Asian American Poets (Sealey Challenge)

I am sharing more of my reading towards completing the Sealey Challenge for the month of August. This week I am featuring Asian American poets that inspired me to write more poetry.

Greenhouses, LightHouses by Tung-Hui Hu 

I was impressed by his poetry and the way he is able to add historical facts and turn them into poetry. Something that I would struggle to do in my poetry. Tung-Hui Hu is an English faculty member at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, where he teaches and researches digital media. My favorite poem from this collection was To Launch a Weather Balloon When the Air is Most Calm, 11 a.m. (GMT).

To Launch a Weather Balloon When the Air is Most Calm, 11 a.m. (GMT).

After Nanette Hosenfeld,

National Weather Service, Salt Lake City

It to see the belt of ether all around you:

clouds at ground level, ice falling out of a clear sky,

 

before it thickens or becomes malevolent,

swelling thousands of balloons to house size

 

as they photography the air, not part of the air

but in chorus and above it. We fill the balloons

 

with gas in the shelters, we hold their necks

like horns as we pass them through the opening

 

of the dome roof to the outside of seeing, outside

of the outdoors, though they still sound, though they

 

can be located, though they fall, over there,

in the mountains, in creeks or ravines, postage-paid,

 

past bursting, crated and marked Return to Sender.

Some have been found as far as two hundred

 

miles down the interstate, the farthest point

imaginable that might still include us.

When I Was the Wind by Hannah Lee Jones 

This book is a debut poetry collection that follows her personal journey traveling west, north, east, and south to find inner meaning. I enjoyed the creative use of concrete directions to guide her self-exploration and also organize her thoughts on the page. My favorite poem from this collection was A Marriage.

A Marriage 

Under heaven thunder rolls: All things attain the natural state of innocence. — The I Ching

As when once at dawn two dragons duel

in a meadow, their keepers mad.

 

Blood stains their scales black and yellow.

A temple bell rung by the moon’s marked climb

 

hangs like the dead, and a king rises

from slumber to read his scrolls in the light.

 

His queen: the captive scribe who grinds his ink.

Their servants the exploded rays

 

of every hour they keep their robes.

How whitely they whisper to each other

 

it notes of bitter herbs— their lips bearing

all that’s been writ large

 

or small in the shallows of their skin.

His eye adrift like the wind.

 

Her fingers weary with language.

Their silence poured along the ground

 

Like so much pine smoke

while their burning brims over, labors long.

 

As when once at dusk I go to a grove

to meet my life’s two takers,

 

and they come to keep their vows,

and death sends word.