Following up on Sunday’s post — I discovered that the Poetry Foundation has a great short essay on “Asian American Voices in Poetry,” with links to lots of poems by dozens of poets.
Thre are links to some stalwarts of the older generation of poets, including well-known figures like Maxine Hong Kingston. Among the older poets, I was pleased to see a link to some of Lawson Fusao Inada’s poetry. I used to have a book of his poetry which I quite liked but it must have disappeared in the last cross-country move. Reading his poetry again makes me want to get another of his books.
I enjoyed seeing a link to Indran Amirthanagayam’s poems. He’s almost exactly my age (an old guy), and I first saw him maybe forty years ago when he was the lyricist and lead singer of a punk rock band. Now he’s older, respectable, a U.S. diplomat — but his poems still have some of that punk rock energy.
I was also pleased to see links to younger poets like Chen Chen and Ocean Vuong. To my shame, I haven’t kept up with younger poets. It looks like this will be a good way to get introduced to some of the newer poets.