January. The living room window.

We start 2012 with a prompt that was suggested to us by one of our former staff writers, Supriya Misra.

After reading Richard Meier’s poem “[Untitled] The child thought it strange” in Poets.org‘s Poem-a-Day newsletter, Surpriya was so struck by the opening line that she emailed us to share it. “I think the first line of this poem would make an amazing poetry prompt!” she wrote.

We couldn’t agree more. Hence, today’s Friday Prompt.

Prompt: Write a poem that begins with some part or variation of the line: “The child thought it strange to define words with other words.”

To read the rest of Richard Meier’s poem,  click here.

In the meantime, we’ll be putting together the issue, and preparing to exhibit at this February’s AWP conference in Chicago, where we’ll be sharing a table with Kartika Review under the name “The Asian American Literary Collective.”  Planning on going to the conference this year?  Please let us know, or at least plan to stop by the table — we’d love to meet you in person!

Warm thoughts for a happy, healthy 2012,

Iris & Mia

All the best for a happy, safe, and peaceful holiday, and a wonderful New Year! See you in 2012.

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PEOPLE ARE TINY IN PAINTINGS OF CHINA

People are Tiny in Paintings of China
by Cynthia Arrieu-King
Octopus Books, 2010
Recommended by Iris:
“I lost my father in late 2010, and the delicate—almost brittle—transparency of this collection (which has much to do with fathers and familial heritage) struck me to the bone.  Arrieu-King’s language is beautifully evocative, but economical; her poems are rendered with slim, decisive strokes that are as breathtaking for their clear-eyed, precise minimalism as they are for their wry, sharply observant (at times downright blunt) commentary.  Acts of mathematical counting, division (or inability to divide, as in the case of the poem titled “Prime Numbers”), and serial repetition are motifs in the collection, as are colors, lenses or frames of vision, the contours of landscapes and language. Taken together, these themes serve to magnify and illuminate the speaker’s gaze as she negotiates what it means to claim a multiracial, transnational identity in a world that irrationally desires, even demands, perfectly divisible, concrete forms.”

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ARDENCY

Ardency: A Chronicle of the Amistad Rebels
by Kevin Young
Alfred A. Knopf, 2011
Recommended by Mia:
“Kevin Young’s latest book, Ardency, is at once epic and lyric, documentary and wholly imaginative.  Written from the perspective of various figures involved in the Amistad rebellion of 1839, the three sections of this book, ‘Buzzard,’ ‘Correspondence,’ and ‘Witness: A Libretto’ unfold in a dramatic reimagining of this moment in history.  While it’s true that with this collection, Young ‘[places] himself squarely in the African American poetic tradition pioneered by such writers as Langston Hughes’ (as the Washington Post claims on the book jacket), he also uses it to reinvent the tradition.”

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THE ANATOMY THEATER

The Anatomy Theater
by Nadine Sabra Meyer
Harper Collins, 2005
Recommended by Mia:
“Nadine Sabra Meyer won the 2005 National Poetry Series Award with this collection, and I can’t recommend it more highly.  The poems draw deeply from history and mythology, studies of the human figure—its dissections, assemblages—and the tradition of the body in medicine and art.  Her work is riveting, beautifully crafted, and a must-read for anyone interested in, as John Koethe puts it, the human body and its relationship to the transcendent.  Luckily, Harper Collins lets you browse the contents of the book on their website, so you can preview a selection of the poems online.”

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CHEERS TO MUSES

Cheers to Muses: Contemporary Works by Asian American Women
Asian American Women Artists Association, 2008
Recommended by Kelsay:
“Cheers to Muses is a truly inspired and inspiring anthology featuring visual art, poetry, fiction and nonfiction by Asian American women who challenge contemporary and historical assumptions about what it means to create Asian American art in all of its forms. Barbara Jane Reyes, Kathy Aoki, Keiko Nelson, Nellie Wong, Katherine Westerhout, Genny Lim, Catherine Ceniza Choy and many others share pieces of work and tributes to the Asian American women who have influenced their creative lives. Aside from being visually appealing, it offers a taste of how Asian American women approach the contemporary art scene.”

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APOCALYPTIC SWING

Apocalyptic Swing
by Gabrielle Calvocoressi
Persea, 2009
Recommended by Henry:
“This was recommended to me by someone who’s completing a dissertation on boxing and Modernism. I’ve boxed and had a hard time writing about it, and have never come across any literature about the sport/art that isn’t mere glory or gossip. But this book of poems is ‘it.’ Brutal, beautiful, sincere. It’s the one that blew me away this year.”

