
November 1995
Poetry/Asian American literature
6x9 in, 595 pp
54 b&w illustrations
Paperback 1-885030-14-2
$22.95 list
Cloth 1-885030-13-4
$44.95 list |
Premonitions: The Kaya Anthology of New Asian North American
Poetry
Edited by Walter K. Lew
Book Description
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The most comprehensive anthology of Asian North American poetry to date, Premonitions
gathers work-ranging from cyberpunk meditations and Buddhist odes to L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E-influenced
and neo-Orientalist writing--and juxtaposes them in ways that both echo and subvert
categories of theme, poetics, and identity. Video and multimedia texts, pidgin poetry,
queer writing, and Canadian open-field compositions further broaden the scope of
this ground-breaking collection. The 73 contributors include veteran authors like
Jessica Hagedorn, Lawson Fusao Inada, Trinh T. Minh-ha, Fred Wah, Kimiko Hahn, Arthur
Sze, and John Yau, as well as such "premonitory" new poets as R. Zamora
Linmark, Barry Masuda, Evelyn Lau, Amitava Kumar, and an emerging generation of Vietnamese
and Korean American poets. Also featured are previously unpublished poems by the
late Frances Chung, Roy Kiyooka, and Theresa Hak Kyung Cha.
Praise for Premonitions:
"An exquisite artifact of activist experimentalism, theoretically smart
and so beautiful it hurts, Premonitions promises to be a landmark in American
letters for many years to come."--Maria Damon, University of Minnesota
"An impressive collection distinguished by its variety and sweep. By
turns entertaining, exciting, troubling, it is always provocative. A major contribution."--David
Palumbo-liu, Stanford University
"Up to recently, Asian American literary anthologies have served to canonize
authors, works, tastes, and ideas. Premonitions is different. From conception
to layout, it explodes impulses to map centers and margins of Asian American poetry.
Premonitions gives us a brilliant variety of poetry and poets who together
show, we are all this and more."--Stephen Sumida, University of Michigan
"Demonstrating the infinite range of possibilities overlooked by the
too easily applied label of 'multicultural' this collection steeps the reader in
alternative histories and approaches to language and tells stories seldom--if ever--heard.
Recommended for most poetry collections."--Library Journal |
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