{"id":7669,"date":"2017-01-03T04:00:15","date_gmt":"2017-01-03T12:00:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/?p=7669"},"modified":"2017-01-02T21:57:46","modified_gmt":"2017-01-03T05:57:46","slug":"apia-poetry-collections-to-carry-with-you-into-2017","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/2017\/01\/03\/apia-poetry-collections-to-carry-with-you-into-2017\/","title":{"rendered":"APIA Poetry Collections to Carry with You into 2017"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"The
Clockwise from top left: NIGHT SKY WITH EXIT WOUNDS, POWER MADE US SWOON, OVERPOUR, LOOK<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Happy New Year! It’s hard to believe that 2017 is already here. In the past, we\u2019ve made an annual tradition of listing some of our favorite reads of the year before the holidays begin. But this season, as we find ourselves staring down the barrel of a year that promises to hold significant changes for our nation with a mixture of apprehension and resolve, we\u2019ve decided to do things a little differently. And so, rather than a list of holiday reading recommendations, here are a few books by some of <\/span>LR\u2019s <\/span><\/i>friends and past contributors that inspired us in 2016 and that we hope will inspire you to take heart, to speak up, to fight harder, and to dream and make art with even greater passion in the coming year. <\/span><\/p>\n

Power Made Us Swoon <\/i><\/b>by Brynn Saito (Red Hen Press, 2016)<\/b><\/a><\/p>\n

We are so proud to have published an excerpt<\/a> of the manuscript that eventually became this collection in our sixth issue. In <\/span>Power Made Us Swoon, <\/span><\/i>Saito uses persona to probe family legacies of trauma, immersing herself in the history of Japanese American internment during WW II. Saito\u2019s speaker is transitory, transcendent in the resolve that propels her to continually return to the artifacts of memory, and to inhabit sites and stories in search of narrative, lyric, image. In a time when more than one public figure has attempted to erase the trauma of internment in service of grotesquely racist and xenophobic rhetoric, this powerful collection seems prescient indeed.<\/span><\/p>\n

Look <\/i><\/b>by Solmaz Sharif (Graywolf Press, 2016)<\/b><\/a><\/p>\n

A finalist for the National Book Award, Sharif\u2019s <\/span>Look <\/span><\/i>captures the anxieties of our time, illuminating the frightful spectre of language mutated in the mouth of war. The collection recasts terms from the Department of Defense\u2019s <\/span>Dictionary of Military and Associated Terms<\/span><\/i> to perform a kind of documentary acrobatics that shows how language and experience are imbricated in times of war. \u201cI am attempting my own \/\/ mythmaking,\u201d Sharif says, in an elegant, urgent argument about how the private and public, the immigrant and emigrant, and the civilian and military are realities that cast shadows, chiaroscuro-like, on each other.<\/span><\/p>\n

Night Sky with Exit Wounds <\/i><\/b>by Ocean Vuong (Copper Canyon Press, 2016)<\/b><\/a><\/p>\n

One of the first poets whose work we published<\/a>, Ocean Vuong has a distinctly masterful voice that sings and flits through this finely-tuned collection. At once delicately intimate and intensely raw, <\/span>Night Sky with Exit Wounds <\/span><\/i>powerfully stitches together\u2014no, choreographs\u2014feathered fragments of memory and the legacies of war and displacement onto a document of the speaker\u2019s coming-of-age journey, a rich odyssey of survival and self-discovery as seen through the lens of language and text. In the context of the troubling conversations about refugees that have swirled to fever pitch of late, Vuong\u2019s singular voice rises to bear poignant, timely witness.<\/span><\/p>\n

Overpour <\/i><\/b>by Jane Wong (Action Books, 2016)<\/b><\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m that person who can\u2019t stop looking,\u201d Wong writes, and indeed, hers is the writing of an eye\u2014or an \u201cI\u201d\u2014that is attuned and attentive, a poetry startled into mystery, one into which perception floods, impressions overlaid and juxtaposed to encapsulate everything from the cosmic to the kitchen. The language in <\/span>Overpour <\/span><\/i>is filled with riddles and slips, steeped in undergrowth, and inhabited by mushrooms, carnations, and sweaters. The poems are songs, tasting the strangeness of language, its slippages and shifts in meaning, and embedded music.<\/span><\/p>\n

