Cathy Park Hong

2011-08-23T13:15:00.000-07:00

Here's an interview where I talk about my new upcoming book, Engine Empire.

2010-11-30T09:01:00.000-08:00

On Speculative Poetry: It's the city in drag.

2010-11-22T12:54:00.000-08:00

On Bluets:

I picked up Maggie Nelson’s Bluets. As in, I picked it up in a bookstore, flipped through a few pages, became snagged. Then, I walked to the café end of the bookstore, ordered coffee, found a table, read a few more pages, and then, after reading this passage:

As I collected blues for this project—in folders, in boxes, in notebooks, in memory—I imagined creating a blue tome, an encyclopedic compendium of blue observations, thoughts, and facts. But as I lay out my colletion now, what strikes me most is its anemia—an anemia that seems to stand in direct proportion to my zeal. I thought I had collected enough blue to build a mountain, albeit one of detritus. But it seems to me now as if I have stumbled upon a pile of thin blue gels scattered on the stage long after th show has come and gone; the set, striked

I walked promptly to the cash register and bought the book. On the train, I finished the slim volume and then began again. It’s a book of lyric essays that are meditations on blue, blue in all its historical, religious and cultural radiations, and the author’s own struggle with depression and loss. Its agility to move between her own personal travails and her scholarship reminds me of Anne Carson’s Glass Essay, the piece where Carson movingly writes about Charlotte Bronte’s life and her own heartbreak. Bluets is a lyric study on perceptions of color, beauty, eros and love. But also, the book is about the act of searching; her process of researching blue becomes an act of passion itself, from the blue curios she examines, to ransacking her own memories of her ex-lover, to reading about saints who gouge out their blue eyes, to her small surprised encounters with blue. There’s a kind of collector’s quality to Nelson’s writing in the way she amasses blue encounters, which leads me to Benjamin’s quote about the collector:

“Among children, collecting is only one process of renewal; other processes are the painting of objects, the cutting out of figures, the application fo decals…the renew the old world—that is the collector’s deepest desire when he is driven to acquire new things.”

And this--

“Thus there is in the life of a collector a dialectical tensions between the poles of disorder and order. Naturally, his existence is tied to many other things as well: to a very mysterious relationship to ownership, something about which we shall have more to say later; also, to a relationship to objects which does not emphasize their functional value—but studies as loves them as the scene, the stage, of their fate.”

which aligns with Nelson’s approach towards the color blue, a color that she seems to study as scene, stage, fate. Lyric poems that focus in on the personal lived experience can often feel myopically self-absorbed but Nelson’s Bluets is a gift that must be shared.

2010-11-21T08:30:00.000-08:00

I might write a personal essay about the music I listened to when I was teenager in LA. I began tentative research (more an excuse to tumble my way down the nostalgia rabbit hole) and came across live footage of bands that played at my favorite scrappy under-age club, Jabberjaw, that’s now defunct.

Jabberjaw was a godsend for lonely, music-starved teenagers who couldn’t get into the 21 and over clubs. It cost five dollars to get in. They only served coffee and sodas and no one gave you attitude at the door. It was an especially welcoming—if grotty—place for geeky sixteen year olds. They had some great bands come and play during the 90’s: Unwound, Bikini Kill, Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, The Gits, etc.

Here’s Bratmobile playing at Jabberjaw:

2010-04-28T16:48:00.000-07:00

This Friday:

2-UP is pleased to announce its newest edition, a collaborative poster created by video artist Zerek Kempf and poet Cathy Park Hong. This is the third in a series of collaborative poster editions to be produced by 2-UP in the coming year. Please join us for a launch party hosted by Triple Canopy on Friday, April 30th at 8:00PM at 177 Livingston, Brooklyn, NY 11201 (the shared home of Triple Canopy, The Public School New York, and Light Industry).

Combining image and text, Kempf and Hong present a double-sided poster that reflects on industry and its effects on human interaction. Hong's contribution is inspired by the tradition of the poster as socialist propaganda. Riffing on and questioning Tatlin’s celebration of the machine aesthetic, she utilizes a DIY zine-like style of collage and drawings. The images and text are drawn from her recent writings about industrializing Chinese boom towns. Using a fragment of Hong's writing, Kempf takes on the more formal aspects of text. He positions hand-cut and taped letters in the corner of his studio to photograph. Skewed from the vantage of the camera, the view is further impaired by a suspended flurry of wood blocks. This interjection into the image is caused by a force which, though unseen, effects the visible interior of the frame.

For the occasion of the reception, Kempf and Hong have created a site specific, temporary video installation, to be projected at 177 Livingston. At 9:00PM, there will be a reading/performance by special guest Thomas Sayers Ellis and Hong.

Comprised of 16 artists and writers, each month 2-UP pairs two of its members together to produce a double-sided poster, packaged in twos. The content of each poster is entirely a product of the participants ‘up’ each month. The complete series of 2-UP editions is available for a modest subscription fee; individual editions are available for a suggested donation of $2. Production of each poster is funded by monthly contributions from each member, with all proceeds from the sale of posters re-invested into the project. 2-UP aims to produce low-cost multiples in large editions, guided by the idea that the value of art can exist independently of money and irrespective of rarity.

www.twoup.org serves as a record of the project that includes images of each month’s poster and documentation of the collaborative process.

The fourth installment of 2-UP will feature Ben Dowell and Mores McWreath, and will be available in May 2010.

Initiated by Adam Shecter and Joe Winter, 2-UP is Nathan Lee + Monika Zarzeczna, Davina Semo + Colleen Asper, Ben Dowell + Mores Mcwreath, Cathy Park Hong + Zerek Kempf, Glen Fogel + Craig Kalpakjian, Joe Winter + Christian Hawkey, Cate Marvin + Benjamin Kress, Adam Shecter + Matthea Harvey.

For additional information, please email info@twoup.org

2010-04-22T17:11:00.001-07:00

I'll be taking part in the Juniper Literary Festival! Information below:

10th ANNUAL JUNIPER LITERARY FESTIVAL
Celebrating 10 Years of jubilat
April 23 & 24, 2010

The 10th annual Juniper Literary Festival honors jubilat's decade of award-winning publishing. Inspired by the journal's adventurous spirit, the festival will explore the national literary landscape and the Pioneer Valley's unique contributions to it. Events include readings and panels by jubilat editors and friends, a tour of Antonio Frasconi's poetic woodcuts, an original performance based on Christopher Smart's “Jubilate Agno,” and a fair showcasing over 50 of the nation's most exciting literary magazines and presses.

Friday April 23

3:30 pm Eric Carle Museum: Antonio Frasconi Exhibit Tour: curator tours of the internationally acclaimed artist's woodcuts, including works inspired by Pablo Neruda and W.S. Merwin

4:30 pm: Eric Carle Museum: Roundtable: On Poetry & The Visual Arts: Jen Bervin, Terrance Hayes, & Matthea Harvey, moderated by Jane Curley

6 pm: Fine Arts Center Lobby: Independent Journal & Book Fair Opening Reception

7:30 pm: University Gallery: Reading & Performance: Jen Bervin, Christian Hawkey, & Michael Teig, followed by the premier of a performance based on Christopher Smart's “Jubilate Agno,” staged by Missoula Oblongata

Saturday April 24

10:30 am: Fine Arts Center Lobby: Journal & Book Fair Continues

11 am: University Gallery: Roundtable: Poetry, Publishing, & the Pioneer Valley : the dreaming up, creating, & evolving of jubilat, Verse Press/Wave Books & Rain Taxi with Rob N. Casper, Matthew Zapruder, & Eric Lorberer, moderated by Dara Wier

12:30 pm: University Gallery: Roundtable: The Future of Poetry, Part II with Heather Christle, Cathy Park Hong, Evie Shockley, & Rebecca Wolff, moderated by Rob N. Casper

3 pm: Amherst Cinema Arts Center: Reading: Terrance Hayes, Caroline Knox, Dean Young, & Matthew Zapruder

2010-04-20T13:41:00.000-07:00

I have a few New York City readings clustered in the last week of April. Here they are!

TUESDAY:
Please come and help us celebrate LANA TURNER: A JOURNAL OF POETRY AND OPINION, sponsored by David Kirschenbaum, editor of Boog City.
Lana is being helped to her feet by the poets Timothy Donnelly, Drew Gardner, Karen Garthe, Cathy Park Hong, and Douglas Piccinnini.
Music supplied by Drew Gardner.
Cal Bedient will do the introductions.
When: Tuesday, April 27, beginning promptly at 6 p.m. and lasting one hour.
Where: Chelsea: ACA Galleries 529 West 20th Street, 5th Floor, New York, NY 10011

FRIDAY: 2up Launch
My poster collaboration with the artist Zerek Kempf will be opening next Friday evening, April 30th at the Triple Canopy space on 177 Livingston. More information TBA. For information about the 2up collective, go to http://twoup.org/2UP_current.html

Saturday: PEN World Literary Event Reading
When: Saturday, May 1
Where: Grand Gallery, National Arts Club, 15 Gramercy Park, New York City
What time: 6–8 p.m.
With Homero Aridjis, Ariel Dorfman, Cathy Park Hong, Inga Kuznetsova, and Marlene van Niekerk
Tickets: $5/free to PSA and PEN Members
Co-sponsored by the Poetry Society of America
Celebrate contemporary poetry with PEN and the Poetry Society of America. Six acclaimed poets join us from across the globe for an early evening of readings. Don’t miss this extraordinary lineup of poets—Mexico’s Homero Aridjis, Chile’s Ariel Dorfman, Russia’s Inga Kuznetsova, South Africa’s Marlene van Nierkerk, and Cathy Park Hong from the United States—for an evening of acclaimed verse.

