{"id":947,"date":"2010-02-16T12:10:41","date_gmt":"2010-02-16T17:10:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lanternreview.com\/blog\/?p=947"},"modified":"2010-02-16T12:10:41","modified_gmt":"2010-02-16T17:10:41","slug":"on-the-small-press-and-asian-american-poetry-tupelo-press","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/2010\/02\/16\/on-the-small-press-and-asian-american-poetry-tupelo-press\/","title":{"rendered":"On the Small Press and Asian American Poetry: Tupelo Press"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>
A selection of offerings from Tupelo Press's list<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

A Guest Post by Stephen Hong Sohn, Assistant Professor of English at Stanford University<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Stephen H. Sohn<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In an earlier post<\/a>, I had the chance to discuss the exciting growth in Asian American cultural production via the small press, especially as it has impacted poetic projects and publications.\u00a0 In this post, I\u2019d like to concentrate on Tupelo Press<\/a>, another small press that has developed an outstanding catalog which includes both Asian and Asian American poets.\u00a0 Among the offerings in Tupelo’s current catalog are:<\/p>\n

Night, Fish, and Charlie Parker<\/em><\/a> by Phan Nhien Hao (translated by Linh Dinh)<\/p>\n

Abiding Places<\/em><\/a> by Ko Un<\/p>\n

Ardor<\/em><\/a> by Karen An-hwei Lee<\/p>\n

Why is the Edge Always Windy?<\/em><\/a> by Mong-Lan<\/p>\n

At the Drive-In Volcano<\/em><\/a> by Aimee Nezhukumatathil<\/p>\n

Miracle Fruit<\/em><\/a> by Aimee Nezhukumatathil<\/p>\n

In the Mynah Bird’s Own Words<\/em><\/a> (chapbook) by Barbara Tran<\/p>\n

In this post, I will concentrate most specifically on Barbara Tran\u2019s In the Mynah Bird’s Own Words<\/em>, Karen An-hwei Lee\u2019s Ardor<\/em> and Aimee Nezhukumatathil\u2019s At the Drive-In Volcano<\/em> and Miracle Fruit<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Tran\u2019s chapbook is one that I have chosen to teach for my Introduction to Asian American Literature course.\u00a0 What I find so breathtaking about Tran\u2019s work is her clarity of image, which always imparts a precise sense of a given moment or time through its use of lyric.\u00a0 The chapbook also has a clear sense of lyrical trajectory.\u00a0 The earlier poems seem to be invested in rooting out heritage and ethnic origin, especially as rendered through a growing romantic relationship.\u00a0 The latter poems dig more deeply into the diasporic trajectory.\u00a0 It is here where the chapbook becomes more autobiographically inflected.<\/p>\n

Karen An-hwei Lee\u2019s Ardor<\/em> is a curious collection, described on the book jacket as having a \u201clyric postmodern aesthetic,\u201d but I suppose I would disagree from this phrasing, only because it does not have the slippage that I generally associate with postmodernism.\u00a0 If anything, the murkiness of Ardor<\/em> stems much more from an impressionistic approach in which geography, temporality, and lyric voice cannot always be firmly situated, even though there are clear semantic clusters that delineate the collection’s thematic unity.\u00a0 These clusters include: a focused attention to religion (e.g. references to Christ, the Bible, etc), geometry (cardioids, circumference, curves), medical vocabulary (the medical names for bones like radius and ulna) and terminology (atrial flutter, arrhythmia), and fruit (kumquats, pomelos).\u00a0 The opening page of Ardor<\/em> is instructive in helping the reader to think about the semantic landscape that so richly texturizes Lee\u2019s lyrically conceived world:<\/p>\n

As a child I knew how to sketch this
\nGraph a cardioid around plotted
\nBirds from real algebraic equations
\nConversation images of empirical scent
\nI slipped this dream out of its own skin
\nPut its shape inside a bottle, this one
\nJoined it hands to prayer, this one
\nJin wei<\/em> first tone fourth tone
\nMerged rivers of contrasting hues
\nOne opaque, the other clear (9).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Here, we already see the importance of geometry to the collection, but in this case the speaker considers the subject through a kind of translation.\u00a0 Certainly, this situates Lee\u2019s poetic as interlingual, since \u201creal algebraic equations\u201d can somehow roughly estimate the shape and morphology of objects such as \u201cbirds\u201d and hearts (a cardioid adorns the cover of the collection).\u00a0 As the lines continue, dreams are said to have a \u201cshape\u201d that is then placed \u201cinside a bottle,\u201d and literalized and collided together into different tonalities, different colors, different transparency levels.<\/p>\n

Lee does invoke a unique structuring device that leaves the reader relatively grounded, too: she structures various blocks of the collection in prayers, dreams, and letters.\u00a0 At one point, toward the conclusion of the poetry collection, the lyric speaker asks, \u201cHow does a Song dynasty poet\/ Relate to this Western\/Female poet of Asian lineage\u201d (65) and we seem to get a sense of the project engaged by \u201cthis Western\/Female poet of Asian of Asian lineage,\u201d who perhaps routes the influence of the Song dynasty poet in her movement Westward.\u00a0 This diasporic lyric is especially important to the way that Lee conceives of race relations:<\/p>\n