* * *<\/span><\/p>\n

Of course, there are so many others that we could list\u2014starting with the books and chapbooks that we featured on the blog in 2016. Janine Joseph\u2019s <\/span>Driving Without a License <\/span><\/i>seems especially prescient right now in the context of the fraught conversations about immigration happening in our country, while Sun Yung Shin\u2019s voice in <\/span>Unbearable Splendor <\/span><\/i>provides critical witness for the Asian American adoptee community in the wake of the unjust deportation of Adam Crapser<\/a>. Meanwhile, Timothy Yu\u2019s <\/span>100 Chinese Silences, <\/span><\/i>Jai Arun Ravine\u2019s <\/span>The Romance of Siam: A Pocket Guide, <\/span><\/i>and Pat Rosal\u2019s <\/span>Brooklyn Antediluvian <\/span><\/i>model unique modes of resistance, writing back in satire and song. Nor are they alone in doing so among the titles that we have written about this year. Here is the full list:<\/span><\/p>\n

Unbearable Splendor<\/a> <\/i><\/b>by Sun Yung Shin (Coffee House Press, 2016)\u00a0<\/b>[Read an excerpt on the LR blog here.<\/a>]<\/p>\n

The Romance of Siam: A Pocket Guide<\/a> <\/i><\/b>by Jai Arun Ravine (Timeless, Infinite Light, 2016)\u00a0<\/b>[Read our interview with Ravine about the collection here.<\/a>]<\/p>\n

Brooklyn Antediluvian<\/a> <\/i><\/b>by Patrick Rosal (Persea Books, 2016)\u00a0<\/b>[Read our most recent interview with Rosal\u00a0here.<\/a>]<\/p>\n

The Taxidermist\u2019s Cut<\/a> <\/i><\/b>by Rajiv Mohabir (Four Way Books, 2016)\u00a0<\/b>[Read our summer feature on this collection here.<\/a>]<\/p>\n

Map of an Onion<\/a> <\/i><\/b>by Kenji C. Liu (Inlandia Books, 2016)\u00a0<\/b>[Read our summer feature on this collection here.<\/a>]<\/p>\n

Driving without a License<\/a> <\/i><\/b>by Janine Joseph (Alice James Books, 2016)\u00a0<\/b>[Read our interview with Joseph here.<\/a>]<\/p>\n

The Dead in Daylight<\/a> <\/i><\/b>by Melody Gee (Cooper Dillon, 2016)<\/b> [Read our summer feature on this collection here.<\/a>]<\/p>\n

The Ruined Elegance<\/a> <\/i><\/b>by Fiona Sze-Lorrain (Princeton U Press, 2016)\u00a0<\/b>[Read our summer feature on this collection here.<\/a>]<\/p>\n

100 Chinese Silences<\/a> <\/i><\/b>by Timothy Yu (Les Figures Press, 2016)\u00a0<\/b>[Read our interview with Yu here.<\/a>]<\/p>\n

Kissing the Sphinx<\/a> <\/i><\/b>(Two of Cups Press, 2016) and <\/b>Set the Garden on Fire<\/a> <\/i><\/b>(Porkbelly Press, 2015) by Chen Chen\u00a0<\/b>[Read our dual interview with Chen and Margaret Rhee here.<\/a>]<\/p>\n

Radio Heart<\/a> <\/i><\/b>(Finishing Line Press, 2015) and <\/b>Yellow<\/a> <\/i><\/b>(Tinfish Press, 2011) by Margaret Rhee\u00a0<\/b>[Read our dual interview with Rhee and Chen Chen here.<\/a>]<\/p>\n

* * *<\/b><\/p>\n

We hope that 2017 is a year filled with brighter things for our community, despite all apparent expectation\u2014glimmers of illumination in the midst of struggle, moments of delight that surprise us in the thick of the ever-present work. As you labor on, may these books, and the many others like them (c.f. also Bryan Thao Worra\u2019s extensive roundup of books by API poets published in 2016<\/a>, and <\/span>Hyphen <\/span><\/i><\/a>magazine\u2019s 2016 poetry favorites<\/a>), be touchstones to you. Return to them when the work feels weary; keep their words and images pressed to your skin like small talismans kept in a coat pocket, warm and smooth to the touch. May language serve you well this year, and may your own words in turn be infused with strength and truth and beauty, lantern-glow against the ever-quickening dark as we stride into the months ahead.<\/span><\/p>\n

Peace and light,<\/span><\/p>\n

Iris & Mia<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Happy New Year! It’s hard to believe that 2017 is already here. In the past, we\u2019ve made an annual tradition of listing some of our favorite reads of the year before the holidays begin. But this season, as we find ourselves staring down the barrel of a year that promises to hold significant changes for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"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":[902],"tags":[1142,1141,1143],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7669"}],"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\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7669"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7669\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7678,"href":"https:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7669\/revisions\/7678"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7669"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7669"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7669"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}