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bough breaks

Bough Breaks
by Tamiko Beyer
Meritage Press, 2011
Recommended by Jai:
“I am excited by this book’s inquiry into and desire for queer conception and how it imagines what queer mothering would look like.”

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For yet more evocative reading, we also recommend any of the following titles, which we have reviewed or featured in the last year:

Poetry

• Mouth by Lisa Chen (reviewed in this post by Henry)
• Travel & Risk by Monica Mody (featured in this post)
• Spit by Esther Lee (featured in this post by Henry)
• แล้ว and then  entwine by Jai Arun Ravine (featured in this post)
• Narrative of the Life of the Brown Boy and the White Man by Ronaldo V. Wilson (reviewed by Stephen Hong Sohn in this post)
• Poems of the Black Object by Ronaldo V. Wilson (reviewed by Stephen Hong Sohn in this post)
• Toxic Flora by Kimiko Hahn (winner of the 2011 Asian American Literary Award in Poetry; mentioned here; also see Wendy’s interview with Kimiko Hahn)
• Requiem for the Orchard by Oliver de la Paz (1st finalist for the 2011 Asian American Literary Award in Poetry; mentioned here and reviewed by Supriya in 2010)
• We Take Me Apart by Molly Gaudry (2nd finalist for the 2011 Asian American Literary Award in Poetry; mentioned here)
• The Propaganda Factory, or Speaking of Trees by Marc Vincenz (featured in this post)
• Ligature Strain by Kim Koga (reviewed in this post by Jai)
• Yellow/Yellow by Margaret Rhee (reviewed in this post by Jai)
• Sông I Sing by Bao Phi (reviewed in this post by Greg Choy)
• not merely because of the unknown that was stalking toward them by Jenny Boully (reviewed in this post by Jai)

Prose, Mixed Genre, & Comic Art

• Kartika Review: 2009-2010 Anthology (featured in this post)
  
• Secret Identities: The Asian American Superhero Anthology (reviewed in this post by Henry)
• How Do I Begin? A Hmong American Literary Anthology  (edited by HWAC, whom we profiled in Issue 3; featured in this post)
• Soul Mountain by Gao Xingjian (featured in this post by Henry)

What is the best book that you have read in 2011, or what books are you planning to read (or give) over the holidays?  Let us know in the comments!

Videopoem for Kenji C. Liu’s “A Son Writes Back”

LR contributor Kenji C. Liu sent us a link to this awesome video he created for his poem “A Son Writes Back” (the most recent version of which appeared in Issue 2). The video combines an audio performance of Kenji’s poem with musical accompaniment by Jason Jong.  According to its caption on Vimeo, the visuals in the piece are footage from “a US Air Force propaganda film portraying aerial attacks on Imperial Japan during World War II.”  Watch the embedded version below, or follow the links beneath it to watch on Vimeo.

(A Son Writes Back – Poetry by Kenji C. Liu – Kou Xiang by Jason Jong from Kenji Liu on Vimeo).

W. Todd Kaneko Featured by the Los Angeles Review

Not only does Issue 3 contributor W. Todd Kaneko’s work appear in the 10th issue of the Los Angeles Review, but the magazine recently featured his poem “Remembering Minidoka” online as one of the issue’s “highlights”!  To read the piece, click here.  Many congrats to Todd on this honor.

Bao Phi’s Sông I Sing Reviewed in the New York Times

The heading says it all: Bao Phi’s collection, which Greg Choy reviewed for us last week, has been reviewed (and highly praised), by The New York Times.  Our congratulations to Bao on these well-deserved accolades.

Melissa R. Sipin responds to Kimiko Hahn

Issue 3 contributor Melissa R. Sipin was inspired enough by Wendy’s interview with Kimiko Hahn (and by the APR interview that Wendy references) that she wrote a poem in response!  She’s shared it on her blog.  Thanks, Melissa, for your thoughtful engagement with Kimiko’s words!

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Julia Kuo's illustration of HYPHEN's Roundtable on Asian American Poetry

1. “CON-VERSE-SATIONS”
(Hyphen Magazine Roundtable with Timothy Yu, Victoria Chang, and Nick Carbo)

I appreciate the thoughtful dialogue to be had in this article with regard to Asian American poetry’s stylistic diversity, its audiences, its status both inside and outside of academia, and its current relationship to its activist roots. In particular, I think Tim Yu makes a spot-on observation that while, in the wave that immediately followed the 70′s, poets were more interested in the confessional mode than in political rhetoric, poets are now coming back towards the political, some through the overt expression of activist “creeds,” as is true in the spoken word scene, and others more quietly, by infusing their approaches to craft and subject matter with strong political undertones (Yu points to Ken Chen as an example of one such poet). “We’ve had two decades of Li-Young Lee and Marilyn Chin and these writers who really risk prominence writing about their own personal experience,” he says, but “that’s not where we are anymore.”  His claim is exemplified by the list of recommended titles the editors provide at the end of the article: from Cathy Park Hong to Barbara Jane Reyes to Ronaldo V. Wilson, the body of contemporary Asian American poets who are again engaging with the political (particularly through experimental forms) is strong, and seems to be growing.

