog on "Asian-American poetry," then I think that the chances are fairly decent that you would read Xiaojing Zhou's The Ethics and Poetics of Alterity in Asian-American Poetry (University of Iowa Press, 2006) -- the first published book-length critical study of Asian-American poetry. When I started this blog, I pointed out that no full-length study of Asian-American poetry had ever been published, and much to my approval and delight, that fact has now changed.

Also to my delight is the fact that Zhou's The Ethics and Poetics is a real tour de force. In characterizing the book as a "tour de force," I mean that Zhou illustrates her central thesis -- "in developing a poetics of alterity that insists on confronting social injustice against the other and exploring the ethics and aesthetics of otherness, Asian American poets demonstrate that their transformation and displacement of the lyric I engage with broader issues than merely the poetic" (pp. 275-76) -- with real persuasiveness and intelligence. It's a difficult thesis. I read Zhou as claiming that Asian-American poets have transformed "the traditional lyric I, the lyric voice, and the lyric form" (p. 20) into a poetics that is more conscious of the "we" and the "you" aspects of human relations, that is more engaged with philosophical questions concerning otherness and the self.

Zhou demonstrates this thesis through an exploration of the work of seven Asian-American poets -- Li-Young Lee, Marilyn Chin, David Mura, Kimiko Hahn, Timothy Liu, John Yau, and Myung Mi Kim -- "moving from autobiographical and confessional poems where the lyric speaker is central, to surrealist and Language poems where the poet-I as the lyric I is replaced by multiple voices of other, and the lyric voice gives way to impersonal, hybrid, and other-sounding patterns" (pp. 20-21). She divides the book into seven chapters, exploring the work of one poet in each chapter, and adds an introduction and conclusion. I found the book very well-organized, and it covers a diverse range of poetic traditions.

Perhaps the greatest quality of the book is Zhou's perceptive readings of the poems themselves. Over and over again, she uses the pattern of describing a particular poem, quoting excerpts from the poem itself, and then analyzing the excerpts. She usually analyzes the poem in light of her aforementioned central thesis, but she does not push it to the degree of rendering her assertions incongrous with the text. The points do not become forced or repetitive, but instead, they provide us with greater insight into the poetry itself. The book contains quite a few wonderful readings of various poems.

While I enjoyed the book, I will point to several issues that I had with it as well, many of which may be addressed in a future edition of the book. First, I found my asking the question, "Why these poets?" While I understand the necessity of limiting the number of poets, if only for reasons of space, I think that Zhou should have explained the reasons that she believes that these particular poets' works exemplify "Asian American poetry," given that there are dozens of other Asian-American poets whose works she potentially could have selected for this volume. Second and related, I would say that the book would have been stronger with poets from a wider range of ethnicities -- there are four Chinese American poets, two Japanese American poets, and one Korean American poets. As is, perhaps a more appropriate term than "Asian American poetry" would have been "Asian Pacific American poetry." Third, I would have preferred that the book contain more information on Asian American history, the history of Asian American poetry, and contemporary Asian American society, but this point may be a minor one, because I know that you can only do so much in a limited amount of space, and I found the book's length to be quite appropriate at 312 pages. Fourth, I think that Zhou could have better explained her rationale for choosing the poems that she does select in light of the poet's larger body of work -- for example, she quotes heavily from John Yau's "Genghis Chan" poems, but many of Yau's poems do not engage in questions of Asian American identity, and it would have been interesting if there had been some compare and contrast between poems that are relatively more engaged with such issues of "otherness" and poems that are not as engaged with these issues. Fifth, especially since this book is the first published full-length study of Asian-American poetry, I think that it would have been better with more of a discussion on the reasons for having such a published volume of analysis on Asian American poetry at this point in time.

Let me pause for a moment here. The previous paragraph was relatively long. I want to say again that I think that this book is not only fascinating and well-written but groundbreaking. It's not easy to do "groundbreaking" work, because you face a lack of texts written before yours. Furthermore, there are not a lot of scholars of Asian-American poetry, which means that a professor like Zhou (or a PhD student) must deal with the issue of having relatively few people who would have read her text with much interest or expertise before its publication. As someone who has read and written on Asian-American poetry for years, I can sympathize. I think that the book stands as a pretty amazing accomplishment.

That said, I'll describe arguably my most important issue with the book here. It's not really a critique, and it has to do with the thesis. Basically, I wonder about the extent to which these Asian American poets' transformation of the lyric I to make it more engaged with philosophical questions of otherness is distinctive to Asian-American poetry. I am guessing that Zhou would assert that such an engagement is not distinctive to Asian-American poetry, because she notes the importance of the poetry of Asian-American poets to larger questions of feminism, cultural studies, postcolonial studies, and critical studies in race, gender, and culture in both her introduction and conclusion.

