Song of a Reformed Headhunter

Finished reading Anna Burns' Milkman today. I liked it very much. Henry Abelove gave me the book when he came to our holiday party. My Goodreads review: A revelation. How does one convey the emotional numbness that the unlikely heroine, Middle Sister, puts up to protect against the various invasive forms of violence in her Belfast community in the 1970s? By showing the constant struggle to maintain the shield, always in danger of slipping because of one's curiosity, anger, fear, and love, if not battered down by communal conflict. The language, repetitive, idiosyncratic, in one word, paranoid, immerses the reader in Middle Sister's consciousness. The immersion is complete with the voices of other members of the community, filtered through Middle Sister's consciousness in such a way that they are always at least potentially echoes of her own dilemma, figures of her own splitting. Today I also got to page 95 of Asad Haider's Mistaken Identity: Race and Class in the...

"For some reason I cannot pin down, I go to the word “soft” often in my poetry. It does not only speak, it also touches and tastes, and it does all this while meaning, variously, listen, gentle, vulnerable, honest, subtle, strong, tender, comfortable, pre-erection, post-orgasm, receptive, sympathetic, malleable, formal, transformative. It is not the opposite of hard, but is a state of hardness, just as hard is but a state of softness. It appears in conjunction with “ware,” “water,” and “power.”" Pleased to be included in this special Singapore feature of the Portugal-based journal Jogos Florais. Shout-outs in my interview to Tan Pin Pin, Sonny Liew, Gwee Li Sui, Dorothy Wang, Timothy Yu, Jahan Ramazani, and Gina Apostol. And thanks, Marguerita, for sharing your story with me. Your poem has appeared! Poems and interviews by Angeline Yap, Anne Lee Tzu Pheng, Cyril Wong, Edwin Thumboo, Jee Leong Koh, Loh Guan Liang, Pooja Nansi, Shirley Geok-lIn Lim, Tania De Rozario, and...

Went to the Race & Poetry & Poetics in the UK (RAPAPUK) Conference in Cambridge, UK (Friday and Saturday, Oct 26 and 27). Initiated and co-organized by Dorothy Wang. The theme of the conference was, aptly, "Legacies of Colonialism." Priyamvada Gopal was most incisive and insightful about the possibility and meaning of "decolonizing Cambridge." I also learned from Walt Hunter's paper ‘Riot of Sound: Claudia Jones’s Carceral Poetics’ and Chinelo Ezenwa's paper ‘Stifling Indigenous Agency through Translation: the Igbo Psalms and a Poetics of Decolonization’. Dorothy was at her polemic best in her presentation 'Whither Poetry Studies?' There were poetry readings during both evenings of the conference. The first night showcased four experimental and performance poets. The second night, which I liked better, showcased three page poets, among whom Will Harris and Mary Jean Chan stood out, for me.

Dorothy Wang invited, and we attended, a reading by John Tipton, Mary Margaret Sloan, and Michael Autrey at at Berl's Poetry Shop in Dumbo last night. Tipton read from his forthcoming book Paramnesia and his translation of Aeschylus' Seven Against Thebes . The poetry of Sloan, a friend of Dorothy's, was more experimental. Autrey read from his book Our Fear . The rumbling of trains over the Manhattan Bridge made it quite difficult to hear the readers, especially since the men insisted on not using the mic. Before the reading, Dorothy and I had dinner at Almar, an Italian place just a block away from Berl's. We had a lively discussion, as usual, about poetry, politics, and friendships. divided on race while sharing a side of broccoli rabe

As a poet, I'd be deeply grateful to any reader who reads my poetry as closely as Dorothy J. Wang does the writings of Li-Young Lee, Marilyn Chin, John Yau, Mei-mei Berssenbrugge and Pamela Lu. The quality of attention in Thinking Its Presence: Form, Race and Subjectivity in Contemporary Asian American Poetry is strongly sympathetic, though never uncritical. Wang shows how the racialized formation of the poets' identity is, not a cause, but a determinant of the form and language of their poetry. To ignore such influence is to read them willfully with one eye closed. Whether the poet treats race thematically, as Li-Young Lee, Marilyn Chin and John Yau do, or through formal means and experimental strategies, as Wang argues for Mei-mei Berssenbrugge and Pamela Lu, he or she has to confront the realities of American racial politics. In her readings, Wang uncovers the complex deployment of the individual poet's dominant trope. She shows, for instance, that Li-Young Lee is...