In his review of Bao Phi’s book, which we posted yesterday, guest contributor Greg Choy made some particularly intriguing observations about shifting trends in Asian American poetry, especially with regards to its relationship with community-based activism. The discussion about how best to engage with politics (and specifically, about whether to engage with identitarian politics) in our work is broad and ongoing, and in light of that, I thought I would follow up on Prof. Choy’s thoughts by pointing you towards a few insightful write-ups that provide additional perspectives on the matter.
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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.
Sông I Singby Bao Phi | Coffee House Press 2011 | $16
Greg Choy
After reading Bao Phi’s remarkable collection of poems, Sông I Sing, I was reminded of an incident that occurred about ten years ago when I was an assistant professor at the University of Minnesota. I was attending a panel discussion at UMinn entitled, simply, “Asian American Poetry,” sponsored in large part by Minnesota Poets Society, and was greatly looking forward to listening to two acclaimed Asian American poets speak on the topic. Disappointingly, the only thing the Society members, through their persistent questions about it, seemed interested in was the “poetic process”—and more particularly a process devoid of those nattering issues about race, identity, or politics. Toward the end of the discussion, an elderly white woman, clearly a senior member of the eminent Society, raised her hand and said, “Well, after listening to you both talk about your poetry, I’m wondering why we need to apply the name ‘Asian American’ to your poetry at all.” To my astonishment, at the time, both poets—both award-winning Asian American poets—agreed that the term “Asian American” as it’s applied to their poetry or to them as poets, felt limiting if not downright debilitating.
Such a response has its precedent. It’s reflective of the conundrum of the ethnic writer: how to keep from falling into the binary of either writing to a prescribed aesthetic steeped in a history of political ideology or writing as a fully realized individual shaped by an accumulation of discrete, personal experiences. It ‘s a false binary, of course, as a number of Asian American poetry anthologies have already shown, from The Open Boat: Poems From Asian America, edited by Garrett Hongo, to Premonition:The Kaya Anthology of New Asian North American Poetry, edited by Walter Lew, and Asian American Poetry: The Next Generation edited by Victoria Chang. All three anthologies rally around the diversity of themes and poets as opposed to a unifying call to some singular identity and community. Though anchored from a historical perspective to linear coordinates such as identity construction and political ideology, Asian American poetry is not bound to those coordinates. It is a fluid, changing body of work in time and space.
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.
Panax Ginseng is a monthly column by Henry W. Leung exploring the transgressions of linguistic and geographic borders in Asian American literature, especially those which result in hybrid genres, forms, vernaculars, and visions. The column title suggests the congenital borrowings of the English language, deriving from the Greek panax, meaning “all-heal,” and the Cantonese jansam, meaning “man-root.” The troubling image of one’s roots as a panacea will inform the column’s readings of new texts.
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The "Fish House" in Berkeley (via SFGate.com)
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“The China Issue” of Cha: An Asian Literary Journal presents itself with an ambiguous title. It is the journal’s literary issue on China, but it might just as well be ‘the issue of China,’ i.e. the problem of it, a claim to authority and singularity; or simply ‘the issue of representing China,’ the question of it, the difficulty. ‘China’ as a thematic boundary is naturally complex for a journal based in Hong Kong—but virtually, over the internet—and presented in English. Most of this issue’s poems are translations from the Chinese, with the originals preserved; of these, few refer explicitly to or narrow themselves by locality—except where those locations become outside points of reference (i.e. Zang Di’s “History of Daffodils” referencing Fukushima, or Zhai Yongming’s “Climbing the Heights on the Double Ninth,” which is self-conscious about the literary tradition of hiking on a traditional occasion). Some of the poems written in English, however, announce their ‘Chineseness’ with archetypal localities, such as romanticized pastorals of farmland China, or romance recalled as manufacture in Sumana Roy’s “Love: Made in China,” or the two poems with Beijing in their titles.
Place is fascinating and troubling to define. Is place a city by name, by reference, or by index? Or a collocation of buildings and objects seen as an outsider might see them, or as an insider might? Within the spaces shaped by buildings are cultures and languages—both mainstream and marginal—and the subjectivity of people and their relationships to history and memory.
As late fall begins to deepen into winter, we at LR have been rolling up our sleeves and starting to make preparations for Issue 4. Here are a few announcements to let you know what else we’ve been up to recently, and what we are planning for the next few weeks:
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!
Ligature Strain by Kim Koga and Yellow / Yellow by Margaret Rhee | Tinfish Press 2011 | $3.00
LIGATURE STRAINYELLOW YELLOW
In typography, a ligature is the conjunction of two or more letters into a single glyph.
In typography, an index is a punctuation mark indicating an important part of the text with a pointing hand.