But the book is a study of Asian-American poetry, and I find myself asking, "To what extent do the poetics and poems of various contemporary non-Asian American poets engage in such innovations with the lyric I?" In other words, to what extent should this "Asian-American poetics of alterity" (p. 19) be adjudged as "Asian-American"? The very writing of this book strongly suggests that Zhou does think that Asian-American poetry is different from, for example, feminist poetry or African-American poetry or rural American poetry. Again, a more in-depth discussion of Asian-American history, the history of Asian-American poetry, and/or contemporary Asian-American society would probably have helped. I think that Zhou might even have provided her own working definition of "Asian-American poetry," even if it would have been subject to critique, or perhaps outlined multiple definitions of "Asian-American poetry," so readers could better understand her perspective in this respect.

As you may conclude from this rather involved discussion of The Ethics and Poetics of Alterity in Asian-American Poetry, I think that the book is a must-have for anyone who reads and enjoys Asian-American poetry. It's a very useful volume that belongs on the bookshelves of libraries, scholars of contemporary poetry, and readers of Asian-American poetry alike.

On the Goodness of Asian-American Poets

2006-11-06T00:52:00.000-08:00

In a recent column entitled, "Yes, We Have Role Models," Sports Illustrated writer Jon Wertheim writes that "the overwhelming majority" of people in the sport of tennis are "good people," pointing to the prevalence of such individuals as James Blake, Carlos Moya, Monica Seles. (I'm not sure whether Asian-American poetry aficionados would recognize all these names, but rest assured, they are well-known in the world of tennis.)

While Asian-American poets do not make millions, or even thousands or hundreds, in endorsement deals, I think that the same compliment may be directed towards them. I would say that the overwhelming majority of Asian-American poets are good people. By "good," I mean something akin to Wertheim's observation that world number one tennis player Roger Federer "will return from his matches to write a thoughtful, entertaining blog for this tour's website" -- that is, most Asian-American poets are kind and generous with their time and are not opposed to engaging in some dialogue with readers of their poetry.

Partly that has to do with the present state of Asian-American poetry. The other day, I was telling a friend that, in Asian-American poetry, unlike in fiction and non-fiction and perhaps poetry in general, no author is really so "big" as to be completely inaccessible to a scholar's or reader's letters or feedback on their writing. At the time, I was probably thinking of the "fame and money" factor, suggesting that no Asian-American poet has become so rich and famous through poetry as to, either through choice or neccessity, basically ignore the responses they get from readers of their work. The top poetry books generally just do not sell as well as the top fiction and non-fiction works.

But I have thought it over some more, and I think that the relative lack of fame and money cannot totally account for the "goodness" of Asian-American poets. For one thing, the leading Asian-American poets have achieved an analogous level of fame, such that one might presume that they could feel entitled to ignore scholars' requests to explain their poetry, for example. Yet, in Xiaojing Zhou's The Ethics and Poetics of Alterity in Asian-American Poetry, which I'll be reviewing and discussing on this blog, Zhou thanks all of the poets whose work she discusses in her book -- Li-Young Lee, Marilyn Chin, David Mura, Kimiko Hahn, Timothy Liu, John Yau, and Myung Mi Kim "for taking the time to discuss their writings with [her] and to respond to [her] readings of their poems" (p. x). I found it kind of touching that these leading Asian-American poets would be open to discussions and scholarly analyses of their poetry.

My hypothesis here to account for the generosity of Asian-American poets with their time, especially with regards to such scholarly endeavors, is that the vast majority of Asian-American poets are interested in fostering the idea of "an Asian-American community." They are aware of their existence in American society as Asian-Americans and do care about other Asian-Americans. Participation in organizations like the Asian American Writers' Workshop and Kundminan count as another example of the willingness of many Asian-American poets to reach out to the community as a whole.

Collaborative Poetry

2006-10-27T08:30:00.000-07:00

In this post, I'd like to think more about collaborative poetry as it relates to Asian-American poetry. If one defines "collaborative poetry" as a poem or sequences of poems authored by two or more poets, I think that there is simply not much collaborative work in Asian-American poetry. I know that I've never come across a sequence of poems, or even a single poem, authored by two or more Asian-American poets, and I'm not sure if there are any such poems out there.

