Summer Reads: Issue 1 Contributor Eileen R. Tabios

For our Summer Reads series, we’ve asked contributors from Issue 1 to share what they’ve been reading or plan to read this summer.  This installment features a list of titles that were recommended to us by Eileen Tabios.

Writes Eileen,

“For another venue, I came up with a Summer reading list in poetry here . . .

From above list and for LR — I can recommend the following Asian American titles:
Juvenilia by Ken Chen (Yale University Press)
Far far above the typical poet’s first book. Admirably — and effectively — ambitious. Sophisticated. Will make you fall in love
Bending The Mind Around The Dream’s Blown Fuse by Timothy Liu (Talisman House)
Simply: Magnificent!
Texture Notes by Sawako Nakayasu (Letter Machine Editions)
Intelligent luminosities!”
Many thanks to Eileen for sharing these titles with us!  Her poem “DISASTER RELIEF (#2)” can be found in Issue 1 of Lantern Review.  She can also be found online at her blog, “THE BLIND CHATELAINE’S KEYS.”

Summer Reads: Issue 1 Contributor Tamiko Beyer

For our Summer Reads series, we’ve asked contributors from Issue 1 to share what they’ve been reading or plan to read this summer.  This installment features a list sent to us by Tamiko Beyer.

Says Tamiko,

“Here’s what’s on my reading stack right now:

Cascadia, by Brenda Hillman
Incendiary Circumstances, by Amitav Gosh
Ida, by Gertrude Stein
the ecolanguage reader, edited by Brenda Ijima
The Mill on the Floss, by George Eliot
The Wind-up Bird Chronicle, by Haruki Murakami (finally!)
Zong! by M. NourbeSe Philip
And chapbooks by Jason Bayani and Bushra Rehman, which I got from the authors at the most recent Kundiman retreat!”

Many thanks to Tamiko for sharing these titles with us.  Check out her postcard poem in Issue 1’s special feature on Kundiman, or follow her online at her personal web site, www.wonderinghome.com, and at the Kenyon Review blog.

Summer Reads: Issue 1 Contributor Rachelle Cruz

For our Summer Reads series, we’ve asked contributors from Issue 1 to share what they’ve been reading or plan to read this summer.  This installment features Rachelle Cruz’s summer reading list.

Rachelle says,

“Here’s my long list.  A mix of poetry and mystery (I work at a specialty mystery bookstore):

A Bad Day for Sorry by Sophie Littlefield

Severance Package by Duane Swierczynski

Natural History of Love by Diane Ackerman

Dawn Light by Diane Ackerman

Transformations by Anne Sexton

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo by Steig Larsson

Delivered by Sarah Gambito

Toxic Flora by Kimiko Hahn

I-Hotel by Karen Yamashita

So Much Things To Say by Kwame Dawes”

Many thanks to Rachelle for sharing her list with us.  You can read her poem “I Am Still Alive” in Issue 1 of Lantern Review or find more of her on the web at rachellecruz.com and on her radio show, The Blood-Jet Writing Hour.

Summer Reads: Issue 1 Contributor Desmond Kon

For our Summer Reads series, we’ve asked contributors from Issue 1 to share what they’ve been reading or plan to read this summer.  This installment features a list from Singaporean poet & ceramist Desmond Kon Zhicheng-Mingdé.

Desmond writes,

“Here’s my list (some books have arrived and others I’m requisitioning from the national library here) but these are the ones I’ve been excited about (there are others but they’ll have to wait for next year or something):

Power & Possibility: Essays, Reviews and Interviews (by Elizabeth Alexander)

Islamic Ceramics (by James W. Allan)

The Gate of Horn (by L. S. Asekoff)

Planisphere (by John Ashbery)

This Lamentable City (by Polina Barskova)

These Extremes (by Richard Bausch)

I Was the Jukebox (by Sandra Beasley)

The Collectors (by Matt Bell)

Approaching Ice (by Elizabeth Bradfield)

Plato’s Socrates (by Thomas C. Brickhouse & Nicholas D. Smith)

An Island of Fifty (by Ben Brooks)

Confusion: A Study in the Theory of Knowledge (by Joseph L. Camp, Jr.)

