I'm going to be in Los Angeles next week for my boyfriend's thesis art show at USC. If you happen to be in LA, please come out for the opening. It will feature video art, photos, and I don't know what else. I have a neurotic tendency to butt in with unnecessary advice, so he and I decided that it would be best if he keeps his ideas to himself. I'm sure, though, that it will be a doozy of a show.

Parnassus is finally out. I have a long review essay on Asian American poetry. I am weary of critiquing anything under such a rubric, but in 2005-2007, this idea of Asian American poetry has been torqued and twisted by so many innovative poets that I thought why not. I review Mei-Mei Berssenbrugge's soon-to-be-classic "I Love Artists," Barbara Jane Reyes' "Poeta en San Francisco" and Shanxing Wang's "Mad Science in Imperial City."

I wanted to write a longer omnibus review that included the likes of Paolo Javier (his excellent "60 Love bo(e)mbs") Brian Kim Stefans and Linh Dinh, but alas, I had to narrow it to three.

As long as we're on the subject of Asianness, Action folks kindly sent me a copy of Kim Hyesoon's "Mommy Must Be a Fountain of Feathers." Profoundly disturbing. Will write more after I finish.

I was also pleased to find that Roger Gilbert wrote an erudite review of "Dance Dance Revolution" in the same issue of Parnassus. Shanna Compton also wrote a
perceptive review of it for Galatea Resurrects.

The inestimable poet/critic Evie Shockley and I are guest editors for two issues of Jubilat and our first edited issue is out! Unfortunately, it's not online yet. This is a sugar plum of an issue. Highlights: Oni Buchanan's pyrotechnically assonantal "Maroon Canoe," Robyn Schiff's twisted and brilliant paean to Ralph Lauren, an interview with Peter Gizzi, Arda Collins' deadpan musings on heaven ("Heaven is a white formica table"), some beautiful urban poems by the German poet Steffan Popp, Lara Glenum's "post orifice" hang-ups in verse, and some undiscovereds like Jimmy Lo's underwater reveries and so much more. I read these submissions and and it made me want to brew some coffee and write. Or at least hum happily.

I'm so angry right now that I can't think of anything else but the current mudslinging that this race has degenerated into. Hillary Clinton's hypocrisy astounds. She doesn't apologize for Wolfson's ludicrous remark about Obama and Kenneth Starr and then a few hours later, becomes indignant and exploits Samantha Power's slip so that she could dig for more fundraising despite the fact that Power stepped down and Obama apologized. If she continues these below-the-belt negative tactics, she is going to lose new voters in droves. That is, if she miraculously wins the nomination. I can't believe just a week ago, I actually liked her.

Here's a semi-old interview Salon conducted with Powers. Power's antipathy against the Clintons is not isolated to her quote in The Scotsman. In her book, "A Problem From Hell," she charges the Clintons for royally screwing up Rwanda. I have not read it but apparently it's a sober and intelligent study on recent acts of genocide.

I have in my clutch a stack of terrific freshly minted poetry books that I bought at awp. I do want to write about them at length, but in case I don't, I will just excerpt choice bits.

Linh Dinh, jam alerts: why haven't I read Linh Dinh before? I'm crazy.

"Short of all vitamins and calcium, malformed,
My mom a yawning question mark, I wasn't born
From a warmed egg, but sculpted from the surfeit
Of a bombastic masturbator, clouding a bathtub.
Raised on no milk, I sucked and suckled myself
into this laughing pretension.


Danielle Pafunda, my zorba: hot pink cover to match the hot verse of zorba's gothic and oddly beautiful adventures.

"Zorba had invited her pals the apostles. To welcome home.
The one with the quill in his back, the one with the lamp
in his throat. A pectoral. Dance. The one with the mail.
Drove the boat, waded ashore. With the ladies, dance.
In the rosy beam of venetian bone."

Johannes Goransson, a new quarantine will take my place: these poems are deeply sinster and deeply funny. there are also more pigs in here than that scene in mad max. i wanted to excerpt the glossary but I don't know how to find umlauts on my keypad.

"I keep mentioning my torso because I wish I were a
zoologist. I wish I were a surgeon. Or Darwin. Or a
ballet impressario in Paris. Ora mole in the ground.
Or a reptile collector. Or 5000 accidents. Made of
swans. Or Darwin. Or an injury. Or going home
in a wheelbarrow. Or moving into the Hotel Fuck. Or
bleeding slowly into a silver bucket. Or plundering.
Most of all I wish I were Darwin.

Or 5000 accidents."

more to come...

I'm reading with Daisy Fried at ze Zinc Bar--

Sunday, December 9, Zinc Bar 7 PM
90 West Houston Street

I'm heading to San Francisco to do two exciting readings.

Friday, Oct 19, 7:30
with Linda Russo
Small Press Traffic Reading Series
Timken Lecture Hall, San Francisco campus
Info for direcitons: www.sptraffic.org

(they're allowing me to play a mix CD before the reading starts.)

Sunday, October 21, 3 p.m.
Asian American Poetry Now
UC Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive
2626 Bancroft Way / 510.642.0808


The Sunday reading is curated by the fearsome poet/critic Chris Chen and features an extremely talented roster of poets. Here's how they describe it:

How are young Asian American poets grappling with some of the issues that have engaged the artists featured in One Way or Another? Eight West Coast- and New York-based Asian American poets, from the same generation as the exhibition artists and with a comparable range of cultural backgrounds, will read from work that parallels the "post-identity" premise of One Way or Another. Their poetry displays a range of exciting experimental styles that depart from the focus on identity politics that has marked the work of many Asian American poets since the 1960s. Poet and UC Berkeley Ph.D. candidate Chris Chen, whose dissertation explores experimental currents within contemporary Asian American and African American poetry, will introduce and moderate the program. Featured poets are Barbara Jane Reyes, Tsering Wangmo Dhompa, Cathy Park Hong, Paolo Javier, David Lau, Eileen Tabios, and Truong Tran. A reception will follow the program.

I'm reading with Ange Mlinko (author of the beautiful and live-wire Starred Wire) at McNally Robinson Bookstore.

7:00 Thursday, Sept 13
Mcnally Robinson Books
52 Prince St, NY