In general, one could say that there is and there isn't much collaboration in American poetry today. As I've defined collaborative poetry, there isn't too much of such work going on, especially on the level of book publishing, which makes Reb Livingston and Ravi Shankar's Wanton Textiles, as well as the postcard poems of Tim Yu and Cassie Lewis, relatively unique works of art. But I would say that there is a lot of collaboration among poets in other forms -- for example, writing workshops and conferences, feedback from poetry editors, suggestions and critiques from other poets and friends. You could even expand this list and point out that poets live in societies and are greatly influenced by the time and place in which they live. I would thus assert that the notion that poems typically exist in some kind of "pure" form, uninfluenced by the opinions of other individuals, is somewhat overly romanticized and outdated. In this sense, I think that most poems are the products of a certain degree of collaboration among poets.

But in the less abstract sense of "collaborative poetry," I find it interesting that there is almost none of that happening in Asian-American poetry today. I think that it points to the importance of the individual in the generating of poetry, especially poems that are more personal in nature. But I also wonder whether such a lack of collaboration is essentially a byproduct itself of a particular tradition in contemporary American poetry that presumes a poem to have only one author and thus approaches collaborative poems with some measure of bewilderment. In other words, if you read enough poems in literary magazines that have only one author, pretty soon you presume that is the way that poetry works.

From both history and modernity, however, we know that there are different ways in which the art of poetry could and does work. In some Asian cultures, oral history is the primary means through which poetry is generated, shared, and passed down from generation to generation. The renga is a form of collaborative poetry that originated in Japan, and poets throughout the world continue to work in the form today. Then there is the whole concept of "postcard poetry" in which, in its simplest form, poets exchange poems on postcards, which may or may not touch upon specific geographic locales depending on the poets' definition of such poetry.

While I think that most poets who engage in collaborative poetry find it amusing and a nice change of pace, I also think that such work can and should be taken more seriously as well. There are many potential upsides to collaborative poetry -- it could point to similarities and contrasts in writing styles between two poets, work as a means to highlight different perspectives on particular issues, like matters involving race or ethnicity or gender, and help poets grow as authors and thinkers by showing them a different way of approaching a topic or theme.

On Wanton Textiles and Collaborative Chapbooks

2006-10-19T07:22:00.000-07:00

I just finished reading Wanton Textiles (No Tell Books, 2006), a collaborative poetry chapbook by leading emerging American poets Reb Livingston and Ravi Shankar, and it's an entertaining read. I imagine that if Regis and Kelly were ever to emcee at a Dadaist poetry festival, this is what they would say to the crowd of spools and yarn.

In this slim volume, the distinctive voices of Livingston and Shankar emerge unscathed as their personas exchange prose poems with each other. While both poets continue in the "avant-garde" tradition of poetry writing and seem at ease with surrealist techniques, I think that we essentially have a successful study in contrast. Even though one poet (Shankar) is Asian-American, while the other poet (Livingston) is not, I would say that gender is a more obvious proxy than race for the representation of "difference" here.

Livingston's passages are generally marked by her use of the second person "you," her relatively more personal voice, her plain speech, her directness, her observation of concrete, everyday objects, and her evocation of "feminine" reference points (e.g. "hosiery" (p. 9), "silk worms" (p. 9), "mermaid" (p. 11), "beautiful pinching stilettos" (p. 15), "grapefruit-scented" conditioner (p. 24)).

Shankar's passages are generally marked by his comfort with the third person, his preference for the abstract, his scattering of relatively obscure names and places, his use of long and/or difficult words (e.g. "multitudinous" (p. 14), "clairolfaction" (p. 14), "vestigial" (p. 19), "slabyard of recurrent camisoles" (p. 21), "entropy" (p. 23)), and a certain gender-neutrality that nevertheless still possesses qualities of a "masculine" voice.

I should note that I'm more familiar with Shankar's poetry than Livingston's. I haven't talked about my thoughts on Shankar's poetry on this blog before, so I'll do it quickly here. In my opinion, the greatest strength and weakness of Shankar's poetry is its intelligence. The poetry is often brilliant and eloquent. It's often "erudite," so to speak. The voice, vocabulary, and tone are somewhat like Vijay Seshadri's or John Yau's. There's an implied skepticism towards the personal and/or confessional and not too much of an everyman feel to the poetry. There's usually no obvious invocation of the poet's race. In short, this isn't the work of Adrienne Su or Li-Young Lee here.

I was particularly fascinated by the fact that Shankar largely kept his usual voice, as described previously, but also expanded it in response to Livingston's passages in certain lines. To note just a few of Shankar's lines that break from the prevalent rhythms of abstractness: "Let's stretch together, sky, breasts/ silhouettes, our own recognizable heads/ unnumbered and damp upon the grass" (p. 26), "Nothing doing./ Not a single train has left the station/ grown over with snarling vetch, sandwich wrappers," (p. 23). At times, there's a shifting of gears here towards relatively simple, plain, everyday talk, and what an admirer of Adrienne Su or Li-Young Lee's poetry might characterize as charming.