I'm involved with 2 other Pen World events. Go here if interested.

2009-10-08T11:14:00.000-07:00

My poem, "Thin Shangdu," is just out from this week's The Nation. Pick up an issue!

2009-10-04T08:09:00.000-07:00

Brilliant chestnuts by Joyelle McSweeney.

2009-09-21T13:47:00.000-07:00

I will be part of an exciting Feminist conference this week. Click here for more information.

Also, a belated review of DDR. It's been around for awhile but I thought I would post it for David Lau's astute analysis. He also published a collection last April, Virgil and the Mountain Cat, which is full of demanding and subversive lyric illuminations concatenated together by explosive sounds and meditations on late capitalism. Read, especially, The Tupperware Concerto, Many Jasons, Black Line Drawing and Protest in the Philipines. My ear hairs are tickled when reading his verse.

2009-09-01T06:56:00.000-07:00

I have new poems in Octopus magazine. Arda Collins generously wrote a sterling opening for my poems. If you haven't read her It Is Daylight, go and link that sucker into your Amazon shopping cart right this hot second!

Also, some great poems by Heather Christie, Lynn Xu, Tony Tost, and many more.

Also, I just noticed Google Books has this "common terms and phases" excerpt where they cram together a paragraph's worth of the most commonly used words in a book, enlarging the font according to the frequency in which the word's been used. It's hilarious. For my DDR, "CHIHUAHUA" is huge while "teef" is also included in teeny tiny letters. Funnier is Translating Mo'um, where the largest words are "BOX WINE."

I looked up some other friends or poets I know and noted the funnier enlarged fonts (I'm clearly procrastinating from preparing for Fall semester).

Joyelle Mcsweeney: Cockatoos Morose
David Lau: Not-Appearing-in-This-Film
Lara Glenum: Oedipus Sock Monkey
Eugene Ostashevsky: Sextus Propetius
Matthea Harvey: Terror Gazelle
Shanxing Wang: Smart Dust

"Terror Gazelle" and "Smart Dust." That is an unhealthy mix of Cheney, Disney and Philip K. Dick. Although my favorite is "Oedipus Sock Monkey." I'm going to have to go back and see how many times this phrase appears in Lara's book.

2009-01-29T05:38:00.000-08:00

My poem, Adventures in Shangdu, is now in Conjunctions. Check it online.

2008-11-15T14:42:00.000-08:00

The paperback version of Dance Danc Revolution will come out at the end of November. If you thought that the hardcover was too formidably priced, well now, you can buy multiple copies for friends and families!

I'm also now blogging for poetryfoundation.org. Visit and rant in the comments section.

2008-09-18T06:03:00.000-07:00

I'm deeply saddened by the death of David Foster Wallace and have been re-reading my now faded Infinite Jest.

McSweeney's has a touching collection of memories by those who have, in some way or another, met him or known him.

2008-03-21T09:02:00.002-07:00

I'm going to be in Los Angeles next week for my boyfriend's thesis art show at USC. If you happen to be in LA, please come out for the opening. It will feature video art, photos, and I don't know what else. I have a neurotic tendency to butt in with unnecessary advice, so he and I decided that it would be best if he keeps his ideas to himself. I'm sure, though, that it will be a doozy of a show.

2008-03-19T19:33:00.000-07:00

Parnassus is finally out. I have a long review essay on Asian American poetry. I am weary of critiquing anything under such a rubric, but in 2005-2007, this idea of Asian American poetry has been torqued and twisted by so many innovative poets that I thought why not. I review Mei-Mei Berssenbrugge's soon-to-be-classic "I Love Artists," Barbara Jane Reyes' "Poeta en San Francisco" and Shanxing Wang's "Mad Science in Imperial City."

I wanted to write a longer omnibus review that included the likes of Paolo Javier (his excellent "60 Love bo(e)mbs") Brian Kim Stefans and Linh Dinh, but alas, I had to narrow it to three.

As long as we're on the subject of Asianness, Action folks kindly sent me a copy of Kim Hyesoon's "Mommy Must Be a Fountain of Feathers." Profoundly disturbing. Will write more after I finish.

I was also pleased to find that Roger Gilbert wrote an erudite review of "Dance Dance Revolution" in the same issue of Parnassus. Shanna Compton also wrote a
perceptive review of it for Galatea Resurrects.

2008-03-19T19:06:00.000-07:00

The inestimable poet/critic Evie Shockley and I are guest editors for two issues of Jubilat and our first edited issue is out! Unfortunately, it's not online yet. This is a sugar plum of an issue. Highlights: Oni Buchanan's pyrotechnically assonantal "Maroon Canoe," Robyn Schiff's twisted and brilliant paean to Ralph Lauren, an interview with Peter Gizzi, Arda Collins' deadpan musings on heaven ("Heaven is a white formica table"), some beautiful urban poems by the German poet Steffan Popp, Lara Glenum's "post orifice" hang-ups in verse, and some undiscovereds like Jimmy Lo's underwater reveries and so much more. I read these submissions and and it made me want to brew some coffee and write. Or at least hum happily.

2008-03-07T13:37:00.000-08:00

I'm so angry right now that I can't think of anything else but the current mudslinging that this race has degenerated into. Hillary Clinton's hypocrisy astounds. She doesn't apologize for Wolfson's ludicrous remark about Obama and Kenneth Starr and then a few hours later, becomes indignant and exploits Samantha Power's slip so that she could dig for more fundraising despite the fact that Power stepped down and Obama apologized. If she continues these below-the-belt negative tactics, she is going to lose new voters in droves. That is, if she miraculously wins the nomination. I can't believe just a week ago, I actually liked her.

Here's a semi-old interview Salon conducted with Powers. Power's antipathy against the Clintons is not isolated to her quote in The Scotsman. In her book, "A Problem From Hell," she charges the Clintons for royally screwing up Rwanda. I have not read it but apparently it's a sober and intelligent study on recent acts of genocide.

2008-02-07T13:55:00.000-08:00

I have in my clutch a stack of terrific freshly minted poetry books that I bought at awp. I do want to write about them at length, but in case I don't, I will just excerpt choice bits.

Linh Dinh, jam alerts: why haven't I read Linh Dinh before? I'm crazy.

"Short of all vitamins and calcium, malformed,
My mom a yawning question mark, I wasn't born
From a warmed egg, but sculpted from the surfeit
Of a bombastic masturbator, clouding a bathtub.
Raised on no milk, I sucked and suckled myself
into this laughing pretension.

Danielle Pafunda, my zorba: hot pink cover to match the hot verse of zorba's gothic and oddly beautiful adventures.

"Zorba had invited her pals the apostles. To welcome home.
The one with the quill in his back, the one with the lamp
in his throat. A pectoral. Dance. The one with the mail.
Drove the boat, waded ashore. With the ladies, dance.
In the rosy beam of venetian bone."

Johannes Goransson, a new quarantine will take my place: these poems are deeply sinster and deeply funny. there are also more pigs in here than that scene in mad max. i wanted to excerpt the glossary but I don't know how to find umlauts on my keypad.

"I keep mentioning my torso because I wish I were a
zoologist. I wish I were a surgeon. Or Darwin. Or a
ballet impressario in Paris. Ora mole in the ground.
Or a reptile collector. Or 5000 accidents. Made of
swans. Or Darwin. Or an injury. Or going home
in a wheelbarrow. Or moving into the Hotel Fuck. Or
bleeding slowly into a silver bucket. Or plundering.
Most of all I wish I were Darwin.

Or 5000 accidents."

more to come...

2007-12-04T18:54:00.001-08:00

I'm reading with Daisy Fried at ze Zinc Bar--

Sunday, December 9, Zinc Bar 7 PM
90 West Houston Street

2007-10-18T16:09:00.000-07:00

I'm heading to San Francisco to do two exciting readings.

Friday, Oct 19, 7:30
with Linda Russo
Small Press Traffic Reading Series
Timken Lecture Hall, San Francisco campus
Info for direcitons: www.sptraffic.org

(they're allowing me to play a mix CD before the reading starts.)

