My T-Shirt

I am thinking about the parallels between a T-shirt that says

It's a black thing. You wouldn't understand

and

It's a language thing. Let me explain.

There is a whole raft of things to say here about how the label "language poet" might or might not resemble the label "woman poet" or "black poet," but you'll just have to wait for the book on that one.

Meanwhile, I guess my T-shirt would have to say

It's an Asian thing. I would explain, but I don't speak English.

Kundiman/Verlaine Reading, April 8, NYC

NYC Reading: 2nd Ave, April 7

A Shoehorn...with Teeth

I've got a few poems up in the March issue of Concelebratory Shoehorn Review, edited by Maurice Oliver. They were originally written as postcard poems in correspondence with Del Ray Cross back in July 2003.

I've been publishing a number of these poems in various places the past few months, and there's a weird nostalgia around them for me: I'm just realizing that they were written during my last month in California. There are some Stanford poems ("White Plaza"), San Francisco making an appearance as "The City at the End of the Rainbow," and glimpses of Chicago from our apartment-hunting trip ("The Magnificent Mile," in Seven Corners).

Adding to the time-warp feeling is that I've just completed my first round of postcard poems in several years--this one a sort of round-robin with my old poem-swap buddies Del, Stephanie, Cassie, and Jennifer. The postcards seem realer and more appropriate now that we're scattered (Cassie in Rochester, NY, me in Chicago or Toronto or wherever), opening up all kinds of possibilities for mishap (a few of Stephanie's postcards took a detour through Canada, and one of Jennifer's arrived with most of the pasted-on poem peeled off, creating an unintentional though interesting fragment), but also less immediate and conversational: sometimes a poem I'd send up the bay would arrive the very same day, while here I can wait a week for one. But opening the mailbox and having poems fall out is still worth it.

Seven Corners

I'm the featured poet this week in the Chicago-based blog journal Seven Corners, edited by Steve Halle. (Warning: the photo of me looking relaxed and summery can be blown up to an alarmingly large size.)

Journey to the West in Barrow Street

The new Winter 2006 issue of Barrow Street is out, and nestled snugly in its center is Journey to the West, a 15-page selection of my poems that won the 2006 Vincent Chin Memorial Chapbook Prize. Thanks to the folks at Kundiman, which sponsors the prize (and which is also sending me to their summer retreat at the University of Virginia in June). I also have to give a shout-out to Roger Pao, whose blog reminded me about the contest just before the deadline...and to Alli Warren and Del Ray Cross, whose collaborative efforts brought quite a few of the poems into being...and to Eileen for mentioning it.

My contributor's copies just arrived. I'm pretty sure this is about as many poems of mine as I've ever seen in print in one place before, so it's a bit of a strange sensation--a simultaneous feeling of pride and of looking-over-my-shoulder, is-anybody-else-reading-this embarrassment. The "chapbook" part is a bit of a misnomer, I guess; I'd been fantasizing about it as a pull-out section that you could detach from the binding with a satisfying yank, but it's pretty well integrated (not that that's a bad thing--there's a lot of other good stuff in the issue too, so you don't have to just read it on my account).

I'll be doing a reading in NYC for Kundiman on April 8 at Verlaine, with Marlon Unas Esguerra, Rona Luo, and Margaret Rhee. Hope to see some of you there, after you've rushed out to your local better bookstore and bought up every copy of Barrow Street your little hands can carry.

2nd Ave., Vol. 2

* Volume 2 features work by

ANSELM BERRIGAN michael coffey ERNEST CONCEPCION kevin coval DEL RAY CROSS thomas fink ROB FITTERMAN drew gardner RIGOBERTO GONZALES donna ho FANNY HOWE brenda iijima PAOLO JAVIER jack kimball SERENA LIU paolo manalo NOAM MOR joyelle mcsweeney BRUNA MORI daniel nester MANUEL OCAMPO tim peterson WANDA PHIPPS sreshta premnath MEREDITH QUARTERMAIN peter quartermain BARBARA JANE REYES tony robles PATRICK ROSAL thaddeus rutkowski SUKHDEV SANDHU leslie scalapino JENNIFER SCAPPETONE purvi shah DENNIS SOMERA rodrigo toscano TIM YU and more