I'm bringing up this point, because it suggests one of the great potentials of collaborative poetry chapbooks. Collaboration can lead to shifts in a poet's style and add to a poet's repetoire. The back-and-forth between two poets makes each think about his or her work in relation to the other poet's work. I think that I may blog more about collaboration in poetry as it relates to Asian-American poetry in a future post. But for now, I'll just say that Wanton Textiles represents a nice example of, and model for, a collaborative chapbook of poetry.

The Catalina Cariaga-Cultural Evidence Conundrum

2006-10-14T23:19:00.000-07:00

Over the past few days, I have been thinking about Catalina Cariaga's Cultural Evidence (1999). I first came across Cultural Evidence as a college student, and I must admit that I really did not understand it back then. More precisely, I didn't understand why something "like this" was even published and in our library. At around the same time, I had similar reactions to the poems of Myung-Mi Kim and John Yau, which generally bear a certain similiarity to Cariaga's in the sense that they are rather "avant-garde," may arguably classified as "language" poems, and often push the limits of form in poetry. At the time, these poems made relatively little sense to me.

Now I think that it is natural for people to gravitate towards certain "schools of poetry" and enjoy certain kinds of poetry more than others. But here is the thing -- I also think that we should challenge this natural inclination to, essentially, stick with the types of poems we like. It builds our capacity to relate to each other as readers of poetry, challenges our preconceptions regarding different schools of poetry, sharpens our minds and expands our perspectives on the possibilities of poetry, and may lead us to eventually discover that we like certain styles of poetry that we may not have in the past. On a related note, I also think that people should read within and outside of Asian-American poetry as well as both contemporary and non-contemporary poetry.

I wonder sometimes, though. I wonder whether my views on the importance of reading many different types of poetry might change in the future. The existence of the very phrase, "schools of poetry," suggests that it might. My experiences in general suggest that my sense of the importance in reading poetry broadly and historically may be in the minority here. It appears that the vast majority of poets and readers of poetry tend to "stick with what they like," so to speak.

And practically speaking, it makes a lot of sense. There are lots of poems to read. There are only so many hours in the day. There are only so many days in the year. We can only check a limited number of poetry books out of the library. We can't afford to buy every book of poetry out there. We have lives outside of poetry. It makes sense, on a practical level, to focus on the kinds of poetry that we intuitively feel we like and quickly move past the ones we don't. Also, by focusing on the poems that we have a certain affinity towards, we can read them in greater depth. We can arguably develop a greater understanding of that particular body of work.

In terms of relating this phenomenon to my own experience of reading poetry, one might call it the Catalina Cariaga-Cultural Evidence Conundrum. That is, to appreciate a text that I found challenging, like Cariaga's Cultural Evidence, I needed to put in more time and effort into it than I probably would have when reading a more accessible work of poetry. By putting more time and effort into it, I was perhaps spending less time on poems that I found easier and more enjoyable while not spending as much time developing a particular expertise in the poetry that I more naturally enjoyed.

But the conundrum presents itself in another form -- I would never have appreciated Cariaga's Cultural Evidence, if I had not been open-minded enough to return to the book. I would have missed out on a great piece of literature, and I would not have sharpened my skills as a reader. In fact, I'm glad that I stepped out of what had been my comfort zone as a poetry reader and took a more in-depth look at a genre of poetry whose importance I had not fully comprehended before.

In addition, by focusing on a particular "school of poetry" without making an effort to look outside this particular field, one risks not gaining sufficient insight into the very field itself. I find overspecialization somewhat worrisome, because it could breed complacency and lack of understanding of the more general context within which a school of poetry, or specialty, is situated. The ability to make cross-field comparisons can add to the quality of the reading and writing of "one's own school of poetry." A greater understanding of the diverse schools of poetry may lead to more innovation in both the scholarship on poetry and the writing of poems.

At this point in time, as a reader, I think that one of my goals is to read a wide range of poems to get a greater sense of the possibilities that are out there. At least in the forseeable future, I would like to remain open to the diversity in poetry and gain a better understanding of Asian-American poetry and beyond.

Asian-American Poets Not Named Li-Young Lee

2006-10-11T20:47:00.000-07:00

How many Asian-American poets do you know? You might be able to name Mei-Mei Berssenbrugge, Justin Chin, Garrett Hongo, Eileen Tabios, and Nellie Wong off the top of your head. You might think that you know most, if not practically all, of the Asian-American poets out there. But do you really?