In the ladies circle
\nWhite women said
\nYou would have been
\nA good house slave
\nBecause you can stitch
\nShe owned that property
\nOn this and such avenue
\nBurned to the ground
\nA white woman
\nIn the ladies circle
\nEveryone knew how to stitch
\nWhite women, prejudiced
\nSlave hands with fine hands
\nI did the stamp collection for them
\nWhen I could still see, parting one
\nFrom same, their bleached faces
\nIn profile, intaglio, cameo
\nPlaced each one in books
\nAlbums with little pockets
\nNever understood why
\nWhite women
\nSo often photographed
\nUsed bleaching cream [end of 34]
\nHydroquinone
\nIsn\u2019t white
\nWhite enough (35)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Repetition continually brings the reader back to the racialized gaze, as the \u201cwhite women\u201d are apparently not \u201cwhite enough.\u201d The slippage and the impressionistic quality of the collection as a whole leave one ungrounded as to where and when this particular lyric \u201cscene\u201d might be taking place.\u00a0 One gets a sense of propriety and class \u2014 a group of \u201cwhite\u201d ladies in a parlor room perhaps \u2014 and the repetition of the word \u201cslave\u201d generates tension that places whiteness up against African American oppression.\u00a0 The lyric speaker presents these ladies with an attitude of apparent puzzlement: race already ordains such women through a specific kind of phenotypic privilege and yet, the lightness of their skin must be further enhanced to the extent that one wonders when they might be satisfied with their supposed \u201cwhiteness.\u201d<\/p>\n

Aimee Nezhukumatathil\u2019s two poetry collections have been a delight to read.\u00a0 Her poems have a witty and often funky edge to them as evidenced by her second collection\u2019s title\u00a0\u2014 At the Drive-In Volcano <\/em>\u2014 which I think is absolutely hilarious and perfect in terms of the book\u2019s general theme of poetic heartbreak.\u00a0 Rather than the drive-in theater, we\u2019re at the drive-in volcano, where we sit down to watch the emotional outpourings that occur in the wake of a long-term relationship gone awry.\u00a0 If there is an arc to the two collections, it would seem that Miracle Fruit<\/em> is more about possibility and potential, while At the Drive-in Volcano<\/em> leads us more toward the pessimistic and the problematic in romantic relationships.<\/p>\n

One of my favorite poems in Miracle Fruit<\/em> takes \u201cfruit\u201d literally, using it as a prop in the background of a lyric \u201cscene\u201d in which the speaker regrets having turned down a cherry farmer’s offer of a date:<\/p>\n

The Woman Who Turned Down A Date with a Cherry Farmer<\/strong><\/p>\n

Fredonia, NY<\/em><\/p>\n

I was dusty, my ponytail
\nall askew and the tips of my fingers ran, of course, red<\/p>\n

from the fruitworms of cherries I plunked into my bucket
\nand still\u2014he must have seen some small bit of loveliness
\nin walking his orchard with me.\u00a0 He pointed out which trees
\nwere sweetest, which ones bore double seeds\u2014puffing out
\nthe flesh and oh the surprise on your tongue with two tiny stones<\/p>\n

(a twin spit), making a small gun of your mouth.\u00a0 Did I mention
\nmy favorite color is red?\u00a0 His jeans were worn and twisty
\naround the tops of his boot; his hands thick but careful,
\nnimble enough to pull fruit from his trees without tearing
\nthe thin skin; the cherry dust and fingerprints on his eyeglasses\u00a0(24).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The language here is so lush that we understand the speaker’s deep regret, even though the farmer is a perfect stranger, offering up a tour of his orchard, to perhaps someone who is on a New York vacation.\u00a0 Nezhukumatathil\u2019s poetry is felicitously rendered, and has a musical texture that threads her lines together. Take for instance, the lines: \u201che must have seen some small bit of loveliness \/ in walking his orchard with me.\u00a0 He pointed out which trees were sweetest, which ones bore double seeds.\u201d\u00a0 Here,\u00a0 Nezhukumatathil employs alliteration of the \u201cs\u201d sound, first in \u201cseen some small\u201d and later in \u201csweetest\u201d and \u201cseeds.\u201d We also get assonance in \u201cseen,\u201d \u201cme,\u201d \u201ctrees,\u201d \u201csweetest, and \u201cseeds,\u201d as well as consonance in \u201cmust,\u201d \u201cbit,\u201d \u201cpointed,\u201d \u201cout,\u201d and \u201csweetest.\u201d\u00a0 Such sonic clusters are not unique to this poem, but can be found throughout the collection.<\/p>\n

The concluding poem from Miracle Fruit<\/em> interrogates Nezukumatathil\u2019s admittedly unwieldy surname:<\/p>\n