Sunday, October 21, 3 p.m.
Asian American Poetry Now
UC Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive
2626 Bancroft Way / 510.642.0808

The Sunday reading is curated by the fearsome poet/critic Chris Chen and features an extremely talented roster of poets. Here's how they describe it:

How are young Asian American poets grappling with some of the issues that have engaged the artists featured in One Way or Another? Eight West Coast- and New York-based Asian American poets, from the same generation as the exhibition artists and with a comparable range of cultural backgrounds, will read from work that parallels the "post-identity" premise of One Way or Another. Their poetry displays a range of exciting experimental styles that depart from the focus on identity politics that has marked the work of many Asian American poets since the 1960s. Poet and UC Berkeley Ph.D. candidate Chris Chen, whose dissertation explores experimental currents within contemporary Asian American and African American poetry, will introduce and moderate the program. Featured poets are Barbara Jane Reyes, Tsering Wangmo Dhompa, Cathy Park Hong, Paolo Javier, David Lau, Eileen Tabios, and Truong Tran. A reception will follow the program.

2007-09-07T16:19:00.001-07:00

I'm reading with Ange Mlinko (author of the beautiful and live-wire Starred Wire) at McNally Robinson Bookstore.

7:00 Thursday, Sept 13
Mcnally Robinson Books
52 Prince St, NY

2007-09-05T19:49:00.000-07:00

Alan Gilbert, author of the formidable "Another Future," wrote an illuminating and generous review of "Dance Dance Revolution" for the September issue of the Believer. Full content is not available online but here, at least, is an excerpt.

2007-08-31T11:20:00.000-07:00

Turns out there has been some cross-breeding between graphic novels and poetry.

Francois mentioned Gary Sullivan (the first two issues I'll have to check out) and Nick Bertozzi. My old student, Megan, mentioned Austin English. I also noticed that the latest issue of Paris Review has Monica Youn's series on Krazy Kat which I'll have to check out. Any other suggestions?

2007-08-05T20:06:00.002-07:00

Thank you, Rigoberto Gonzales, for writing an eloquent and lucid review of Dance Dance Revolution in this issue of Luna.

2007-08-05T19:47:00.000-07:00

I just bought Douglas Wolk's Reading Comics. I'm curious to read what he has to say about the Hernandez Brothers (a whole book should be devoted to them). While more are partial to Jaime Hernandez, I'm a fan of Gilbert. His whole Luba series is a masterpiece in all its daring, soap-operatic, rough-edged, dynastic glory.

Speaking of cross-genres, I wonder if there's a way to cross-pollinate graphic novels and poetry? Would you call it graphic poetry? Can Blake be considered a graphic poet? Doesn't quite have the same ring as graphic novelist. I don't know anyone who's even written an ekphrastic poem on the art of comics. I'll have to think about it.

2007-08-01T07:58:00.000-07:00

Quote: Matthew Ritchie--More is more.

Reading: Charles Fourier's Thoery of the Four Movements, Ed Pavlic's Labors Lost Left Finished, Jon E. Lewis's Making of the American West, Raymond Roussel's Locus Solus

Watched: Kalup Linzy's video "Play with de Churen" (best name for a drag queen--Matissa), documentary on Lynne Stewart, Hairspray

2007-07-18T17:14:00.000-07:00

I am now house-sitting. I always wondered what the whole point of house-sitting was--I guess it's to make a show that the house is inhabited so that it won't be robbed. This house that my boyfriend and I are staying in is amazing. It's the kind of loft one would see in a huge coffee-table book called "Silverlake Living" displayed out in the front of St. Marks bookshop where people just drool over the pics instead of actually buying the tome. It's modular, and clean-lined, and very zen in that Modernist way. There's a courtyard with only cactii. There is a flat-screen tv and an alarm clock with a remote. The bathroom has twin shower nozzles. The gadgetry is formidable.

Being in Los Angeles, I have become very nostalgic for music I listened to when I was a teenager. One thing that I find terrible is that I have stopped listening to new music. I just stopped. There comes a point when you're up to speed with the music and then the music just merrily speeds ahead of you. And you can't do anything about it. You can try, sporadically, reading Pitchfork. You can ask your sister for recommendations. But it's too far ahead. Yesterday, I was frantically searching through this modern loft dweller's i-tunes for music but everything was too upbeat so I settled for bossa nova in the "mellow" category.

I've been listening to Fugazi because that's what I listened to when I grew up. The nostalgia for music in LA is all too powerful--especially when all you're listening to is driving music and you can't help but inextricably link music with the road and passing scenery. "Waiting Room" will always be my favorite, but also all the songs in "Steady Diet of Nothing." I even love certain songs in their later album, "Argument," especially the second song (I don't remember what it's called) which has this building instrumental that brings a tingle to my sinus (a strange reaction I get when I'm especially moved by something). But I'm not sure why I'm so moved by that particular part, or say "Waiting Room" for example. There's something anthemic about it,of course, a "fuck all" kind of attitude, but it's not an insoucient "fuck all" attitude that is synonymous with Ramones but a "fuck all" attitude that feels very important, tragic, serious, visionary. Jem Cohen directed a beautiful moody documentary on Fugazi called "Instrument"--perhaps one of the more affecting music documentaries around.

2007-07-18T12:08:00.000-07:00

I've been spending the last few months in California and I've developed a fascination with the following: Westerns, smoothies, and taco trucks. My fascination with Westerns has been infiltrating my writing. Last year, it was manga. Now, Westerns. I used to hate them. I remember channel-surfing and only watching a syndicated episode of "Bonanza" when absolutely nothing else was on. That show was equivalent to a helpless sense of boredom in a flat-lining late afternoon. I finally saw "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly" and I finally get Clint Eastwood. I also love how the extras clearly look like they're Spanish and not American. Apparently, the movie was filmed in Spain during the Franco regime.

I've made little mini-travels for readings and have been reuniting with old grad school friends. In Chicago, I read with a friend, Arda Collins, who is a really fantastic poet (if there is any justice in this world, her manuscript will find a penthouse of a home). Chicago has a really great literary scene--Joel Craig operates a cool series at Danny's. It's lively and crowded rather than a little bit dismal like how some readings can be. Robyn Schiff and Nick Twemlow were our dear hosts (also fearsome poets--Robyn has a yet untitled book forthcoming in 2008). A month ago, I also jaunted off to San Francisco to read with the amazing Lyn Hejinian who read a nautical series that I'm very very eager to see in print. I met Barbara Jane Reyes who I was happy to meet (if you haven't done so, you must find her book "poeta en san francisco"). I hung out with old friends--Chris Chen, Susan Maxwell, Shane Book, Xochi Candelaria, and David Lau who all made me nostalgic for grad school when everyone was very impassioned about poetics--it made me impassioned all over again. I also hung out with a very pregnant Malena Watrous (if there is any justice in this world, her novel will be in every airport lounge, Barnes and Noble, inside the satchels of every citizen riding public transportation) and Liz Goodman, a dear friend way back from middle school, who is having a wedding soon where she will wear a fuchsia dress and Mike, her fiance, will wear a green tuxedo. It is not a wedding. It is performance art. They actually asked me to pen a poem for it. I agreed to do so. I figure if this poem for poem's sake doesn't work out, maybe I'll start a business where I will write for commemorative puposes only. A poem for a wedding. A poem for a birthday. A poem for Groundhog's day. A poem in protest of taco trucks being run out of the city of Salinas. That I will most definitely do.

How I love the taco truck. There is not a better meal than a Juarrito mandarin flavored soda and a mulita with carne asada with salsa and pickled radish. I wonder if I can smuggle a taco truck back to New York?

2007-07-13T16:28:00.000-07:00

Here's a link to an interview I did with Joshua Kryah for Poets and Writers.

2007-06-24T13:22:00.001-07:00

Believer editor Ed Park now has a monthly Sci-Fi column for the LA Times. Check out his latest.

2007-06-24T12:25:00.000-07:00

An excellent panel called "A Panel Of Excess" can now be read in Action Yes. Writers include Jed Rasula, Johannes Goransson, Lara Glenum, K. Silem Mohammad, and Anne Boyer. Points traverse from Bakhtin's notion of grotesquery and the female body, traditional language as wax museum, Dada and Finnish poetry, three point proclamations on the "poetic non act," "the Nostalgia of the Infinite is a painting by the Italian artist Giorgio de Chirico," Blanchot's idea of disaster as skeptical gaiety and "At what point do the parables of rapt compliance intersect with the rapturous parables of noncompliance?"

Also, roaring good poems by Paolo Javier, Danielle Pafunda, and a poet who I have not read--John Wilkinson.

2007-06-11T17:43:00.000-07:00

For all of you in SF or Oakland area, I'm reading with Lyn Hejinian at the Berkeley City College. If I can drum up excitement over a reading, it would be this one. I haven't met Lyn Hejinian yet so I'm really looking forward to the event--

When: June 21, 7:30
Where: BERKELEY CITY COLLEGE Auditorium, 2050 Center Street, one-half block from Berkeley BART. Parking garage next door. For information, call Poetry Flash: (510) 525-5476. Co-sponsored by Cody's Books. Free admission.