Until Before After (by Ciaran Carson)

Ceramic Materials: Science and Engineering (by C. Barry Carter)

One Kind of Everything: Poem and Person in Contemporary America (by Dan Chiasson)

Pierce the Skin (by Henri Cole)

Heterologies: Discourse on the Other (by Michel de Certeau)

When All Our Days Are Numbered (by Sasha Fletcher)

For the Fighting Spirit of the Walnut (by Takashi Hiraide)

The Living Fire (by Edward Hirsch)

Gender, Desire, and Sexuality in T. S. Eliot (by Cassandra Laity & Nancy K. Gish)

We Don’t Know We Don’t Know (by Nick Lantz)

Chinese Ceramics (by Stacey Pierson)

Long Lens (by Peter Makuck)

Tocqueville (by Khaled Mattawa)

The Stranger Manual (by Catie Rosemurgy)

Vinland (by Jamie Ross)

Living Must Bury (by Josie Sigler)

Postmodern Ceramics (by Mark Del Vecchio & Garth Clark)

Archicembalo (by G. C. Waldrep)

A lovely set of Mud Luscious Press chapbooks (by Eric Beeny, Matt Bell, Michael Berstein, Daniel Citro, Ryan Downey, David Gianatasio, Kuzhali Manickavel, Ben Segal)”

Many thanks to Desmond for sharing his reading list with us. Check out his poems, “first falling, to get here, ferric by foot” and “: craquelure at the interiors :” in Issue 1 of Lantern Review.

Here’s my list (some books have arrived and others I’m requisitioning from the national library here) but these are the ones I’ve been excited about (there are others but they’ll have to wait for next year or something):

Power & Possibility: Essays, Reviews and Interviews (by Elizabeth Alexander)

Islamic Ceramics (by James W. Allan)

The Gate of Horn (by L. S. Asekoff)

Planisphere (by John Ashbery)

This Lamentable City (by Polina Barskova)

These Extremes (by Richard Bausch)

I Was the Jukebox (by Sandra Beasley)

The Collectors (by Matt Bell)

Approaching Ice (by Elizabeth Bradfield)

Plato’s Socrates (by Thomas C. Brickhouse & Nicholas D. Smith)

An Island of Fifty (by Ben Brooks)

Confusion: A Study in the Theory of Knowledge (by Joseph L. Camp, Jr.)

Until Before After (by Ciaran Carson)

Ceramic Materials: Science and Engineering (by C. Barry Carter)

One Kind of Everything: Poem and Person in Contemporary America (by Dan Chiasson)

Pierce the Skin (by Henri Cole)

Heterologies: Discourse on the Other (by Michel de Certeau)

When All Our Days Are Numbered (by Sasha Fletcher)

For the Fighting Spirit of the Walnut (by Takashi Hiraide)

The Living Fire (by Edward Hirsch)

Gender, Desire, and Sexuality in T. S. Eliot (by Cassandra Laity & Nancy K. Gish)

We Don’t Know We Don’t Know (by Nick Lantz)

Chinese Ceramics (by Stacey Pierson)

Long Lens (by Peter Makuck)

Tocqueville (by Khaled Mattawa)

The Stranger Manual (by Catie Rosemurgy)

Vinland (by Jamie Ross)

Living Must Bury (by Josie Sigler)

Postmodern Ceramics (by Mark Del Vecchio & Garth Clark)

Archicembalo (by G. C. Waldrep)

A lovely set of Mud Luscious Press chapbooks (by Eric Beeny, Matt Bell, Michael Berstein, Daniel Citro, Ryan Downey, David Gianatasio, Kuzhali Manickavel, Ben Segal)

Summer Reads: Issue 1 Contributors Craig Santos Perez & Henry W. Leung

For our Summer Reads series, we’ve asked contributors from Issue 1 to share what they’ve been reading or plan to read this summer. This week’s installment features reads from Craig Santos Perez and Henry W. Leung.

Writes Craig,

” . . . here are three books that i just read for this summer:

Thirteen Ways of Looking at the Bus, Gizelle Gajelonia (Tinfish Press)
Shout Ha! to the Sky, Robert Sullivan (Salt)
Zong! M. Nourbese Philip (Wesleyan)”

Henry says,

“I’m working on a Fulbright application for a research novel in China,
so my reading for the next week will be research on the little that’s
been written in English about contemporary (actual contemporary, not
heavily political post-Mao post-CR) China. They include:

Yiyun Li – A Thousand Years of Good Prayers
Shouhua Qi – Red Guard Fantasies and Other Stories
Xiaolu Guo – Lovers in the Age of Indifference
Deanna Fei – A Thread of Sky (product of a 2002 Fulbright in China)
Geling Yan – The Banquet Bug

and translations:
New Generation: Poems from China Today
Pearl Jacket and Other Stories: Flash Fiction from Contemporary China

Many thanks to Craig and Henry, for sharing their reading lists with us.  You can check out Henry’s poem “Question for a Painter” and Craig’s review of Skirt Full of Black in Issue 1 of Lantern Review.

