An Asian American Poetry Companion: Mesmerizing Reads for APA Heritage Month (May 2022)

Header image. An Asian American Poetry Companion: May 2022. Cover images of Time Regime by Jhani Randhawa, Becoming AppalAsian by Lisa Kwong, Wanna Peek into My Notebook? by Barbara Jane Reyes, Spooks by Stella Wong, Time Is a Mother by Ocean Vuong, Girl 2.0 by Nora Hikari, The Convert's Heart Is Good to Eat by Melody S. Gee, Dear God, Dear Bones, Dear Yellow by Noor Hindi, The Trees Witness Everything by Victoria Chang, You Cannot Resist Me When My Hair Is in Braids by Frances Kai-Hwa Wang, That Blue Trickster Time by Amy Uyematsu, As She Appears by Shelley Wong.
New and Notable Books by Asian American Poets for May 2022

Our Asian American Poetry Companion series is back, bringing you new titles that you won’t want to miss this May! Get ready to celebrate APA Heritage Month with a deep dive into some mesmerizing new books from Asian American poets. 

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FROM THE LR COMMUNITY

Melody S. Gee, The Convert’s Heart Is Good to Eat, (Driftwood, May 2022) 

Melody S. Gee returns with her latest collection, The Convert’s Heart Is Good to Eat. If you enjoyed her poem “And So More” in Issue 7.3, The Convert’s Heart Is Good to Eat may be the perfect thing for you to pick up this month. Out now from Driftwood Press. 

Barbara Jane Reyes, Wanna Peek into My Notebook? Notes on Pinay Liminality, (Paloma, March 2022)

Issue 1 contributor Barbara Jane Reyes reclaims Pinay spaces through her exploration of diasporic Pinay poetics in this collection of lyric essays. If you enjoyed her two most recent collections, Letters to a Young Brown Girl and Invocation to Daughters, you’ll definitely want to pick this new volume up as well. Out now from Paloma Press. 

Amy Uyematsu, That Blue Trickster Time, (Bateau, March 2022)

Amy Uyematsu’s newest collection affirms Asian American identity in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, reaching back into her own family’s experience of incarceration during World War II and lifting up strong female elders from across time. If you enjoyed her poems “Thriftstore Haiku” in Issue 5 or “The Bachi-Bachi Buddhahead Blues” in Issue 7.2, be sure to put this collection down on your reading list for the spring. Out now with What Books Press. 

Ocean Vuong, Time Is A Mother, (Penguin Random House, April 2022) 

Ocean Vuong’s much-anticipated second collection, Time Is A Mother, is finally out from Penguin Random House! LR readers have been enjoying Vuong’s work since Issue 1, long before his novel, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, catapulted him into the national spotlight. If you enjoyed his previous collection, Night Sky With Exit Wounds, you’ll be sure to enjoy diving into his powerful return to poetry this spring.

Shelley Wong, As She Appears, (YesYes, May 2022) 

If you enjoyed Shelley Wong’s poem “Rivets and Cables” in Issue 6, get ready for her debut collection, As She Appears. Wong writes for queer women of color, rethinking the many different ways in which women take up space, and inviting them to appear as they are. As She Appears is available now from YesYes Books.

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MORE NEW & NOTEWORTHY PICKS

Victoria Chang, The Trees Witness Everything, (Copper Canyon, April 2022)

Nora Hikari, Girl 2.0, (Seven Kitchens, March 2022)

Noor Hindi, Dear God, Dear Bones, Dear Yellow, (Haymarket, May 2022)

Lisa Kwong, Becoming AppalAsian, (Glass Lyre, April 2022)

Jhani Randhawa, Time Regime, (Gaudy Boy, April 2022)

Frances Kai-Hwa Wang, You Cannot Resist Me When My Hair Is in Braids, (Wayne State UP, March 2022)

Stella Wong, Spooks, (Saturnalia, March 2022)

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What titles are you putting on your reading list for APA Heritage Month? We’d love to hear more about what you’re starting the summer off with! Share your recommendations with us in the comments or on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram (@lanternreview).