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2. “Lyricism, Political Poetry, Social Realism, and Responsibility”
(Reflection from Barbara Jane Reyes’s blog)

Reyes poses a lot of questions here regarding the relationship between lyricism and political agency. As a result, this particular blog post serves as an excellent illustration of the complex nature of the inquiries about craft and politics that contemporary Asian American poets must negotiate in their work. Reyes’s thoughts also provide a useful first-hand perspective on what it is like to be a poet of deep political convictions whose practice of craft simultaneously engages with and resists certain established literary traditions.

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3. Forum with David Mura, Ru Freeman, & Alexander Chee
(from The Asian American Literary Review‘s first issue)

If you have access to a print copy of AALR‘s first issue, this particular discussion is very much worth checking out. Of specific interest is the debate initiated by Alexander Chee about the degree to which Asian American writers need (or ought to) “perform” their ethnic identity in their work, given the context of today’s world. Both Mura’s and Freeman’s responses, and Chee’s subsequent reply, illustrate the fraught nature of the Asian American poet’s dilemma: do we do our communities a disservice when we write from the space of the personal, without regard for the macro scope of our position as minority voices in America? Or conversely, are we untrue to ourselves if we sacrifice the personal in our craft in order to either meet outside expectations or embody the voice of a particular political cause? (Surely, there must be an equilibrium somewhere between the two, but is there, and can there ever be, one?) It’s a valid set of questions, and one that reflects a very real internal conflict that all Asian American poets must wrestle with at some point in their career.

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4. Open City: Blogging Urban Change
(Produced by the Asian American Writers’ Workshop)

While the Open City project and blog is not specifically about poetry, its genesis and mission very much speak to the kind of geographical migration (away from fixed urban centers) that Greg Choy says has complicated contemporary Asian American poets’ relationship to the idea of community.  Open City seeks to document changing communities in New York—and does so in a really unique way, by bringing artists and writers into conversation with activists and academics.  Even more interesting to me is the fact that Open City, although based out of and about New York,  locates its own center in a geographically ambiguous way by enacting its documentation exclusively online. In a way, it speaks to the impulse towards transience, the shifting that Choy says is reflected in contemporary Asian American work, but in so doing, it also demonstrates that Bao Phi is far from alone in the immediacy of his approach to community-based politics. Of particular interest is Cristiana Balk’s recent post on the archives of the Basement Workshop Collective (the writing group, first formed in the 70′s, that eventually birthed the AAWW), in which she reflects on the significance of the AAWW’s historical role within NYC’s Asian American community, and the ways in which that role has evolved since then.  (As Balk astutely points out, although the AAWW is still deeply engaged in community-based work, the political and social context in which it operates today is very different from the one in which it began).

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5. Our thoughts, and yours

Finally, here’s our own editorial take (from Issue 2) on the relationship between identity and critical inquiry in terms of Asian American poetry.  We’d love to hear your thoughts, as well. Have you written about, or can you recommend additional resources that engage with this question? If so, please let us know in the comments!

Candles in Notre Dame de Paris

I am a Christian, and for the past two weeks, my church has been celebrating what’s known as the season of Advent—a period of anticipation in which we light a new candle every week (symbolizing hope, peace, joy, and love, respectively) as we prepare for the coming of the Christ child at Christmas.  I’ve always loved Advent and think of it as a particularly beautiful tradition—somewhat akin in execution, perhaps, to other festivals of light like Diwali—because of the way in which the spiritual significance of Christmas (for me) is rendered concrete through the act of illumination.  Within the Christian tradition, as in other cultures, light and illumination is a deeply important symbol: to light a candle is to enact, in a small, symbolic way, the illumination of the soul, and of the world—and to keep it burning is to remind oneself of the significance of that light; to say that such a light is worth preserving; to acknowledge that that light is a constant source of hope, peace, joy, love, and salvation, and that it is a beacon to which we can return again and again and again.  One of the most well-known biblical uses of light as a spiritual metaphor comes from the gospel of John:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. (John 1:1-5)

