{"id":5787,"date":"2012-05-25T17:00:36","date_gmt":"2012-05-25T21:00:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/?p=5787"},"modified":"2012-05-24T13:38:20","modified_gmt":"2012-05-24T17:38:20","slug":"curated-prompt-timothy-yu-travesty","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/2012\/05\/25\/curated-prompt-timothy-yu-travesty\/","title":{"rendered":"Curated Prompt: Timothy Yu \u2013 \u201cTravesty\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Timothy<\/a>
Timothy Yu<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

This May, in celebration of APIA Heritage Month, we have asked several respected teachers and writers of Asian American poetry to share writing exercises with us in lieu of our regular Friday Prompts. This week\u2019s installment was contributed by Timothy Yu.<\/em><\/p>\n

travesty,<\/em> n. A literary composition which aims at exciting laughter by burlesque and ludicrous treatment of a serious work; literary composition of this kind; hence, a grotesque or debased imitation or likeness; a caricature. (OED)<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

I\u2019m currently writing a sequence of poems called 100 Chinese Silences<\/em>. The series was inspired, so to speak, by a poem by Billy Collins called \u201cGrave<\/a>,\u201d which describes the \u201cone hundred kinds of silence\u201d that the Chinese believe in\u2014only to admit that this idea is something the poet \u201cjust made up.\u201d This made me mad\u2014those darn quiet Asians!\u2014so I decided to get even. Rather than replying to Collins\u2019s poem, I rewrote it<\/a> line by line and phrase by phrase.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve decided to call this a travesty<\/em>, a \u201cludicrous treatment of a serious work.\u201d It takes a poem that plays on stereotypes and rewrites it from the inside out. It tries to critique without falling into easy anger or mockery.<\/p>\n

So here\u2019s your assignment:<\/p>\n

Find a poem that really bugs you for some reason. Maybe, like Collins\u2019s, it contains an annoying stereotype about Asians. Maybe it\u2019s sexist or simply smug. Then rewrite it, line by line, preserving when possible the form of the original\u2014the same number of lines, the same kinds of phrases, even the rhyme scheme if there is one\u2014while filling it with content that reflects on, critiques, or undermines the original. The result should be a poem that could have been written by the original author but is \u201coff\u201d in some way. Don\u2019t be afraid to be silly, but do strive to echo the tone of the original. Hopefully you\u2019ll end up with something that can speak back to the original in its own voice.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Timothy Yu<\/a><\/strong> is the author of two chapbooks: <\/em>15 Chinese Silences<\/a>, from Tinfish Press, and <\/em>Journey to the West, winner of the Vincent Chin Memorial Chapbook Prize from Kundiman. He is also the author of a scholarly book, <\/em>Race and the Avant-Garde: Experimental and Asian American Poetry since 1965<\/a> (Stanford University Press). He is an associate professor of English and Asian American studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This May, in celebration of APIA Heritage Month, we have asked several respected teachers and writers of Asian American poetry to share writing exercises with us in lieu of our regular Friday Prompts. This week\u2019s installment was contributed by Timothy Yu. travesty, n. A literary composition which aims at exciting laughter by burlesque and ludicrous […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0},"categories":[627,13],"tags":[862,629,484,628],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5787"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5787"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5787\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5812,"href":"https:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5787\/revisions\/5812"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5787"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5787"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5787"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}