2007-06-05T12:03:00.000-07:00

Juliana Spahr on Bruce Andrews, white studies, and subjectivity.

2007-05-09T15:02:00.000-07:00

My book "Dance Dance Revolution" is out.

a publishers weekly capsule review if you want to know more.

2007-04-26T05:41:00.000-07:00

Here is another reminder for my remainder readings in New York. Looking forward to these since I will be reading with friends. Gary's "Absurdistan" will be out in paperback. We share the same book cover designer, Christine Lee. For those of you who are looking for cool, sharp-eyed designers to gussy up your book, she's moving back to NY! Also looking forward to reading with Christian Hawkey, whose excellent Citizen Of has just come out. On the subject of covers, Christian has perhaps the most punk "Never Mind the Bollocks" book covers around. Am I done promoting?

Spoonbill and Sugartown Books
with Gary Shteyngart
Thursday, May 3, 7:00
218 Bedford Avenue
Brooklyn, NY

Academy of American Poets/Bryant Park Reading Series
with Christian Hawkey and Rachel Zucker
Tuesday, May 8, 6:00
Bryant Park

Speaking of promoting, I was a guest last week at Jordan Davis's Million Poems Show which I have been hearing about for quite some time but never actually eye-witnessed. It is actually hilarious but perhaps everyone knew that and I'm just late to the party. The reading opened with a Russian Futurist slam and the winner was given the prize option of a Georgia Review back issue or a toy rocket ship. When the winner reached for the toy rocket ship, Jordan slapped (well not literally) him away and said, "No that's for my son. Take the review." Hilarious!

2007-04-20T10:40:00.001-07:00

Poetry is Dangerous
Kazim Ali

On April 19, after a day of teaching classes at
Shippensburg University, I went out to my car and
grabbed a box of old poetry manuscripts from the front
seat of my little white beetle and carried it across
the street and put it next to the trashcan outside
Wright Hall. The poems were from poetry contests I had
been judging and the box was heavy. I had previously
left my recycling boxes there and they were always
picked up and taken away by the trash department.

A young man from ROTC was watching me as I got into my
car and drove away. I thought he was looking at my car
which has black flower decals and sometimes inspires
strange looks. I later discovered that I, in my dark
skin, am sometimes not even a person to the people who
look at me. Instead, in spite of my peacefulness, my
committed opposition to all aggression and war, I am a
threat by my very existence, a threat just living in
the world as a Muslim body.

Upon my departure, he called the local police
department and told them a man of Middle Eastern
descent driving a heavily decaled white beetle with
out of state plates and no campus parking sticker had
just placed a box next to the trash can. My car has
NY plates, but he got the rest of it wrong. I have two
stickers on my car. One is my highly visible faculty
parking sticker and the other, which I just don’t have
the heart to take off these days, says “Kerry/Edwards:
For a Stronger America.”

Because of my recycling the bomb squad came, the state
police came. Because of my recycling buildings were
evacuated, classes were canceled, campus was closed.
No. Not because of my recycling. Because of my dark
body. No. Not because of my dark body. Because of his
fear. Because of the way he saw me. Because of the
culture of fear, mistrust, hatred, and suspicion that
is carefully cultivated in the media, by the
government, by people who claim to want to keep us
‘safe.’

These are the days of orange alert, school lock-downs,
and endless war. We are preparing for it, training for
it, looking for it, and so of course, in the most
innocuous of places—a professor wanting to hurry home,
hefting his box of discarded poetry—we find it.

That man in the parking lot didn’t even see me. He saw
my darkness. He saw my Middle Eastern descent. Ironic
because though my grandfathers came from Egypt, I am
Indian, a South Asian, and could never be mistaken for
a Middle Eastern man by anyone who’d ever met one.

One of my colleagues was in the gathering crowd,
trying to figure out what had happened. She heard my
description—a Middle Eastern man driving a white
beetle with out of state plates—and knew immediately
they were talking about me and realized that the box
must have been manuscripts I was discarding. She
approached them and told them I was a professor on the
faculty there. Immediately the campus police officer
said, “What country is he from?”

“What country is he from?!” she yelled, indignant.

“Ma’am, you are associated with the suspect. You need
to step away and lower your voice,” he told her.

At some length several of my faculty colleagues were
able to get through to the police and get me on a cell
phone where I explained to the university president
and then to the state police that the box contained
old poetry manuscripts that needed to be recycled. The
police officer told me that in the current climate I
needed to be more careful about how I behaved. “When I
recycle?” I asked.

The university president appreciated my distress about
the situation but denied that the call had anything to
do with my race or ethnic background. The spokesperson
of the university called it an “honest mistake,” not
referring to the young man from ROTC giving in to his
worst instincts and calling the police but referring
to me who made the mistake of being dark-skinned and
putting my recycling next to the trashcan.

The university’s bizarrely minimal statement lets
everyone know that the “suspicious package” beside the
trashcan ended up being, indeed, trash. It goes on to
say, “We appreciate your cooperation during the
incident and remind everyone that safety is a joint
effort by all members of the campus community.”

What does that community mean to me, a person who has
to walk by the ROTC offices every day on my way to my
own office just down the hall—who was watched, noted,
and reported, all in a day’s work? Today we gave in
willingly and whole-heartedly to a culture of fear and
blaming and profiling. It is deemed perfectly
appropriate behavior to spy on one another and police
one another and report on one another. Such behaviors
exist most strongly in closed and undemocratic and
fascist societies.

The university report does not mention the root cause
of the alarm. That package became “suspicious” because
of who was holding it, who put it down, who drove
away. Me.

It was poetry, I kept insisting to the state policeman
who was questioning me on the phone. It was poetry I
was putting out to be recycled.

My body exists politically in a way I can not prevent.
For a moment today, without even knowing it, driving
away from campus in my little beetle, exhausted after
a day of teaching, listening to Justin Timberlake on
the radio, I ceased to be a person when a man I had
never met looked straight through me and saw the
violence in his own heart.

2007-04-18T19:56:00.000-07:00

Oh no they didn't. Well, maybe the Korean community's persecution complex seems more legitimate. I can't believe that the NYT just posted a front page photo comparing Cho's photo with a still from the film "Old Boy." And this is based on a professor's hunch? And this is reporting? "The poses in the two images are similar, and the plot of the movie, “Oldboy,” seems dark enough to merit at least some further study."

Dark enough indeed.The film has nothing to do with a mass-murdering spree. In fact, the film critiques the lust for vengeance as an ultimately empty gesture. And though violent, it's a violence that bears no resemblance to the shootings. The director Park Chan Wook must be reeling right now (bet you they'll be pulling the American remake of that film).

2007-04-18T19:42:00.000-07:00

My father left two messages warning me that I should be careful and I'm sure he's not the only Korean father to do so. I hear Koreans in Flushing are afraid to leave their apartments and exchange students are buying tickets back to Seoul. Of course, I understand the fear of retribution. When I found out that the gunman was Korean, I too felt a stab of dread. But the shame factor is going too far:

"State Sen. Paull Shin, D-Edmonds, apologized to fellow lawmakers and legislative staff members, first at a private prayer meeting, then in Senate chambers. "It hurts me deeply, knowing what happened to Korea and how much the U.S. helped," said Shin, an orphan who was adopted by an American soldier after the Korean War. "This is not the way to pay back the blessings we received."

Pay back? The blessings we received? The Korean War? Clearly, especially in light of the videos that have been coming out, he's a sicko who has more in common with the Columbine trenchcoat kids than any alienated foreigner. I know media will use this opportunity to do specials on Asian Americans, the Korean immigrant community, etc, etc, but come on, he was psychotic. End of story. The Korean community, both here and in Korea, has treated this as, perhaps, the most horrifying moment of "losing face" and has gone out of their way expressing their guilt. What if Cho Suen-Hui was Chinese, would the Chinese immigrant community have reacted with the same kind of gut paranoia, shame, and guilt? Perhaps, considering US's prevailing atmosphere of post 9/11 xenophobia, but I also think that Koreans are particularly sensitive since the nation is so small, the immigrant community so homogenous and tight-knit, and well, they have a bit of a persecution complex.

2007-04-09T11:22:00.000-07:00

My second poetry collection (which was chosen for the Barnard Women's Poetry Prize) from WW Norton, "Dance Dance Revolution," will be out May 8th! I'll be doing a solo reading on April 17th at Barnard College next week. Here's a schedule of a few other readings I will be doing in or near NY.