On her blog, Barbara Jane Reyes recently made an insightful commentary on the general preoccupation with Li-Young Lee, and it made me think. It made me think that, for a greater understanding of Asian-American poetry, we should read a wider range of poets. It made me consider the possibility that all of us -- even Asian-American poets, even people who study Asian-American poetry closely -- may not know as much as we think we know, as far as appreciating the scope of Asian-American poetry goes.

There are at least several dilemmas with this lack of knowledge. First, it renders any of our assertions of "what Asian-American poetry is" less accurate, given that we have only a limited, partial view of this body of literature. Second, it prevents us from making comparisons between the poetry of, say, a "Justin Chin" and the poetry of a perhaps lesser known Asian-American poet. Third and related to the previous points, it makes progress in defining and comprehending "Asian-American poetry" (and perhaps in the writing of such poetry itself) more difficult. There may be a constant reinvention of the wheel, a swinging of the pendulum between "language" and "political/identity" poetry camps in both the poems themselves and the scholarship on the poems, fostering "schools of thought" that are not terribly original and cannot fully negotiate all the nuances of "Asian-American poetry."

Where am I going here? In the remainder of post, I want to introduce three Asian-American poets that we should know. I say, "introduce," because I have never come across a discussion of any of these poets, or any of their poems or books of poetry, on any poetry blog. In fact, I have very seldom encountered their names or poems anywhere and thus do not know much about their poetry. But I say, "we should know," because all three of these poets have something in common -- in the past seven or eight years, important publishers have published their first poetry collections.

It is somewhat of a puzzle to me that certain poets are more generally well-known than others. Does the popularity of the poet correlate with the perceived quality of the poetry? I really cannot say. I cannot say, because these poets have something else in common -- relatively few of their poems are online, which makes it difficult for me to form a judgment. Now I could buy their books, but the catch-22 here is that I actually do not know enough about their poetry to make an intelligent decision as to whether I should purchase them. Perhaps these poets and/or their publishers had not done quite enough in terms of publicity. Or perhaps it is those of us in the blogosphere who are behind the curve. I don't know. At any rate, I'd like to give their books of poetry another look with this post:

Arlene Biala: In 1999, West End Press published her first poetry collection, Continental Drift. Here is her biography: "Arlene Biala was born and raised in the San Francisco Bay area. Her poetry explores stories of the generations who have left their native lands to live in America, particularly Philipino/a people. A performance artist with an MFA from the New College of California in San Francisco, she has studied under poets Genny Lim, Juan Felipe Herrera, Margarita Luna Robles, David Meltzer, and Lyn Hejinian. She performs with her brothers, Jimmy Biala on percussion and Billy Biala on saxophone, throughout California. Her stark, tender, sensual and political poetry goes beyond chronological storytelling into the dance of simultaneous experiences called forth by tragedy, family, and love" (http://www.unmpress.com/Book.php?id=2160).

David Chin: In 2000, Mellen Poetry Press published his poetry collection, The China Cupboard and the Coal Furnace. Here is his biography: "David Chin grew up in Jersey City. He received his PhD in English from Binghamton University. His poetry appears in various journals, anthologies, and in a chapbook, Chalked in Orange (Mbira Press). He has been the recipient of a Clara Woo award" (http://www.mellenpress.com/mellenpress.cfm?aid=314&pc=10).

Richard Hamasaki: In 2001, the University of Hawaii Press published his poetry collection, From the Spider Bone Diaries: Poems and Songs. Here is his biography: "Richard Hamasaki's home is in Kane'ohe, on the island of O'ahu. He has published two poetry chapbooks, 7 Poems/8 Photographs (with brother Mark Hamasaki), and virtual fleality. Hamasaki co-produces a series of publications, including spoken word and music recordings, and he writes articles, reviews, and essays, as well as poetry" (http://www.amazon.com/Spider-Bone-Diaries-Poems-Songs/dp/0824825411/sr=1-2/qid=1160628428/ref=sr_1_2/104-5455499-2839160?ie=UTF8&s=books).

A Lack of Asian-American Lit Mags at Colleges and Universities, Part II

2006-10-01T01:02:00.000-07:00

A short while ago, I made a post commenting on the lack of Asian-American literary magazines at colleges and universities. And someone who came across the post recently asked me the following question: "I wonder if there is a way that an organization could be set up into helping campuses start their own Asian American lit mags?"