Summer Reads: Issue 1 Contributors Jon Pineda & Barbara Jane Reyes

Welcome to our new Summer Reads blog series!  We recently asked our contributors from Issue 1 to share with us what they are reading  / what’s on their reading lists this summer, and we’ll be featuring their responses here throughout the months of June and July.  This first installment features reads from Jon Pineda & Barbara Jane Reyes.

Writes Jon,

“I just finished Yoko Ogawa’s beautiful novel The Housekeeper and the Professor.”

Barbara tells us,

“I am finishing up Miguel Syjuco’s debut novel Ilustrado. Otherwise, I’m supporting some of my favorite indie publishers —

Albert Saijo, Outspeaks: A Rhapsody (Bamboo Ridge Press)
Michelle Cruz Skinner, In the Company of Strangers (Bamboo Ridge Press)
Gizelle Gajelonia, Thirteen Ways of Looking at The Bus (Tinfish Press)
Elizabeth Soto, Eulogies (Tinfish Press)
Craig Santos Perez, from unincorporated territory [saina] (Omnidawn Press)
Lily Hoang, Changing (Fairy Tale Review Press)
Reginald Dwayne Betts, Shahid Reads His Own Palm (Alice James Books)
Olga García Echeverría, Falling Angels: Cuentos y Poemas (Calaca Press)
Eduardo Galeano, Soccer in Sun and Shadow (Verso Books)

I am also reading Evie Shockley’s manuscript of her forthcoming second poetry collection, the new black.”

Check out Jon’s poem, “[we left the camera]” and Barbara ‘s pieces, “13. Black Jesus” and “10. For Al Robles” in Lantern Review, Issue 1.  For more information on the poets themselves, visit them online at jonpineda.com and barbarajanereyes.com, respectively.

Staff Picks: Holiday Reading Recommendations

Whether you’ll be traveling or relaxing at home during the upcoming holidays, it’s a great time to polish off an old reading list or to start in on something new.  As our gift to you this season, and to help you get started on your own holiday reading list, we’ve asked members of the LR Staff to recommend some of their recent favorites.  Here are our suggestions.

QuanBarryAsylum

Asylum | Quan Barry | University of Pittsburgh Press (2001)

Recommended by Mia: “My holiday reading pick . . . it’s her first collection.  Her engagement with the voices and subjects of the Vietnam War is beautifully executed, and though the scope of her work is much broader, I was most riveted by her ‘war’ poems.”

* * *

BehindMyEyesLiYoungLee
Behind My Eyes |
Li-Young Lee | W.W. Norton & Company (2008)

Recommended by Iris: “This is Lee’s most recent collection — and it is stunning, as always.  Figurations of the Virgin Mary intertwine with moving landscapes, conversations between the poet and his wife, the transitory spaces of travel, a chance vision of the poet’s father; all hang in a delicate, almost sacred, lumen, suspended somewhere between heaven and earth.  Each poem breathes with an expansiveness and a grave tenderness that only Lee knows how to render. Behind My Eyes is sold with a CD of the poet reading some the poems in the book, and I highly recommend listening to this, as well.  I had the privilege of hearing Lee read from his drafts for this book a few years before it came out, and loved the way that the intonation of his voice seamed through the lines of each poem, threading them together in a low, sonorous hum.  It’s a beautiful listening experience, and adds a new and lovely textural dimension to his already melodious poetics.”

* * *

CallMeIshmaelTonightAghaShahidAli
Call Me Ishmael Tonight |
Agha Shahid Ali | W.W. Norton & Company (2003)

Recommended by Supriya: “This collection of ghazals shows the versatile ways in which a poetic form can go beyond its history and language while staying true to its essence. Agha Shahid Ali demonstrates the intentionality with which he overcomes expectations and boundaries by using a traditional form that often evokes feelings of longing and melancholia but writing in a contemporary English that feels timeless. Although written entirely in form, the range and depth of this collection allows for a vast expanse of emotions and possibilities and is the perfect collection with which to curl up whatever your mood.”

* * *

AGestureLifeChangRaeLee
A Gesture Life |
Chang-rae Lee | Penguin USA (2000)

Recommended by Ada: “Told from the point of view of Dr. Hata, a Japanese WWII veteran, this fictional memoir weaves between his experiences in a crumbling outpost of a Japanese imperial outpost in the last days of the war and his later life in gated, suburban America. The protagonist in Lee’s second novel is so reasonable it’s eerie, and though I think that we are meant to feel sorry for Dr. Hata and the stiffly respectable, appropriately understated life he has bound himself into, the distance that separates him from all the other characters in this book translates into distance from the reader. Not that the whole book left me cold: the scenes describing Dr. Hata’s encounters with Korean comfort women during the war are eye-opening, gripping, and an interesting perspective on the terrors of war.”

Continue reading “Staff Picks: Holiday Reading Recommendations”