Woodland Pattern™ |
 |
| Book Center |
|
||
|
Wednesday, November 11, 7pm NEW PROSE SERIES  Timothy Yu is the author of the chapbook Journey to the West (Barrow Street) and the critical book Race and the Avant-Garde: Experimental and Asian American Poetry since 1965 (Stanford University Press). His poems and prose have appeared in SHAMPOO, Chicago Review, and Another Chicago Magazine. He teaches at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.A groundbreaking study of contemporary American poetry, Race and the Avant-Garde changes the way we think about race and literature. Examining two of the most exciting developments in recent American writing, Timothy Yu juxtaposes the works of experimental language poets and Asian American poets—concerned primarily with issues of social identity centered around discourses of race. Yu delves into the 1960s social upheaval to trace how Language and Asian American writing emerged as parallel poetics of the avant-garde, each with its own distinctive form, style, and political meaning. From its provocative reevaluation of Allen Ginsberg to fresh readings of Ron Silliman, Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, and John Yau, along with its analysis of a new archive of Asian American writers from the 1970s, this book is indispensable for readers interested in race, Asian American studies, contemporary poetry, and the avant-garde. "...Explores how conflicts, anxieties, and confusions fuse with aesthetics, ideologies, and social formations in the unsettling project of a syncretic Asian American poetics. In order to fully engage such poetics, Yu looks at roots but also rootlessness, lineages as well as misalignments. Yu takes risks; the welcome result is a provocatively informative excursion into the productive synergy of race and aesthetic innovation." - Charles Bernstein |