I thought it was an excellent but difficult question. I attempted an answer, and I am basing this post on the answer that I gave:

At this point, my best answer, which is not directly answering the question, is that I think that undergraduate and MFA students alike may start an Asian-American literary magazine without the existence of such a centralized organization -- by making the publication an online one. While it would be nice to have a print publication -- and personally, I like to read fiction and poetry on paper myself -- I think that an online publication would not only be more financially feasible but would most likely reach a wider audience than a print publication as well. Actually, I think that online lit mags are the wave of the future, even though print lit mags will never become completely obsolete.

It would definitely be nice if the college or university gives financial and/or infrastructural support to an Asian-American literary magazine, and I think that students should at least try to seek support from various sources at their respective colleges and universities. Possible sources of assistance include student organizations, faculty members, student governments, and the Dean's Office. In general, I would say that the broader the institutional support that an Asian-American literary magazine possesses, the more successful it will be and the longer it will last. It takes time and effort to start a lit mag, and if there are fiction and/or poetry student groups on campus, an undergrad or grad student who desires to start such a publication may want to contact members of these groups to find others willing to help out as editors and staff members. The Asian Student Associations at various colleges and universities are another potential source of funding and assistance.

Given the lack of Asian-American literary magazines out there, I would add that anyone who started such a publication at a university or college would be filling an important niche. Particularly if the Asian-American student population is not that large, I think that it may be a good idea to seek submissions on a national basis, and I would speculate that there would be a respectable number of responses. Such a publication could be limited to undergraduate and/or graduate students, depending on the preferences of the editor(s). Also, it may be useful to visit existing online literary publications to consult the formats of their websites and their guidelines...Anyhow, I think that it is possible for undergraduate and graduate students to set up Asian-American literary magazines, and that's my personal though definitely far-from-perfect take on things here.

A Few More Thoughts on Asian-American Poetry (What Else is New?)

2006-09-30T20:58:00.000-07:00

Poets Bryan Thao Worra and Barbara Jane Reyes have made great posts on Asian-American poetry, and I would encourage you to check them out. I just have a few quick, general thoughts to add:

1. Asian-American poetry, of course, has a past. But it also has a terrific present and future, which look brighter than ever.

2. I second Pam and Bryan's remarks that Li-Young Lee has an indefinable "presence" that makes him a figure of interest for most people who have come across him in person. I would also add that Li-Young Lee deserves a lot of credit for that. It's primarily what he says and how he interacts with people that makes him so interesting and compelling, along with the fact that he is very generous with his time and energy.

3. I share Barbara Jane's concern over the equation, "Li-Young Lee = Asian-American Poetry." I think that Li-Young Lee himself would not want that to happen. I also concur that other Asian-American poets should have a greater share of the "Asian-American poetry" spotlight, so to speak.

4. There is a need for more Asian-American literary publications. Ironically, at at time when more Asian-American poets than ever are writing and getting published, there may be fewer Asian-American literary publications out there than at any point in the past decade.

5. Both Eileen Tabios and Bryan have mentioned this book, and I want to highlight it here: David Mura's Song for Uncle Tom, Tonto & Mr. Moto: Poetry & Identity (University of Michigan Press, Poets on Poetry series, 2002). Like Breaking the Alabaster Jar, it contains interviews and perspectives on poetry by the poet (the poet being David Mura here).

Li-Young Lee on Asian-American Poets and Poetry

2006-09-27T19:03:00.000-07:00

"That's another thing. A lot of art by Asian Americans is about being Asian American. That's a very dangerous thing because that's supposing that there's something unusual about us. There may be certain things about us that are unique, but ultimately, like you were saying, our experiences are all universal. We have to transcend, especially in art, we have to transcend those - what I call trivial aspects of our existence - and we have to move on to greater issues, that's really what art is about. It's not about this momentary thing, like about AIDS. It's like, 'I'm going to write all these poems or paint all these paintings about AIDS'. AIDS is a real thing. It's very frightening. It's very important in our time. But at the same time, is it art?" -- Li-Young Lee, "Art is Who We Are," Breaking the Alabaster Jar (BOA Editions, 2006, ed. Earl G. Ingersoll), p. 62.

In an interview with Patty Cooper and Alex Yu, originally published in the terrific but now seemingly defunct Chicago-based Asian-American literary/artistic magazine Riksha, poet Li-Young Lee offers a series of fascinating assertions on Asian-American art and poetry. From this interview, the above paragraph includes perhaps the most fascinating and provocative of these remarks, as Lee dismisses much of the work of Asian-American poets as lacking transcendence. I think that it also exemplifies Lee's true feelings on Asian-American art and poetry, as Lee makes such remarks in many of his interviews (though almost certainly in terms that are less stark than in analogizing Asian-American identity to living with AIDS and then suggesting both are "momentary".)