I love the way in which the writer of this passage intertwines different metaphors of illumination with the idea of language, of prophecy, of the Word.  In the world of his metaphor, light is life, which illuminates in order to clarify and to sharpen the world so that we can see what is around is, and—most interestingly to me, light is with, and resides within, the Word. While the Word (with a capital “W”) is most directly being used here to refer God’s authority as manifested through scripture and in particular, through the fulfillment of certain Messianic prophecies from the Old Testament (in the form of Jesus), it also intrigues me to note that the writer has conceptualized the ideas of text, life, light, and salvation as entities which are seamlessly linked, so that the Word can illuminate; light can be life; the light can be in the Word; the Word can have existed from the beginning, and the Word can both be with, and in fact, actually be a facet of the identity of God.  By no means would I ever claim that my imperfect human words (with a lowercase “w”) could ever match up to the (capitalized) Word in terms of spiritual authority or ability to illuminate; but it is intriguing to me as a writer to think that in some way, the metaphorical significance of text within Scripture is so seamlessly linked to the idea of bringing light, of illumination.  Because—to take an associative (highly un-theological) leap—isn’t this impulse similar to the way in which we often speak of our daily practice of craft?  While I don’t read this passage from John as an invitation to write (as given its context, that seems to be neither its immediate purpose nor its theological intent), I am reminded by it that words and text can indeed have a trenchant ability to illuminate and to clarify, to highlight important ideas for the reader, and to enhance and make those ideas seem more real, more accessible, more logically present, even more “true.”  Accordingly, it seems imperative to me that as writers, we should act upon our particular responsibilities to illuminate through language not only so that we  can render our own ideas and experiences more immediate, but also so that we can help to illuminate and “make real” the words of others.

This year at my church, I have had the opportunity to curate a series of “poems for illumination” for the season of Advent.  Each week, I choose a poem that in some way addresses the idea associated with the candle that will be lit (for “Hope,” I chose a poem of Hopkins; for “Peace,” I selected Milton; for “Joy,” I’m using a poem by Michael Chitwood, and for “Love,” I’ll be sharing a piece by Denise Levertov), and include it, along with a short close reading / reflection, on a slip of paper that gets tucked into each of the bulletins for people to encounter as they look through the announcements or follow the order of the service.  It has been a delight to have the opportunity to reflect simultaneously on poetry and scripture—the two kinds of text whose language have had the deepest influence on me, as a poet and as a human being—and a joy to be able to share, and to help “make real,” language from two genres that I often hear described as dense, inaccessible, or intimidating. In the Middle Ages, beautiful visual art and calligraphy was used to “illuminate” sacred texts; so why not poetry (especially since so much of scripture is poetry, in the first place)? I love the idea of light feeding light: of juxtaposing the imagery of one text with that of another in order to render both of their meanings richer and more resonant. To illuminate,  beautify, to clarify, to make real, and to render true: aren’t these objectives at the very heart of what we seek to do every day as poets, as writers and readers of language?

Prompt: Write a poem that uses illumination as its central metaphor, or which meditates upon, or takes inspiration from, another text in order to illuminate or wrestle with its craft, meaning, or implications.

Directory Listings

We are thrilled to announce that LR is now officially listed both in Poets & Writers‘ Literary Magazines Database and on New Pages!  Thank you very, very much to both P&W and the New Pages staff for reaching out to us and making this possible.

Reading Period for Issue 4 Closes on Dec. 21st

A reminder that our current reading period (for Issue 4) will close on December 21st.  We are still looking for original poems, translation work, and lots, and lots of art to feature in the issue, so please do consider sending something our way!  Our submission guidelines can be found here.  (Our submissions form proper can be accessed via the button at the bottom of the guidelines page).

Upcoming Holiday Hiatus

As usual, we will be taking a little break from the blog at the end of the year to celebrate the holidays with our families and to regroup as we work on Issue 4. We’ll officially begin our hiatus on December 21st, when the reading period closes, and will return in mid-January (our current hope is to have the issue out by the beginning of February).  Never fear, though—we won’t leave you high and dry with nothing to read!  As per tradition, will be running our annual staff picks post with a list of  recommended titles from 2011 just before we break:  we bet you’ll be so busy reading while we’re gone, you’ll barely even miss us.

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That’s it for now. We have a lot of exciting content planned for the next few weeks, including a couple of reviews and an interview with a special guest, so keep your eyes peeled as we head into the final stretch of posts for 2011.  In the meantime, please keep those submissions rolling in. We look forward to seeing what you’ve been writing!

