Colloquies
A Response to the Literary Address by Franny Choi
- By Christine Kitano
What is the Future of Asian American Poetry?
Before imagining the future, I must begin in the past, considering how we’ve arrived in the present moment. When it comes to Asian American poetry, the first question is always what defines Asian American poetry and where it begins. Does our tradition begin with Pound’s modernist translations of classical Chinese poetry? The poems inscribed on the walls at Angel Island? Or, the poems written by the Issei from behind barbed wire in concentration camps? There is no elementary point of origin, rather, a brief overview of Asian American poetry’s many earlier manifestations does reveal it has always been rooted in contradiction and struggle, the...