My Name<\/strong><\/p>\n

In New Guinea, to identify a person\u2019s family, you ask,
\nWhat is the name of your canoe? <\/em>My seventh grade
\nsocial studies teacher made up a dance to help him
\nremember how to pronounce my name\u2014he\u2019d break it<\/p>\n

into sharp syllables, shake his corduroyed hips
\nat roll call, his bulge of keys rattling in time.
\nI don\u2019t remember who first shortened it to Nez,
\nbut I loved the zip of it, the sport and short of it,<\/p>\n

until the day I learned Nez means nose<\/em> in French.
\nTranslation: beloved nose.\u00a0 My father tells me part
\nof our name comes from a flower from the South Indian
\ncoast.\u00a0 I wonder what it smells like, what fragrance<\/p>\n

I always dabbed at my neck.\u00a0 Scientists say some flowers
\ndon\u2019t have a scent, but they do<\/em>\u2014even if it\u2019s hints of sweat
\nfrom blooms too long without drink or the promise
\nof honey from the scratchings of a thin bee leg, feathered<\/p>\n

with loosestrife and sage\u00a0(73).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Here, again, I would call attention to the playful quality of both the sound and the lyric images, whether in this line that shows some internal rhymes, \u201cbut I loved the zip of it, the sport and short of it,\u201d or in the mental picture of the teacher who literally \u201cshakes\u201d out the speaker\u2019s name.\u00a0 The teacher’s physical movement reminds us of the way in which\u00a0 Nezukumatathil consistently integrates music and dance into her poems’ sonic choreography.<\/p>\n

I mentioned earlier that At the Drive-in Volcano<\/em> primarily finds its footing in poems about the heartache of a broken relationship.\u00a0 One of the poems that I would argue best dramatizes some of the unexpected collateral \u201cdamages\u201d of a broken relationship is \u201cDog Custody,\u201d which negotiates the custody battle that can arise over the pets who have come to be defined as pivotal to the conception of family:<\/p>\n

Dog Custody<\/strong><\/p>\n

But after we broke up, we couldn\u2019t make choices
\nregarding who gets to see him without being mean.
\nI can\u2019t sleep in the dark.\u00a0 What are those scary noises?<\/p>\n

What about the Sundays we left him to rejoice
\nat church?\u00a0 Can you forget how you leaned
\ntoward me in love, how you sang faith\u2019s praises?<\/p>\n

In my car, I found one of his frayed old leashes
\nfrom the last time at the park\u2014he came back unclean.
\nHe barked at the geese, a cloud of winged voices.<\/p>\n

You win.\u00a0 I give up\u2014he always listens to you best: chases
\nsquirrels, but never returns.\u00a0 If a new girl comes, I\u2019ll turn green.
\nWhen you fall out of love, you make silly choices.
\nThree hundred miles away, I still hear your voices (21).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Nezhukumatathil makes continual use of the villanelle throughout At the Drive-in Volcano<\/em>, as if the poetic form might be able to contain the chaos that arises out of her speaker’s trying personal circumstances.\u00a0 The villanelle is a difficult form not only because it requires a very specific set of line repetitions, but also because its tricky rhyme scheme can result in the production of an overly repetitive and hackneyed poem.\u00a0 Nezhukumatathil texturizes “Dog Custody” by slightly changing the lines that must be repeated, all the while relating the precarious attachments the speaker has made to her pet in the course of her relationship.<\/p>\n

I will end my consideration of Tupelo Press with an excerpt from Nezhukumatathil’s poem, \u201cOriental.\u201d<\/p>\n

Oh this is the perfect ruby, O from the velvet you can\u2019t see, O my goodness, what big eyes you have, considering your mom is Filipina, O my goodness, how light you are, considering your father is Indian, O egg roll, O general Tsao\u2019s chicken I cannot eat with chopsticks, O how I love dim sum (39).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This poem the introduces the intricacies of a mixed-ethnicity background that can be mapped onto Nezhukumatathil’s own heritage: she is Filipina-Indian (South Asian) American.\u00a0 As an \u201cOriental,\u201d or one who can claim multiple ethnic heritages, the poem’s lyric speaker challenges any claims to authenticity, joyfully proclaiming her love of Chinese food, while admitting, \u201cI cannot eat with chopsticks.\u201d\u00a0 The poem’s humor succeeds through its repetition of \u201cO,\u201d an invocation that affords an almost divine status to the racialized and ethnicized images being addressed.\u00a0 One is reminded of Frank Chin\u2019s concept of \u201cfood pornography,\u201d which Nezhukumatathil claims with disobedient lyrical abandon.\u00a0 Whether interrogating racial identity, the date that never was, or the pet she cannot forget, Nezhukumatathil\u2019s collections are a real treat.<\/p>\n

* * *<\/p>\n

Stephen H. Sohn<\/a> is an Assistant Professor of English at Stanford University.<\/em>
\nTo find out more about Tupelo Press, please visit their web site at www.tupelopress.org<\/a>.
\n<\/em><\/p>\n

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