The mirror diary : selected essays / Garrett Hongo.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Hongo, Garrett Kaoru, 1951- author.

Series:

Poets on poetry

Poets on poetry.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Essays.

Poets, American--Hawaii--20th century.

Poets, American.

Japanese Americans--Hawaii--History.

Japanese Americans.

History.

Hawaii.

Physical Description:

210 pages ; 21 cm.

Place of Publication:

Ann Arbor, MI : University of Michigan Press, [2017]

Summary:

"The Mirror Diary tracks the emergence of an original poetic voice and a learned consciousness amid multiple and sometimes competing influences of complex literary traditions and regional and ethnic histories. Beginning with a literary inquiry into the history of Japanese Americans in Hawai'i and California, Garrett Hongo draws on his own history to consider the mosaic of American identities--personal, cultural, and poetic--in the context of a postmodern diaspora. Hongo's essays attest to the breadth of what he considers his cultural inheritance and literary antecedents, ranging from the poets of China's T'ang Dynasty to American poets such as Walt Whitman and Charles Olson. He explains free-verse prosody by way of John Coltrane's jazz; praises his contemporaries, poets David Mura, Edward Hirsch, and Mark Jarman; and acknowledges his mentors, Bert Meyers and Charles Wright. In other pieces he engages with controversies and contestations in contemporary Asian American literature, confronts the politics of race and the legacy of Japanese American internment during World War II, offers paeans to the Hawaiian landscape, and addresses immigrants newly arrived in America with a warm welcome. The Mirror Diary is the work of a poet fully engaged with contemporary politics and poetics and committed to the study and celebration of diverse traditions." -- Publisher's description

Contents:

The mirror diary

In the bamboo grove: some notes on the poetic line

Sea and scholarship: confessional narrative in Charles Olson's "Maximus, to himself"

On Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass

The academy reading series featured poet: R. S. Thomas

From "A poet's notebook"

The activity of the poet

Ministry: homage to Kīlauea

A man on child's swing: contemporary Japanese poetry

Review of Turning Japanese: memoirs of a sansei by David Mura

Homage to lost worlds: where I write, why I write there

Working for the DWP

In the Charles Wright Museum

Introduction to Under western eyes: culture wars in Asian America

Gardens we have left

HR 442: redress

Hope alive: writers at the unconvention

Lost in place: longing for the brave new world of L.A.

America singing: an address to the newly arrived peoples.

ISBN:

0472037021

9780472037025

OCLC:

985887152