Margaret Rhee’s Yellow/ Yellow and Kim Koga’s Ligature Strain meet in a typographical terrain of conjugation and decomposition, where fists appear in the margins. These texts saturate their pages to such a degree that I wish these words could stain my fingers—pink, brown, yellow.
These works are first chapbooks for both Koga and Rhee, and are #5 and #6 in Tinfish Press‘ yearlong Retro Series. Since April 2011, one chapbook has been released per month, each designed by Eric Butler.
In Ligature Strain it’s winter; in Yellow / Yellow I want to believe it’s spring. In the way that Koga lays down planks of text and then proceeds to gnaw, Rhee threads Tila Tequila and her father’s ashes, nectarines and arithmetic with critical discourse on race and gender to index the margins. Continue reading “Review: Kim Koga’s LIGATURE STRAIN and Margaret Rhee’s YELLOW YELLOW”→
It was about a year ago that I posted this prompt on Allen Ginsberg’s American Sentences, thanks to former classmate Jessica Tyson; this week’s Friday Prompt is courtesy of another recent UW MFA graduate, Talia Shalev. She’s derived the exercise from a chapter in the anthology Contemporary American Poetry: Behind the Scenes(Longman, 2002), edited by Ryan Van Cleave, and writes:
Spend an hour in an urban setting that’s somewhat foreign to you. A Laundromat. A bus terminal. A French pastry shop. Record your observations and thoughts. Spend another hour in a more rural setting, such as a chicken farm, an apple orchard, or a fishing hole. At the very least, find a garden or park! Record your observations and thoughts.
Write a poem about the urban setting that uses words, ideas, and images exclusively from your rural setting, and then write a poem about the rural setting that uses words, ideas, and images exclusively from your urban setting. Does forcing yourself into using unusual vocabulary choices allow you greater freedom? Does it make intuitive leaps easier? How might this translate into your other poems?
What I find compelling about this prompt is the way it forces the “translation” or “transmutation” of observational detail from one context to another—a gesture that can be taken in a number of directions. The same process can be used to navigate not only the in-betweens of rural and urban settings, but also the private and the public, the mainstream and the “minority,” the high and the low. While I think it’s important that the prompt remain grounded in specific locales (ie. places that can be physically inhabited by the poet), it seems totally possible that a person could make the same linguistic leap from, say, one part of town to another—and in the process, cast light upon new ways of constructing difference, culture and place.
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.
When the AAWW announced the winners of its 2011 Asian American Literary Awards last month, we were thrilled to hear that Issue 3 contributor Oliver de la Paz’s Requiem for the Orchard had been named 1st finalist in the poetry category (after Kimiko Hahn, who won for Toxic Flora, and before Molly Gaudry, who was named 2nd finalist for We Take Me Apart). But Oliver is not the only one of our friends and contributors who has had exciting news this season. Here some recent publications and releases that have shown up on our radar these past few months:
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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 Factorywas 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.
Molly Gaudry reads during the Poetry Showcase at the AAWW's 2011 Page Turner Festival
This week’s prompt is inspired by the Asian American Writers Workshop’s 2011 Page Turner Festival, which I attended two weekends ago in Brooklyn, NY.
An unexpected winter storm swept into town on the morning of the festival, pummeling Brooklyn with high winds and dumping snow and sleet all over the streets, but despite the merciless weather, a surprisingly large crowd of attendees bundled up and came out to watch panel after panel of writers light up the interiors of Powerhouse Arena and Melville House. All through the morning and afternoon, each event was packed; by the time I arrived at Melville House to catch the Poetry Showcase (my favorite, and last event of the day before I had to rush home to snow-covered NJ), the colorful, cozy performance space was standing-room only.
I’ve been to plenty of readings and conferences before, but never to a literary festival that felt this driven by a searingly-clear, single vision. Throughout the day, the one theme that continued to impress itself upon me again and again was the AAWW’s deep, active commitment to the political—from the reflections of the poets on the Occupy Wall Street panel about the critical and aesthetic possibilities of poetry shared by “human mic” to the powerful photographs and testimonies shared by the CultureStrike participants who visited Arizona in the wake of SB 1070—I was continually struck by AAWW’s unique vision for how the work of the artist can simultaneously inhabit the page and reach beyond it into world in a very physical, practical way.
Today’s prompt comes from that same sense of vision, and invites you to play with figurations of craft that “break” from the construct of the page-bound poem in order to tangibly evoke discussion and action within your immediate community.
Prompt: Construct, organize, present, and/or distribute a political “act of poetry” whose craft and form reaches beyond the written page to invite others to physically and verbally interact with, respond to, and share in its promulgation and completion.