Barnard College Women Poetry Series
Tuesday, April 17th 7:00 PM
3rd floor Barnard Hall
W 117th Street and Broadway

Jubilat Reading Series
with Michael Earl Craig
Sunday, April 22nd, 3:00pm
University of Massachusettes

Jordan Davis Talkshow Series
with Thomas Sayers Ellis and Jace Clayton
Monday, April 23, 6:15
Bowery Poetry Club
308 Bowery

Brooklyn Public Library
with Meghan O'Rourke and Gregory Pardlo
Tuesday April 24, 2007, 7 p.m.
Central Library, Grand Army Plaza,
Brooklyn, NY

Sarah Lawrence Poetry Festival
April 28, 2:30
Slonim House
Sarah Lawrence
(go here for list of readers)

Spoonbill and Sugartown Books
with Gary Shteyngart
Thursday, May 3, 7:00
218 Bedford Avenue
Brooklyn, NY

Academy of American Poets/Bryant Park Reading Series
with Christian Hawkey and Rachel Zucker
Tuesday, May 8, 6:00
Bryant Park

2007-04-08T09:10:00.001-07:00

On a gut level, a true mark of a great book is when I am so inspired that I want drop everything and rush off and write my own poems. Lately, though, I've been enduring dulled bouts of disillusionment where rarely any collections have sparked my attention. Then I came across Ed Roberson's radiant "City Eclogue" and language became revitalized again. He's a stunning poet--this collection outdoes "Atmosphere Conditions" which was already an impressive book. I'm also impressed with Peter Gizzi's Oppen-echoing collection "The Outernationale."

The collection also provides a little bio on Roberson--he's worked as a limnologist, a diver for the Pittsburgh Aquazoo, and the Pittsburgh steel mills. A much more interesting bio than cataloguing his publishing history.

2007-03-10T08:17:00.000-08:00

AWP= agoraphobia. But afterwards, I was pleased to go to University of Georgia and read with the always charming Major Jackson and Natasha Trethewey. It seems like the phD program has gone through some rapid changes but the people there are like-mindedly fabulous--Ed Pavlic and Jed Rasula in the faculty, for instance. And poets Danielle Pafunda, Sabrina Mark and Lara Glenum, who all have books out through Soft Skull Press, Saturnalia, and Action Books. They're the kind of women who I would have wanted to be in a band with, at some point, in my early twenties or grad school. Athens was nice--although I missed the magnolias, that in bloom, are supposed to be as "big as dinner plates."

Also Susie Ibarra performed. After a week of words, words, words, it was a relief to sit back and listen to her perform. I've been hearing about Susie Ibarra for quite some time--she was voted best drummer by the Village Voice and collaborated with John Zorn, Thurston Moore, and many many others. Actually I think she also plays with a violinist, Jennifer Choi, who I went to college with. Anyway, she rocks.

2007-03-09T15:37:00.000-08:00

Critics have been sending love letters to my favorite Korean director, Bong Joon ho, for his just released film "The Host." First Anthony Lane writes a full feature review of the movie. And now the NYT. My boyfriend actually gave me a pirated DVD version a month ago so I've already seen it.

Although Bong deserves every iota of praise he's been receiving, I don't think it's his best film--too CGI-ified and Spielbergian for my tastes. Although both critics remark on the dizzying mash up of genres in "The Host," which is a characteristic that defines not only his style but much of Korean cinema, I found the movie surprisingly tidied up.

Now "Memories of a Murder," his previous film, is brilliant, absolutely brilliant--a stirring antidote to Hollywood buddy cop films or detective dramas, in that the serial killer is never found (It seems that the just released Zodiac is one of the few movies that risks such a loose ending). The film is also less about the mystery and more about the Korean police force's incompetence and sheer corruption, along with its long rich history in sanctioning torture. Actually incompetence is a running theme in Bong's work. Incompetence not only of the political system, but the incompetence of parenting, friendship, and just daily human interactions (witness the Father's parenting skills in "The Host") which is where a lot of Bong's black humor comes into play. Rarely is anything righted or resolved, which is why I was a little disappointed by the polish of his latest film.

His first film is "Barking Dogs Never Bite." Ed Park posted an excellent review in his blog. Ed implores for the film to be distributed in the States. I'm more doubtful because of the violent things done to beloved, cuddly canines. And representing a violent act committed against beloved, cuddly canines is one of the biggest American cinema taboos. Not to be transgressed!

2007-02-15T09:06:00.000-08:00

One poem--of mine, that is--is up on the McSweeney's Sestina page. Check it out !

2007-02-11T15:56:00.000-08:00

I know. It's criminal how long I've ignored this blog. But I've come back! At least for the time being. It's been a stressful few months and quite frankly, after teaching poetry and reading poetry and writing about poetry, I would rather go drink a gimlet or read the chow.com boards than post bon mots about more poetry. Anyway, a friend asked to read an essay that I've written awhile back for American Letters and Commentary. I thought I would just post it up on my blog. It needs some sufficient updating--I slag blogs for instance when well-heh-I am "one of every writer who has a blog now" (which is usually neglected). And there are certainly poetry groups that have emerged that I previously wasn't in the know about. And I don't live in Seoul anymore. But here it is:

Fabula Poetics

Currently, I live in Seoul where English words and idioms, troublingly or not, have crept into the Korean language. Why say bu-in when “wife” will suffice? Overworked Koreans complain about “set-u-ress” and urge a “well-being” diet of green tea, muffins and yoga. Korean hip hop artists blend black urban slang with Korean slang so fast you can’t tell which language they’re rapping in. One moony college student explained to my friend that when love strikes, he prefers to use the phrase “I love you” rather than the Korean equivalent because “I love you” felt more momentous and more real.

So goes Globalization’s patter as developing countries take crash courses in English so that their citizens can say “Would you like an aisle seat or window” in Hindi and English. As multilingualism is imposed around the world, words from mutually exclusive languages begin to cannibalize each other. Chalk this off as the tainted innerworkings of neo imperialism. But America’s boundaries are also being eroded and our English is becoming truncheoned with cultures from the Outside. Copywriters, prose-stylists, journalists, bloggers, rappers and TV writers can pun, chop up, cram in allusions and churn out a turn of phrase more hybridized than a poem by your typical Pound influenced poet. The conduit of cultural exchange (or its degradation) merrily speeds both ways and the world’s soundscape is rapidly evolving. As the world shrinks, the word expands.

Where does that leave poetry, that genre that should be the avatar of linguistic experimentation? Why when is there so much cacophonous, sampled, cyber kinetic blather heard on the streets (and on the internet), are budding poets still debating the merits of Language poetry in MFA classrooms when Language poets are now the gatekeepers of academic institutions, grants, and book prizes?

Poetry has become a boutique enterprise. Camps have branched off with their own grad programs, academic posts, and presses which have stifled innovation since writers dare not stray too far from their academic niche market. You have defiantly traditionalist formalists, poets who write Language Poetry Lite (as in Language Poetry with Heart), poets who plunk out flaccid first person quasi-autobiographical free-verse. You have Ashberian poets whose verbal flux attempts to be an evocation of postmodernity’s mindless chatter but ultimately rewinds back to the injured, romantic Self. Poets are moving toward an online community (every other writer has a blog now) but it has not only cemented the cliques but has also amped up the squabbles about Po-Biz politicking rather than politics itself.

This is of course all redundant. Writers have long complained about the current fragmented state of poetics but they seem rather resigned to its Balkanization. As to poetry’s inertia, many might argue that poetry’s role is to stand apart and that poetry should not have to keep up. But in our staunch determination to be timeless, we have long forgotten how to be timely.

As for myself, I am one of many young poets who is indebted to Language poets. I followed their Marxian critique of language and borrowed their techniques of macerating the lyric down to “word as such.” But while the defamiliarized non sequitur might have been fresh awhile back, it has now become an old stylistic tick that just adds white noise to all the random associations and informational clutter that are out there. Why splice around syntax when your local spammer does it better than you?

So as history dictates, perhaps the pendulum should swing wildly the other way and we should plunge back into the aural. Inject a kind of layered dynamism into poetry, a highly concentrated polyglot song where the voice is not a mimesis of the natural plain spoken but instead “speaks” in a stylized invented language that reflects and ultimately synthesizes the careening sounds of a shrinking late capitalist world.

A few contemporary experimental poets have returned to the aural through a reinvention of language and hybridized genres. Canadian poet Christian Bok’s brilliant “Euonia” consists of five chapters in which only one vowel is permitted per chapter. Amazingly, Bok manages to wend a narrative into these Oulipo constraints and the text, rather than it being dead on the page, comes alive as its own bleating contorted Homeric song (which is marvelously apparent when he reads). Harryette Mullen also turns wordplay into song, fusing Oulipo technique with referents as varied as airplane manuals, sonnets, and African American argot. A new poet Eugene Ostashevsky uses Russian inflected English to perform and write under two bawdy personas called MC Squared and DJ Spinoza. He sings, he parodies, and he raps. Strangely, few poets have absorbed any of the innovations made in contemporary music (i.e. sampling) unless we count Spoken Word poets and poets churned out of PhD and MFA programs certainly do not count them. But the three poets I have mentioned share one trait with the Spoken Word poets and it’s that they engage in aural theater as much as they engage in the page.

