An Asian American Poetry Companion: Cozy Books For Fall (September 2022)

An Asian American Poetry Companion: September 2022. Cover images of ALMANAC OF USELESS TALENTS by MICHAEL CHANG, EXILEE TEMPS MORTS by Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, THE SYMMETRY OF FISH by Su Cho, MANATEE LAGOON by Jenna Le, TOGETHERNESS by Wo Chan, THE RUPTURE TENSE by Jenny Xie, SISTER TONGUE by Farnaz Fatemi, and YOUR EMERGENCY CONTACT HAS EXPERIENCED AN EMERGENCY by Chen Chen
New and Notable Books by Asian American Poets (September 2022)

Every year, it feels like summer is too short. Before we know it, the weather is getting colder and the leaves are starting to change colors. Whether you’ve just gone back to school, just finished celebrating the Midautumn Festival, or are dreaming of pumpkin spice lattes, you can make fall even cozier by exploring these eight new and forthcoming works from the Asian American poetry community. 

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FROM THE LR COMMUNITY 

MICHAEL CHANG, Almanac of Useless Talents (Clash, September 2022)

If you enjoyed MICHAEL CHANG’s sensual epistolary poem in Issue 8.2, their forthcoming book, Almanac of Useless Talents, is a must read. Described by Clash as “part confessional, part experimental, and completely original,” CHANG’s decadent poems delve into a world of potent desire. 

Chen Chen, Your Emergency Contact Has Experienced an Emergency (BOA, September 2022)

Chen Chen’s poem “The School of a Few or a Lot of My Favorite Things,” published in Issue 9.1, will also appear in his second poetry collection, Your Emergency Contact Has Experienced An Emergency. Tracy K. Smith notes that in the book, Chen writes “with humor, deep intelligence, and what feels to me like a luminous everyday philosophy.” An exploration of life as a queer Asian American in contemporary America, this book is one we are eagerly anticipating, and we hope you are too. 

Jenna Le, Manatee Lagoon (Acre, October 2022)

Issue 7.2 contributor Jenna Le is releasing her third full-length collection, Manatee Lagoon, which explores a Vietnamese cultural heritage in a politically fraught America. Matt W. Miller praises Le’s creative use of form, remarking that “with a lyricism that is sometimes the night-light you want, sometimes the lightning you deserve, Le masterfully weaves poems out of inherited forms and meters that are at once surgically precise and organically necessary.” We hope you’re as excited as we are to pick up this book!

MORE NEW & NOTEWORTHY PICKS

Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, Exilée and Temps Morts: Selected Works (UC Press, September 2022)

Wo Chan, Togetherness (Nightboat, September 2022)

Su Cho, The Symmetry of Fish (Penguin Random House, October 2022)

Farnaz Fatemi, Sister Tongue (Kent State U Press, September 2022)

Jenny Xie, The Rupture Tense (Graywolf, September 2022)

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What autumnal reads are making it onto your reading list this season? Share your recommendations with us in the comments or on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.

ALSO RECOMMENDED

Cover image of dayliGht by Roya Marsh

dayliGht by Roya Marsh (MCD x FSG Originals, 2020)

As an Asian American–focused publication, Lantern Review stands for diversity within the literary world. In solidarity with other communities of color and in an effort to connect our readers with a wider range of voices, we recommend a different collection by a non-Asian-American-identified BIPOC poet in each blog post.

Please consider supporting a small press or independent bookstore with your purchase.

A Conversation with Jenna Le

Jenna Le

Jenna Le was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, the youngest child of two Vietnam War refugees. She obtained her B.A. in mathematics from Harvard University and her M.D. from Columbia University. Her first book of poetry, Six Rivers, was published by New York Quarterly Books in August 2011. Her poems and translations of French poetry have been published by Barrow Street, The Brooklyn Rail, The Nervous Breakdown, Post Road, The Raintown Review, Salamander, Sycamore Review, and other journals.

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LR: Many of the poems in Six Rivers riff on classical characters and themes while preserving a conversational use of language. Likewise, you often work in form while eschewing formal language. What do such dualities aim to achieve?

SIX RIVERS

JL: Many of the characters in Greek mythology seem quite real to me, especially the sorceresses like Circe and Medea, who in my mind embody the tragicomic situation of the 21st-century woman who is brimming with intellectual resourcefulness but who is still anguished by her dating troubles. Like, I see Circe as a sort of precursor to Napoleon Dynamite: although she had plenty of “great skills….like nunchuck skills, bow-hunting skills, and computer-hacking skills,” she was still totally hapless when it came to romantic relationships. This is such a thoroughly modern theme that it only makes sense for me to talk about it in colloquial contemporary English.

I use traditional verse forms for much the same reason: because I feel they have a lot of relevance to our modern-day plight. The tanka, for example, is a verse form that was historically used by aristocratic Japanese poets to treat such subject matter as clandestine assignations with illicit lovers. Well, I always thought it would be interesting to repurpose this verse form and use it to address contemporary sexual practices that really don’t differ all that much from ancient ones (“hooking up,” etc.).

LR: There is a strong geographical trope in your book with literal journeys along rivers that are both real and fictional. How do these journeys serve your narrative?

JL: Well, immigration and displacement played big roles in my family history. All the journeys in my book recapitulate that, in a way. And, in a way, it’s this small-scale recapitulation of a large-scale narrative of escape, of striking out on one’s own in an unfamiliar and sometimes hypo-oxygenated territory, that drives the narrative of Six Rivers.

Continue reading “A Conversation with Jenna Le” →