I have been giving these comments a lot of careful thought, as I believe they are important to the way that we conceptualize art and poetry. And I want to help Lee here by answering his ultimate question, "Is it art?"

In this paragraph, Lee suggests that art and poetry should seek to "transcend trivial aspects of our existence" and be about "greater issues," by which he means, "love and death" (p. 63). But what I think that Lee does not acknowledge is that one of the most important ways to address greater issues like love and address is through the "trivial aspects of our existence." In contrast to Lee, who claims that "our experiences are all universal," I would say that our experiences can be both universal and particular at the same time.

Let me elaborate. Lee praises Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson (p. 62) -- two of my favorite poets as well. But whereas Lee appears to believe that the greatest quality of Whitman and Dickinson's poetry is the ability to directly address the universals of love and death, I would say that it is the capacity to illuminate the universals of love and death through the use of vivid, specific images, words, and forms as well as through the evocation of contemporary social concerns with gender, class, and race.

Please correct me if I am wrong here, but I think that Lee posits a future without races by implicitly comparing poems about being Asian-American to poems about AIDS. Essentially, he offers a future in which AIDS (and race) are no longer real, salient issues. It is what I would call a "utopian waiting game theory" of art and poetry. That is, if we "wait" long enough (perhaps decades or centuries), social categories such as those of gender, class, race, ethnicity, disability, etc. will one-by-one no longer have relevance, and we will be left with a "pure" form of art and poetry that focuses on the essentials of love and death.

I think that there are a couple problems with the "utopian waiting game theory". First, I highly doubt that a "pure" form of art and poetry exists. (If one chooses to believe that language and grammar are products of society, then it definitely does not exist.) Second, assuming for the moment that such a "pure" form of art and poetry is possible, I question whether we should aim for it. For complete devotees of Lee's philosophy here, I think that a key problem is, so to speak, "a poetics of boredom" -- an adherence to such a philosophy could very well result in poems that are devoid of originality in language or ideas, e.g., poems that just keep on repeating the words "love," "light," "water," etc. Another issue may be the overproduction of poetry that is unengaged with the world in which we live.

I would suggest that art that "lacks transcendence" is still art. To return to Lee's question, I would answer that poems about being Asian-American or poems about AIDS are works of art, even if one believes that, for example, race will no longer be salient in American society or there will be a cure for AIDS in the future. Specific moments in time and space -- and detailed evocations of specific moments in time and space -- can be interesting, funny, warm, touching, noble, and/or beautiful. Beautiful art does not have to be transcendent to achieve beauty. Perhaps "transcendent art" is art that remains relevant for the society that experiences it. It can exist powerfully for the time being.

Introduction by Earl G. Ingersoll

2006-09-19T09:17:00.000-07:00

As noted in the previous post, I have more to say about Breaking the Alabaster Jar: Conversations with Li-Young Lee (BOA Editions, 2006, ed. Earl G. Ingersoll. Specifically, I want to highlight Ingersoll's introduction to the series of interviews, which I identified as "one of the most perceptive introductions on an Asian-American poet that I have ever come across" in the previous post.

As devoted readers of Asian-American poetry know all-too-well, there has been a long history of non-Asian-American poets giving awful introductions to/readings of the poetry of Asian-American poets. What do I mean by "awful"? I think that I would define "awful" here as "profound misreadings of poems that veer dangerously close, or plunge vigorously into, crude stereotypes." What are the features of such a maladroit introduction? First, it typically includes overuse of such words as "quiet," "tradition," "humility," etc. Second, none of those words accurately describe the poems themselves (and probably not the respective poets-as-people either). Third, there is an indefinable hovering over the "exotic," "oriental," and/or "foreign" features of the poetry, more profoundly present if the Asian-American poet happens to be female.

I have to add quickly here, however, that I think that the intent of the non-Asian-American poet who reads/introduces the work of an Asian-American poet is not necessarily bad. In other words, I think that the origin of such stereotypical misreadings typically comes not from ill-will towards Asian-American poets or his or her poetry but from some deeper inability to approach the text with less static, so to speak. I don't know if it is possible to read poetry without having some thoughts on the race, ethnicity, and nationality of the poet -- especially if explicitly referenced in the poetry -- but I would say that an introduction to a book of poems should not primarily be about "the extent to which the poet her or himself is 'Asian' or 'Asian-American'"but should help focus the readers' attention to the qualities of the poems themselves with reference to larger issues of race, ethnicity, nationality, gender, class, etc., should the narrative call for it.