This idea that we have exhausted the field of experimentation is uninspired, especially now when there is so much politically at stake, when economically and culturally the global playing field is flattening, when the very fabric of our spoken language is changing. Of course, a brand new aesthetic is impossible. The three poets I mentioned, for instance, have a great allegiance to past avant-gardists but unlike some of their predecessors’ ahistorical agrammaticism they have updated their tongue-twisting wordplay within present societal conditions. Following their example, there could at least be a movement where poets are more aligned with the world. Poetry, as it has become divvied up into its camps, has become a narrower and parsimonious field where it constantly refers to itself.

I think poetry could be a bit more fabulous. Not “fabulous” in its camp definition (although on second thought, why not?) but fabulous in the sense of fable, of a heightened exaggeration of the world around us. Charles Olson once wrote that we must “build out of sound the walls of the city.” We must continue to build out of sound but with an awareness that the walls of the city have eroded. A small town poet tenured at the local college would beg to differ but I doubt it is now possible to celebrate rootedness and region in the same way Olson did Gloucester, Massachusetts or William Carlos Williams did Paterson, New Jersey. What does locality mean when access and communication are transmitted in ways that are faster than ever? Even the simple device of cell phone text-messaging has rapidly facilitated spontaneous demonstrations which have then toppled regimes (i.e. Estrada’s downfall in the Philippines or the Ukraine’s Orange Revolution).

The brilliance of Christian Bok’s “Euonia” is due to a startlingly kinetic combination of strict formal constraints and a verbal generosity. Flip through journals to see how many times poets will lazily overuse words like “vesper” and “glissando” in order to evoke shadowy interiority. Working with Oulipo constraints, Bok is forced to use words that one wouldn’t find within a poetic framework (for evidence, check out the chapter devoted to “U”-- “Ubu pumps Lulu's plush, sunburnt tush.”)

I think there is a pervasive flatness to contemporary poetry. In order to work out of that flatness, we could be more formally rigorous with sound while widening our palette on what makes a “word.” Aesthetically, politically, and culturally, if we are more globally engaged, it could also widen our perception on language and form. In order to work out of that flatness, there could be a poetic of dynamism, neologisms, high artifice, and dramatic persona. A poetic in fictional drag. A poetic with the energy of collectivity and not just the tricky interior self. If the autobiographical first person has been argued by Language Poets as a “mockup of consciousness,” why not camp up the mockup (see Ostashevsky when he assumes the role of MC Squared) and return to personas and find a poetic that is as much outward theater as it is inward. A poetic that blends wordplay with serious critique. A poetic that is bigger than itself. A maximalist epic poetic that outsizes genres and bleeds into prose and playwriting and hypertext, that exhausts itself in an inventive sonic virtuosity. Is this just a dressed up return to the lyric? Is this in actuality reactionary rather than a move forward? Not necessarily. But then, years from now, a new group of poets can come in, call it verbal hedonism, and bring it all back down to grammar once again.

2006-11-30T06:14:00.000-08:00

I'll be doing a reading with Joan Retallack for the Segue Poetry Reading Series on Saturday, December 9. 4-6. Bowery Poetry Club. I'm actually quite excited about reading with Retallack.

SEGUE READING SERIES @ BOWERY POETRY CLUB
Saturdays: 4:00 p.m. - 6:00 p.m.
308 BOWERY, just north of Houston
$5 admission goes to support the readers*

2006-11-22T07:43:00.000-08:00

Last weekend, I did a reading at Notre Dame with Sandy Florian. Poets extraordinaire (and proffs of earnest Catholics) Joyelle Mcsweeney and Johannes Gorannson invited the both of us. The venue was remarkable because it was a strange simulacra of a café in the newly built Regis Philbin performance center. The “cafe” had mood lighting and even fake smoke--it had an MTV unplugged kind of feel, which was what Joyelle said the architects were going for. Anyway, I was excited about the Regis Philbin peformance center because I once had an (albeit very brief) obsession with Who Wants to Be a Millionaire.

I found one episode to be particularly poignant which I then used in a poem (I was at that point in poetry where I thought anything can serve as subject, nothing was sacred). Contestants usually zipped through the first five questions in two minutes since the questions were child's play. No one, absolutely no one, stumped on the first five questions.

The contestant was Stan Wu, a well-groomed Chinese American 20-something year old man, the kind of man who probably graduated from a potted Ivy like Williams or Amherst College, who probably received a perfect 800 on not only his math score in his SATS, but his verbal score as well. On the second question, Regis asked Stan Wu what a nectarine was most similar to: a. orange b. apple c. peach or d. pineapple. Stan Wu, with aplomb or with confident bravado, replied in dinner party parlance, “Well, Regis, I grew up in California so I think I should know this one. It’s a. orange.”

And in less than a minute, he was out.

One can attribute Stan Wu's painful gaffe to carelessness or extreme nervousness. But I think that there are all kinds of cultural ramifications . No matter how much of a native "Californian" Stan Wu was, how much he knew the Chicago Manual of Style backwards and forwards, how much effort he put into studying Latin proverbs, he was just not fluent enough. English still took a modicum of effort. Taken off-guard, Stan Wu slipped on a semantic banana peel.

Anyway, Sandy Florian and Tao Lin are the latest poets to come out of Action Books. As usual with all of Action’s choices, the collections of both authors are intriguing, fresh and bold. Tao Lin’s book doesn’t even have page numbers.

*Stan Wu could have also been the result of WWTBM’s aggressive efforts to diversify. Like most trivia shows, WWTBM churned out asperger syndromy white male champions--a fact that didn't escape Regis's attention. On the show, he once implored, "Everyone out there who thought about being on the show, and who isn't a white male, dial that 800 number!"

2006-11-16T17:38:00.000-08:00

I usually don't pay attention to this kind of thing, but I must say this year's National Book Award's choices were remarkable for their two decisions:

Nathaniel Mackey winning for his "Splay Anthem."
Adrienne Rich winning this year's Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters.

From the Washington Post:

Adrienne Rich...drew a standing ovation as she wheeled her walker toward the lectern. Poetry, she said, has sometimes been accused of aestheticizing human suffering. And yet "if poetry had gone mute after every genocide in history," there wouldn't be much poetry in the world. It is the poet's job, she added, to give the lie to "that brute dictum: 'There is no alternative.' "

2006-10-25T08:01:00.000-07:00

Friends/poets/documentarians Shane Book and David Lau are working on an interesting video about California labor conditions. Check it out here.

2006-10-24T16:14:00.003-07:00

This Third Factory essay by Steve Evans has been floating around for awhile but I've only recently read it. It's a muckraking essay on the corporatization of poetry--in particular, Dana Gioia and John Barr's attempt to move NEA and Poetry (remember those Ruth Lily benjamins?) rightward. The essay will also be out in the Baffler. I just wanted to point out my favorite part:

"There is great poetry being written in the academy,” John Barr told Kevin Larimer of Poets & Writers, “but we might get a broader experience base in poetry if people did things other than write and teach.” Need a concrete example? Here is Barr’s favorite: “Ernest Hemingway. In 1933 he took his first safari...he shot lions and went home and wrote about it.... I don’t know a lot of poets who do that.”

Well, doggone it. I'm gonna get my rifle and go on a safari and shoot me some zebras and then I'm gonna write a crown of sonnets about it!

2006-10-09T18:41:00.000-07:00

This whole day, I've been fixated on the disclosure of the North Korean nuclear arms testing. As some of you know, I spent a year in South Korea, translating oral testimonials by North Korean refugees and writing politics articles about the human rights problem (check out, for example, my article for the Guardian).

Marmot's Hole, although its political leanings are sometimes dubious, is a good resource on updates. I'm also waiting to see if Brian Myers, aka B.R. Myers, has anything tantalizing to say about this situation. Brian, an Atlantic Monthly contributor, is someone I met and befriended while in Korea. He's more known for his railings against what he calls Postmodern fiction (in which I've had a few heated arguments with him about). It's a shame that he's known for his literary opinions, since he's more spot on about his analysis on North Korean culture and politics, which is his specialty as an academic. He wrote an interesting article about how to read between the lines of North Korean propaganda for the NY Times.

With all the news analysis and finger-pointing--Bush has catastrophically fucked up once again, but will predictably place the blame on the Clinton administration--little is said about the North Korean people, who will most likely be the worst victims of the sanctions, if China ever goes through with it. Barbara Demick, from the LA Times, wrote a great article about life in a North Korean city.

2006-10-05T07:46:00.000-07:00

My dear friend Jen Liu will be in a group show at Mary Boone Gallery. Check out her hallucinatory, Boschian, dystopic water colors here.

