Song of a Reformed Headhunter

Weekly column written for the Singapore Unbound newsletter. Sign up here . A milestone: my private school on the Upper East Side of NYC has gone for 6 teaching weeks without having to close because of the virus. Sure, some groups of students had had to stay home because a classmate or two had a household member who tested or could be positive, but the rest of the school had continued to function, and after the requisite weeks of quarantine, those students had rejoined in-person learning. As a teacher, I can't begin to tell you the immense difference between real and virtual learning. An informal poll will have to suffice. All my juniors, 16-17 years old, said that they would rather study in school than at home. It is only possible for my school to reach such a milestone because we have such superior resources. We are rich not only in funding but also in personnel. Our teacher-to-student ratio is small. More importantly, our staff-to-student ratio is also small, much bet...

 Weekly column written for the Singapore Unbound newsletter. Sign up here . Last spring, at my all-girls independent school, I taught a senior-year poetry workshop called "A Portfolio of Selves: Four Asian American Women Poets," focusing on the work of Monica Youn, Aimee Nezhukumatathil, Celina Su, and Jenifer Sang Eun Park. The students responded enthusiastically and imaginatively to the variety of subject matter and style in these very different poets. I was immensely impressed by the students' eagerness to learn from these eloquent experiments in contemporary poetry. The poems written by one student, Charlotte Baker, stood out for their self-assured adoption of the means on offer to convey her very own ends. I had very little to offer her in terms of feedback. The poems were whole, or almost so. The poems were incredibly vulnerable too. They transcended the writing exercises to become genuine investments in discovery and feeling. They have now been publis...

Serendipity, to have two of my "Palinodes in the Voice of My Dead Father" appear in Flypaper Lit , which calls Ohio home, when I'm here in Ohio for Elnora's memorial service. GH and I have lost three parents between us in the last three years. The palinodes give voice to the tension between mourners, as in every family, and then the possibility of reconciliation. Five of the palinodes also appeared in PN Review 255 . 

 Weekly column for the Singapore Unbound newsletter. Sign up here . A warm welcome to Singapore Unbound's weekly newsletter to everyone who is joining us fresh from the 2020 Singapore Literature Festival in NYC. Here you will find more news and discussions of the topics of democracy, freedom of expression, and equal rights, and of your favorite authors from the festival. The videos of all the festival events, including the festival previews, are now available for viewing on a special festival playlist on YouTube . You can enjoy listening to the speakers now at your own leisure. If you have found an event particularly interesting, you could organize your own viewing party with friends and discuss the the ideas about literature and politics raised by festival speakers, such as Tanie De Rozario, Leah Piepzna-Samarasinha, Nuraliah Norasid, Ricco Villanuea Siasoco, Amanda Lee Koe, Paula Mendoza, Aimee Liu, and Meira Chand. The Opening Address by PJ Thum "Is There Hope ...