Earl G. Ingersoll's introduction is, of course, not an introduction to a book of poems by an Asian-American poet. It is an introduction to an Asian-American poet himself. I can't say whether that it is easier or harder to write such an introduction, but I think that the dangers of inaccurate stereotyping still exist, and Ingersoll not only skillfully avoids them but paints a remarkably clear and interesting portrait of Li-Young Lee.

Ingersoll's introduction opens with a wonderful paragraph that manages to provide a glimpse into Li-Young Lee's personality, a history of the Lee family, and a brief discussion of Lee's poetry and memoir, Winged Seed, while maintaining the flow of the narrative. All three have been done before elsewhere but to do it all in one paragraph is no easy task.

As editor, Ingersoll then undertakes the risky (but adroitly executed and thus very readable) enterprise of speaking through Li-Young Lee, ventriloquizing Lee through a general reading of his interviews. There are multiple examples here, all emphases mine. "Lee is well-aware that excessive emphasis on his life and especially on his ethnicity can direct attention away from the poems themselves" (p. 9). "Lee knows how indebted he is to American poets" (p. 10). "He might well identify himself as an Asian-American to the census-taker at the door; however, it is as an American poet that he would see himself as first and foremost" (p. 10). "Paradoxically, Lee as a poet has reservations about language" (p. 11). "Once again, Lee is a poet who takes his vocation very seriously" (p. 11). The list goes on and on.

I think that this technique works really well here -- and it is very difficult to tell that it works really well until you have gone through most of the interviews -- because Ingersoll has closely read and digested all the interviews, as well as having interviewed Lee himself, which allows for an intimate yet global reading of Lee as poet, artist, reader, father, and man. In other words, the success comes not by accident but as a result of hard editorial work.

Perhaps more importantly, this technique helps Ingersoll sidestep the perils involved with projecting his personal opinions on the "Asian" or "Asian-American" features of Li-Young Lee's poetry. For example, we don't have Ingersoll saying whether it is a good or bad thing that Li-Young Lee "is not likely to think to himself, Here I am, an Asian American setting out to compose an Asian-American poem"(p. 10). We have Lee's perspective from the interviews, and that seems sufficient here.

Ingersoll then answers the question that I think that all editors of collections of interviews, poems, short stories, etc. should answer: Why this volume? Why should anyone undertake the task of collecting interviews by Li-Young Lee? Why should any potential reader of this collection care? In my previous post, I suggested that the two main answers to these questions are that 1) Lee is a prominent poet who has sold many books and that 2) Lee gives really good and interesting interviews. That is implied in the very undertaking of this enterprise, but Ingersoll adds another important reason: 3) Lee is not an academic and thus "is just not likely to write essays, explaining his notions of his craft as a poet" (p. 12). In other words, these interviews are basically all we've got, aside from speaking personally with Lee himself, in terms of learning Lee's thoughts and views on art, poetry, and life. As Ingersoll puts it, "These conversations offer access to Lee's sense of himself as a working poet and his concept of what it means to be a poet" (p. 13).

Ingersoll does a few other technical things well in the introduction. First, he appears to prefer to call these interviews "conversations," as opposed to "interviews" (even though he does use the term "interviews," probably for the sake of clarity), which seems more appropriate, given the free-flowing feel of most of the exchanges in the volume. Second, he integrates about the right amount of quotes from Lee in the right number of places. Third, towards the end of the introduction, he remembers to clearly reference the original publications in which the interviews first appeared as well as list all of Lee's honors -- again, Ingersoll moves quickly and devotes just about the right amount of space here (two paragraphs). Fourth, Ingersoll does not use the words "foreign," "exotic," or "oriental," which is consonant with the fact that Lee refrains from using these terms as well, but at the same time, Ingersoll does discuss Lee's Chinese heritage and Lee's views on race and ethnicity, which is consonant with the fact that Lee does, in fact, discuss these topics in his conversations. In short, Ingersoll pays close attention to the substance of Lee's interviews.

A larger question went through my mind as I reflected upon Ingersoll's introduction. Would it have been possible for anyone to write such an introduction twenty years ago? I don't know. One could argue that Ingersoll, and perhaps future authors of introductions to the works of Asian-American poets, have the benefit of decades of response and critique from Asian-American scholars. One could also make the "demographic" argument that the increase in the Asian-American population over the past two decades has led to a degree of mainstreaming of the Asian-American population that has made more possible a reading of an Asian-American poet's work without a complete preoccupation with the race of the poet her or himself. Regardless, I think that Ingersoll successfully paints an accurate and informative portrait of Li-Young Lee that will last through at least the first half of the twenty-first century.