2006-10-02T18:03:00.000-07:00

Well, well, well. It looks like a South Korean is in strong positioning to take over as the next UN secretary general. Ban Ki-Moon will replace Kofi Annan after a formal vote next Monday.

I also read about him in this week's New Yorker and it concerns me that Ban Ki-Moon was hesitant to call Rwanda a "genocide," which then makes me wonder how he'll tread around Darfur. Of course, he'll have a full plate with Iraq, Iran, North Korea, Lebanon...

2006-09-22T11:11:00.001-07:00

Eugene Ostashevsky has put out a fascinating anthology: Obeiru, an Anthology of Russian Absurdism. Obeiru was a Russian avant-garde movement from the 1930s, a movement that was quickly suppressed so little has been written about this group. There are plays, poetry, prose. Few of my favorites: Gluttony, A Ballad, and Zeros, which I will excerpt below:

Zeros

The sight of a notebook is pleasant
There a powerful zero is present,
And another, but smaller and crippled,
Like a lemon lies nearby, rippled.

My dear, my dear zeros,
I loved you and I love you still.
Be quick, melancholics! Hurry, depressives!
Rub a zreo and all will be well.

These circles are wonderfully curative,
Each one worth a doctor or nurse:
With them, the patient thinks positive,
Withou them, he cries for a hearse--or worse!

When I go, do not crown my tombstone
With an expensive, impractical wreath.
Rather lay with your trembling fingers
A zero upon the heath.

2006-08-21T19:53:00.001-07:00

Lara Glenum, from Hounds of No, tagged me. I'm quite terrible at thinking up books at the right moment so this might seem random.

1. A book that changed my life
Patricia Bosworth’s biography of Diane Arbus. The biography itself is completely schlocky and terribly written, but it put ideas in my impressionable, teenage head on what kind of person I wanted to be and what kind of career I wanted. Needless to say, I achieved none of these goals.
Doubtful that a book of poems changed my life. But if I had to choose: Paul Celan’s Collected Poems. Theresa Cha’s Dictee comes in a close second.

2. A book I've read more than once?
Well, I’ve read the Diane Arbus biography to rags and then I lost it.

3. What is a book I'd want with me on a desert island?
Does an i-book count?

4. What is a book that made me giddy?
The Official Dictionary of Dance Hall Slang.

5. What is a book that has made me sad?
Any number of children’s books. Recently? Jared Diamond’s chapter on Easter Island in his book “Collapse.” It gave me sad dreams.

6. What is a book I wish had been written?
I wish Osamu Tezuka wrote a manga version of Ulysses.

7. A book I wish had never been written?
At the risk of facing the wrath of many young aggro-emo males: Fight Club? Ok, the book has its place. I’ll have to think about it…

8. What is a book I'm currently reading?
Bertolt Brecht’s Collected Plays. Lisa Jarnot’s Black Dog Songs. Susan Stewart’s Poetry and the Senses. A Prose Poetry Anthology. Richard Greenfield’s A Carnage in the Lovetrees. Paul Virilio’s Speed and Politics. Terry Eagleton's Sweet Violence: The Idea of the Tragic.

These all vaguely have to do with my own writing or teaching. None of these are beach reads except for maybe Brecht.

9. One book I've been meaning to read? I have a shelf of them glaring at me right now.

2006-08-18T06:41:00.000-07:00

From the New York Times:

- Civil rights leader Andrew Young resigned as chairman of a group intended to boost Wal-Mart Stores Inc.'s (WMT.N) image after he made remarks to a newspaper disparaging Jewish, Arab and Korean shop owners.

Young told the Los Angeles Sentinel, an African-American newspaper, that Jewish, Arab and Korean shop owners had ``ripped off'' urban communities for years, ``selling us stale bread, and bad meat and wilted vegetables,'' The New York Times said.

In a statement posted on the Working Families for Wal-Mart Web site on Thursday, Young apologized for his remarks and asked for forgiveness from those who he offended.

``I recently made some comments about former store owners in my neighborhood that were completely and utterly inappropriate,'' the statement said. ``Those comments run contrary to everything I have dedicated my life to.''

I wonder if Young's comments might resonate with some African Americans since he managed to exploit that age-old tension between immigrant store owners and black neighborhoods, a tension that still hasn't dissolved since the LA Riots and that still needs to be addressed. It's just terribly misguided that Young has shilled Wal- Mart as the answer.

Wal-Mart may crush Arab, Jewish, and Korean business owners, but how do they help black business owners? Sure, they prevent immigrants from lining their pockets. Instead, the profits go straight to the Waltons, who rank among America's top 10 richest people. And this is a family not exactly known for promoting livable wages, civil rights, and any kind of health-care for the working class.

Overall, it's disappointing that Andrew Young, someone who has spent decades fighting for equal rights, has made such sweeping bigoted remarks. He truly captured a range of ethnic groups. He could have just kept it to the Koreans. But he had to rope in the Arabs and the Jews. Unlike Mel, it won't be just the synagogue that he'll be visiting to make ammends.

2006-08-01T19:14:00.000-07:00

Ahem, so Poetry Foundation asked me to write a personal essay on "poetry and the sentence" and to respond to Adrien Blevin's essay. I did. It is hardly a groundbreaking essay since I give a skimming, abc explanation on experimental trends.

Then they asked me to engage in a weeklong blog debate with Blevins. Well, here's my response to her response. But, it's a blistering 100 degrees in NY, my brain's fried and I'd rather not think about the aesthetics of poetry. Here, instead, are other weeklong blog debates I would rather engage in:

Leggings: How long will this silly trend last?

Morrissey: Gay or truly asexual? And can people truly be categorized as asexual?

Should one whore oneself out for centralized air-conditioning? Why or why not?

2006-07-26T17:21:00.000-07:00

Walid Raad, video artist and founder of the Atlas Collective, is currently in Lebanon and sent out the following email:

Yet another day of bombing all over the place. In the mountain here, we were subject to about three different bombing runs: 1 to continue destroying the Beirut to Damascus road; another to destroy the cell phone antennas; and another to again hit the Beirut to Damascus road. Just a few minutes ago, the house was shaking again, and I only assume the Israelis are pounding the same area. The safe areas are much further to the north, the northeastern enclave, an area traditionally christian. Listening to Nasrallah's speech tonight was not reassuring one bit. After pleading with the Lebanese to stand firm, and after denouncing Arab government leaving Lebanon cannot imagine this going on for months, despite what some officials up high are stating. I assume that the regional ploy is to disarm hizbAllah. This will only happen is Syria and Iran get something in return. What is the U.S. willing to grant them? Also, they have to find a way out for HizbAllah. Which means that their position inside the Lebanese government will have to be negotiated. They may disarm them, but they have to give them a way out as well. After all, HizbAllah represents 1 million folks here. Israel and the U.S cannot kill them all.

Rumors aplenty, every ten minutes. The news, all of it, Arab and international, makes me sick. We are stuck with a false choice: Support HizbAllah, or be an Israeli agent. That is at least what HizbAllah and their Syrian allies are saying. The Christian right's position is equally naive. They want to assume that HizbAllah will just go away. they are wishing it at least. That wont happen, no matter what. Everyone is miscalculating it seems: HizbAllah, the Americans, the Israelis, The Saudis, the Palestinians, The French, The Russians, The Chinese. You name it.Effects on the ground will remain once this crisis is resolved, and has already generated enough antagonism to last us another decade.

We are trying to think of what to do. To leave,and be stuck in the U.S glued to the TV trying to figure out what is happening will be maddening. This will clearly get worse before it gets better, and we have not seen the worse yet. Now, all parties are slowly revealing their cards.

2006-07-25T14:00:00.000-07:00

A couple months ago, there was uproar over Flarfist Michael Magee’s ill-conceived Orientalist poem "Their Asian Glittering Guys. I haven’t the energy to summarize the debacle but you can read Tim Yu’s eloquent reaming of Magee’s piece here.

Since then, minority poets and theorists in the Bay area have galvanized to begin a discussion group on the buried yet tense intersections between the primarily white practitioners of the avant-garde and race. Now, much criticism has been devoted to the exclusionary tactics of official verse culture but little ink has been spilled on how the historical Avant-Garde and its present torch carriers are not exactly progressive minded themselves. Case in point is how Flarf defenders of Magee’s poem have used Postmodern rhetoric (roving subjectivity, pastiche, lack of authorship and the old-fashioned “some of my best friends are Asian poets!”) to deflect responsibility in owning up to the poem’s Orientalist content. Again much of this is deeply explored in Yu’s blog and responses by Chris Chen, Pamelu Lu, Arif Khan and others.

I also hate to point out the cheatingly obvious, but poets of color are as much in the fringes of post avant-garde culture as much as they are in official verse culture,* perhaps more so. Harryette Mullen, whose work I actually adore, is one of few minority poets who receives the most Langpo PR and I wonder how it’s any different from Academy of American Poetry embracing Yusef Komunyakaa to legitimize their institution as multicultural. I’m also tired of conversations where experimental minority poets are often demoted to being ethnic derivations of their white peers (the true formal innovators)—for instance, Myung Mi Kim being the Korean Susan Howe. Although white experimental poets exile themselves to the margins, they reproduce a hierarchicalizing infrastructure that’s not so different from the machine they are rebelling from.

