Poetry to Look Forward to: Four Way Books
Mar. 17th, 2011 04:54 pm![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
stephenhongsohn.livejournal.com posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
asianamlitfansPoetry To Look Forward to: Four Way Books
I am big fan of Four Way Books, which boasts an outstanding selection of “Asian American” poets. I put the term Asian American in scare quotations only because the texts published by such writers are obviously diverse in content and form and do not always stay within the confines of ethnic or racial themes. Upcoming books by Asian American poets include: Tina Chang (author Half-Lit Houses) and Claire Kageyama-Ramakrishnan (author of Shadow Mountain) in Fall 2011 and Brian Komei Dempster in 2013.
One of their latest publications, Torn, is by one of my favorite contemporary poets, C. Dale Young, who is particularly adept at a couple of different “types” of lyric poems, including what I would call “medicinal” poetics. The title poem, which comes at the tale end of the collection, is an absolutely searing example of the kind of medicinal poetics that Young excels at. In this case, the lyric speaker, a doctor, must tend to the damaged face of a young gay man who has been assaulted during a hate crime. The identification between the lyric speaker and the patient is palpable, especially as the doctor takes care and consideration to stitch the badly injured face together, literally “torn” open, spending far more time than had been recommended by his superior. Of course, Young augments the poignance of this scene by detailing it with such keen and precise diction. With the best of poets, we gorge upon the texture of words and sonic registers, all at play here, even in the most horrifying of circumstances. This dissonance reminds us of paradoxical nature of art—our ability to make sense of and even to render with beauty the moments that can be the most traumatizing.
Link to Four Way Books:
http://www.fourwaybooks.com/
Buy Torn Here:
http://www.amazon.com/Torn-C-Dale-Young/dp/1935536060/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1300406028&sr=8-1
I am big fan of Four Way Books, which boasts an outstanding selection of “Asian American” poets. I put the term Asian American in scare quotations only because the texts published by such writers are obviously diverse in content and form and do not always stay within the confines of ethnic or racial themes. Upcoming books by Asian American poets include: Tina Chang (author Half-Lit Houses) and Claire Kageyama-Ramakrishnan (author of Shadow Mountain) in Fall 2011 and Brian Komei Dempster in 2013.
One of their latest publications, Torn, is by one of my favorite contemporary poets, C. Dale Young, who is particularly adept at a couple of different “types” of lyric poems, including what I would call “medicinal” poetics. The title poem, which comes at the tale end of the collection, is an absolutely searing example of the kind of medicinal poetics that Young excels at. In this case, the lyric speaker, a doctor, must tend to the damaged face of a young gay man who has been assaulted during a hate crime. The identification between the lyric speaker and the patient is palpable, especially as the doctor takes care and consideration to stitch the badly injured face together, literally “torn” open, spending far more time than had been recommended by his superior. Of course, Young augments the poignance of this scene by detailing it with such keen and precise diction. With the best of poets, we gorge upon the texture of words and sonic registers, all at play here, even in the most horrifying of circumstances. This dissonance reminds us of paradoxical nature of art—our ability to make sense of and even to render with beauty the moments that can be the most traumatizing.
Link to Four Way Books:
http://www.fourwaybooks.com/
Buy Torn Here:
http://www.amazon.com/Torn-C-Dale-Young/dp/1935536060/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1300406028&sr=8-1
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}