ALSO RECOMMENDED

Cover image of Broken Halves of a Milky Sun by Aaiun Nin

Broken Halves of a Milky Sun by Aaiún Nin (Astra House, 2022)

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

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.

An April APA Poetry Companion: New Books for National Poetry Month

Header Image: An APA Poetry Companion, April 2020 (Victoria Chang, OBIT; Jenifer Sang Eun Park, AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A HORSE; mai c. doan, WATER/TONGUE, George Abraham, BIRTHRIGHT; Marianne Chan, ALL HEATHENS; Dorothy Chan, REVENGE OF THE ASIAN WOMAN; Lawrence Lacambra Ypil, THE EXPERIMENT OF THE TROPICS; Diruba Ahmed, BRING DOWN THE ANGELS)
More New and Notable APA Poetry Reads for April 2020

Last week, we featured an excerpt from Arhm Choi Wild’s debut collection, Cut to Bloom, here on the blog. But Wild’s book is far from the only new collection by an APA poet being released this April; this National Poetry Month has bestowed us with quite the embarrassment of riches. Below are just a few of the exciting new titles that are on our radar this month.

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FEATURED PICKS

Victoria Chang, Obit (Copper Canyon)

Written in a span of two weeks after the death of the poet’s mother, this collection (Chang’s fifth) takes obituary as poetic form. It looks to be an intensely powerful read, and it’s on the top of this editor’s list to check out next.

Lawrence Lacambra Ypil, The Experiment of the Tropics (Gaudy Boy)

Ypil’s The Experiment of the Tropics co-won the 2019 Gaudy Boy Poetry Book Prize and is up for both a Believer Book Award and a Lambda Award this year. This collection finds the poet digging into archival history using photographs and documentary poetics to examine the colonization of the Philippines. His experimentation with form and text looks to be especially exciting—definitely a title to check out!

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ALSO NEW AND NOTEWORTHY

George Abraham, Birthright (Button Poetry)

Dilruba Ahmed, Bring Down the Angels (U of Pittsburgh)

Dorothy Chan, Revenge of the Asian Woman (Diode Editions)

Marianne Chan, All Heathens (Sarabande)

mai c. doan, water/tongue (Omnidawn)

Jenifer Sang Eun Park, Autobiography of Horse: A Poem (Gaudy Boy)

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What new and notable books have you been reading this month? Share your recommendations with us in the comments or on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram (@LanternReview).

Weekly Prompt: Engaging the Image

Using Elizabeth Bishop’s “The Fish” as a model, write at least 20 lines of detailed, concrete observation that describes a single object.  Move past the obvious and think instead how you can describe the thing as if seeing it for the first time.  Using tools like sensory detail, metaphor, and simile, defamiliarize the object to the extent that it becomes an object of wonder—terror, even.  Hone your powers of observation by delving into the fantastical, allowing your subconscious to reveal what’s most strange or troubling about your subject of scrutiny.

Work with all of the senses (including the imagination) to allow your reader to really see the object—and then to see it again, even more closely.  Avoid abstractions and “I” statements, communicating instead a sense of the “I” through the types of concrete detail included in the poem.

After finishing your initial draft, return to the piece and think how you can invest specific details with greater emotional resonance (ie. in describing the worn laces of a man’s boot, how can you actually address the nature of his relationship with his father?) through word choice, tone, and pacing.  Expand on one (or two) of your most promising details and develop an original, full-fledged image (for example, the severed ears in Carolyn Forche’s “The Colonel,” or the lantern-heads in Victoria Chang’s “Lantern Festival”), one that functions as objective correlative to the subject matter of the poem.

Alaskan Rainbow Trout

 

Editors’ Picks: Open Books – A Poem Emporium

A poet’s utopia, Open Books: A Poem Emporium, is a poetry-only bookstore located in Wallingford, Seattle.  Owned and run by husband and wife duo John Marshall and Christine Deavel, Open Books is the only bookstore of its kind on the West Coast (the other is in Cambridge, MA).  The store’s collection caters to a wide range of poetic sensibilities and carries not only recently published works, but a variety of rare and first editions as well.

Continue reading “Editors’ Picks: Open Books – A Poem Emporium” →