Of course, it’s all up to poets themselves to begin communities, much like the Bay area listserv. And to contradict myself, I do think these are exciting times. Groups are popping up who do not identify themselves by strict identity politicky markers, nor who are straight white males who use theory to bulwark their experimental poetics, but who fuse formal invention, theory, with global politics, history and ethnicity--poets of diverse backgrounds who hammer out their own explosive aesthetics. The excellent Black Took Collective, an experimental offshoot of Cave Canem poets, is one. Action, Yes, integrates formal innovation with internationalism and translations. There are the Russians at Ugly Duckling. There are individual poets like Cecilia Vicuna, Ed Roberson, Tyrone Williams, Barbara Jane Reyes, etc and etc. They are scattered but out there, and I only expect there will be more.

*A caveat: I realize that official verse culture and the experimental camps are often bed partners and that poetry as a whole is one cramped, labyrinthine, incestuous muddle of quibbling groups.

2006-07-05T08:45:00.000-07:00

My roommate Ghita referred me to a fascinating obituary article about an Ex-Sandinista, Herty Lewites. His life is unalloyed fodder for an epic Rushdian novel. Some highlights of his life:

Herty Lewites was born in the Nicaraguan province of Jinotepe, the son of a Jewish Polish candy manufacturer who left New York and settled in Jinotepe after falling in love with a Nicaraguan woman.

Herty Lewites joined the leftist Sandinista National Liberation Front.

Herty Lewites smuggled guns from California to Nicaragua in the 70s. After several successful runs, carrying weapons concealed in trucks, he was arrested and spent six months in federal prison.

Herty Lewites was appointed the minister of tourism after the Sandinistas won the Revolutionary war in 1979.

Herty Lewites won fame and fortune opening “dollar stores” where diplomats could buy imported goods otherwise unavailable in Nicaragua.

Herty Lewites won even more fame and fortune opening up an amusement park named "Hertylandia."

Herty Lewites was a contender in the race for the next Nicaraguan presidency, under a new party that he formed, the Movement for Sandinista Renewal.

Herty Lewites died of a heart attack mid-campaign.

Read the rest here.

2006-06-29T12:15:00.000-07:00

1913 editor/poet Sandra Miller sent me notice about the Rozanova contest for 1913:

The ROZANOVA PRIZE:
For a collaborative and/or visual book, to be published in a beautiful, perfect-bound edition by 1913 Press.
Winner also receives standard royalties contract and 25 copies of the book.

All contest entrants will receive a copy of the winning book.
$20 entry fee
1913 is now accepting entries through September 13, 2006

I'm always for poet/artist collaborations. There isn't enough of them.

2006-06-27T07:41:00.000-07:00

Bulgasari is the name of a friend’s experimental noise music series based out of Seoul. Musicians include Sato Yukie, Chulkie Hong, Joonyong Choi, and Han-gil Ryu. They are very awesome. Check out their site here.

Bulgasari is also North Korea’s Godzilla cult classic made in 1985. A feared monster, yet gentle friend to peasants, chews his way through iron and leads a revolt against the king, ruthlessly destroying the king’s army (thousands of North Korean soldiers were drafted as “extras”). Kim Jong-Il, an insatiable cineaste, was so insistent on having this film made that he kidnapped South Korea’s renowned director, Shin Sang Ok, and his actress wife, Choi Eun-Hi, so that Shin could direct the film and Choi could be the star.

Before Shin, North Korean films had titles like “The County Party Chief Secretary” and “The Fate of a Self-Defense Corps Man.” After the abduction (and after 5 years in a re-education camp), Shin was reunited with Choi in Pyongyang. Then, Kim Jong Il gave him 3 mil a year, a studio, and 700 employees at his disposal. Bulgasari was born.

I actually met the director Shin when I was a kid. He and his wife escaped their North Korean minders in Vienna and made their way to L.A. where they hid in my childhood friend’s home for a few years. The man wore shades and a silk neck scarf even when he lounged around the house, watching TV. I guess Kim Jong-Il passed on a few fashion tips to Shin before he fled.

2006-06-21T13:43:00.000-07:00

I live on St Felix Street, which will soon be overshadowed by Frank Gehry’s behemoth, “Miss Brooklyn.” Read Jonathan Lethem's letter to the architect who will not be sated.

2006-06-14T13:37:00.000-07:00

I was up at Mass Moca this weekend and checked out a group show of artists reenacting history. Some of it was inevitably didactic but I finally had the chance to see Paul Chan's video, "Happiness," a hypnotic digitally animated take on Outsider artist Henry Darger and Utopian thinker Charles Fourier. The scroll-like horizontal projection depicted scenes of girls (with male appendages) frolicking in some kind of prelapsarian garden before they were visited upon by their tormentors, a battalion of suited men bearing cell phones, batons and other nefarious weapons. The animation was homespun and pixelated, kind of like early Nintendo games. It was beautiful, scatalogical, and disturbing.

Paul Chan is one of the few artists who juggles dual roles as artist and activist. He's worked with the Teamsters, IndyMedia, and was part of Voices of the Wilderness, an anti-war organization that is based in Iraq. On top of that, he’s blown up as a video artist (he’s on the cover of June’s Art Forum). But despite his stated need to separate the roles, Chan creates work that is explicitly political and yet it is work that maintains a rich complexity. Part of what is so nuanced about Chan’s work is his formula: he uses the raw materials of our current political situation to create a fictionalized, bizarrely imagined world. (Another brilliant example of a video artist who does this is Lebanese video artist Walid Raad.) Village Voice art critic Jerry Saltz included Chan in his sweeping pronouncements about art in the present age:

“Now, artists are meshing history with lived reality. They're attuned to the sadness, the terror, and the ecstasy of history. They understand that the present is history.”

Years ago, poetry was visual art’s partner-in-crime (think Dadaism, Futurism, etc etc etc and etc), but now hardly a relationship exists between the two as one medium is immersed in the Market while the other has fallen in the dustbins. Yet a relationship, I think, still exists. So I wonder if this mindful awareness towards history and the collective will be a trajectory for contemporary poetry too or has poetry (and I am of course speaking very, very, very generally as I tend to do) already become too trapped within academia's myopia, in that the only history poetry now recognizes is its own literary past?

2006-06-02T08:20:00.000-07:00

For a few months, I considered moving back to LA, but feared its cultural vacuity. The art world, of course, is booming but poets there seem more marginalized there than anywhere else. Wichita appreciates poets more. I know Harryette Mullen is there, as well as Martha Ronk, Cal Bedient, Maggie Nelson and I hear Claudia Rankine is moving to LA, as well as many other great poets...but perhaps I just can't get past my memory of doing a reading there with local poets who blew soap bubbles and read about their "clitora."

Actually, Sun and Moon Press used to be in LA. I once interned there for a winter term when I was a bored college student. It was a storefront press two blocks or so from LA County Museum, on Wilshire blvd, which is a major thoroughfare. The press was cavernous, gray carpeted, many roomed, hushed since it was usually only Douglas Messerli, the Sun and Moon editor, who padded around its empty hallways. I had it in my head that I would meet poets and go to their apartments and eat their brie and listen to their thoughts on Tristan Tzara. But bored at home, I was now bored at the press, where I would open desperate little cover letters and put them in a neat stack which was never read. My only company was Douglas Messerli who was a bearish man with a whitish beard who did not think much of me, which is understandable since I was 20.

I was an idle intern and I had a hunch that Douglas Messerli devised Sissyphean tasks just to get me out of his hair. One day, he told me that he had a grand project for me: to manually count all the books in the storage room. He needed a grand total. Why, I had no idea, or for what purpose, I was not sure. There were thousands of books, towers of books, shelves and boxes of them. So I took my little step ladder and started counting the books, one after another: Bruce Andrews, David Antin, Eleanor Antin, Rae Armantrout, Daphne Athas, Paul Auster….I wrote down a number at every 50 books to keep track. After the third hour, I resentfully began losing count and making up an estimate in my passive aggressive way. I could not finish the task in one day. The next day I asked, rather hopefully, what the agenda looked for the day, and Douglas Messerli looked up and said, “Oh, continue the inventory.” And I was banished into the storage closet to continue my count. I continued to count and count, like the flawed little human abacus I was. On the fourth day, I still wasn't finished and I had it. I told Douglas Messerli that I don’t think I could do it any more. He understood and then banished me to the backroom where all the file cabinets were and that was where I was sent to alphabetize all the order forms. And that was my first encounter with Language Poetry.

Day 1

2006-04-13T15:26:00.000-07:00

This is my debut as a blogger. More to come....