Best,

Iris & Mia
LR Editorial Team

Sulu DC's 2nd Anniversary Show

Our friends at Sulu DC (whom we profiled in LR Issue 2 and had the privilege of featuring on the blog last year through Simone Jacobson’s “Sulu Spotlight” column) are celebrating their second birthday this Saturday night (Nov 19th) with a special Anniversary and Awards show.  The event, which will be held at 6:30 pm at Artisphere in Arlington, VA (at 1101 Wilson Blvd), will be hosted by Regie Cabico and will feature a screening of “Wedding Night” by deaf filmmaker Sabina England, as well as performances by Keva I. Lee, Chip Han, J Pharaoh & the Manhattan Project, and DJ Boo. The following awards will also be presented: Artist of the Year, Community Contribution, Community Partner, and the Sulu DC Audience, Star, and House Awards. Tickets are available online for $20.

Congratulations to Sulu DC on two fabulous years of art, community-building, curation, and performance! If you live in Virginia or the DC Metro area, please do consider helping to support their work by checking out their show.

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Marc Vincenz’s The Propaganda Factory (Argotist EBooks 2011)

Marc Vincenz's THE PROPAGANDA FACTORY

Contributor Marc Vincenz’s new e-book The Propaganda Factory was released by Argotist EBooks this past August.  In this short collection (which includes “Taishan Mountain,” a poem that first appeared in LR issue 2), Marc weaves together layers of history and geography through an ever-shifting range of lenses that take us from the level of the microscopic to the realm of the galactic at a moment’s notice.  It is available for download here.

Kim Koga’s ligature strain (TinFish Press 2011)

Kim Koga's LIGATURE STRAIN

Issue 3 contributor Kim Koga now has a chapbook (ligature strain) out with TinFish.  In this linked sequence, which was published as #6 in TinFish’s current retro chap series, Kim floods the page and the mind’s eye with feverish, liquidly intense imagery that involves birth, echolocation, pink and white flesh, and lots of fetal beavers (yes, the actual animal).  Be on the lookout for more about ligature strain later this month.

Official Launch of How Do I Begin?: A Hmong American Literary Anthology

HOW DO I BEGIN?

The Hmong American Writers’ Circle, whom we featured in Issue 3, officially launched its anthology, How Do I Begin? (Heyday Books 2011), in late October. The book is now available for purchase via Heyday’s web site.  We’re absolutely thrilled that this landmark anthology is finally in print, and are incredibly excited to see the HWAC’s hard work on it come to fruition. 

Kartika Review Issue 10

KARTIKA REVIEW - Issue 10

Kartika Review‘s beautiful tenth issue has just hit the web (and Lulu, too—as it is now also available in either black-and-white or full-color hard copy!), and we were especially elated to see the poetry section, which is edited by Kenji C. Liu (of LR issue 2) and includes work by two of our other past contributors: Kathleen Hellen (Issue 2) and Melissa R. Sipin (Issue 3)!  The issue also includes one of Timothy Yu’s fantastically irreverent “Chinese Silence” poems (a series that began as a response to Orientalist tropes in Billy Collins’ work), and poems and an interview with Ed Bok Lee.

TAYO Literary Magazine Issue 3

TAYO - Issue 3

TAYO, the extraordinarily-designed Filipino literary magazine for whom Melissa Sipin (of LR Issue 3) serves as Creative Director, has just put out its gorgeous third issue. The issue, which includes poetry by LR Issue 2 contributor Aimee Suzara and an interview with LR  Issue 1 contributor Barbara Jane Reyes, is available both in print and in a special, new online edition.

Cura: A Literary Magazine of Art and Action

CURA: A Literary Magazine of Art & Action

Kundiman founder Sarah Gambito recently announced the release of the first issue of CURA, a literary project that is produced out of the Creative Writing program at Fordham University.  Edited by Sarah and designed by LR Issue 3 contributor Monica Ong, each issue is curated according to a prompt that draws its inspiration from a central theme (this year, the theme is “home”).  Issue 1 features work by Bushra Rehman (LR Issue 1) and our very own staff writer (and Issue 1 contributor) Henry W. Leung alongside poems by the likes of  Robert Bly and Evie Shockley.  CURA is accepting submissions through Thursday for its second issue, whose prompt is “the body as home”—so please consider sending something their way!

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Many congratulations to Oliver, Marc, Kim, HWAC, Kenji, Kathleen, Melissa, Aimee, Barbara, Bushra, Henry, Monica, and to the editors of Kartika, Tayo, and CURA.  To read their contributions to LR, please visit any of our past issues (you can navigate to any of their work through the issues’ respective Tables of Contents:  [Issue 1], [Issue 2], and [Issue 3]). Happy Monday!