News of Home (A. Poulin, Jr. New Poets of America) - Softcover

Kang Dean, Debra

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9781880238660: News of Home (A. Poulin, Jr. New Poets of America)

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1880238667 ISBN 13: 9781880238660

Publisher: BOA Editions Ltd., 1998

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Poems that remindus "there is always a habitable place, / the farthest outpost of solitude nothing can touch,/where there is time, there is always time."

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Review:

"News of Home" is the 19th volume in the prestigious A. Poulin New Poets of America series. Debra Kang Dean brings a unique perspective to her poetry in this collection--that of a woman born in Hawaii to parents of Korean and Okinawan ancestry. Her connections to family are strong, as in "Heal-All: In Memory of Kana Nakama" about her grandmother and "the memory of how to move past grief/ ...clearer than any words or photographs: / you, Grandmother, raking wet leaves." Or when she speaks of the real boss of the family, her mother, the images are even more vivid: "I have walked / a long time in my mother's zoris, spanked, scowled / and scolded my own child into submission / almost against my will."

Yet in the midst of family, the theme of being an outsider appears again and again, most apparent in the section of poems called "Homing Pidgin." In Kang Dean's poem "Pineapple," she tells us: "they call my father's people Yobo, kimchee, / the Irish of the East." In such a multicultural environment, even the languages merge and mix. The poem "Hawaiian Time" combines Hawaiian words with Asian English dialectics in a lighthearted banter: "What time stay? / According to my skin getting darker-- / Eh, I pack / pine so can go / holoholo, buy / pakalolo." A mixture of wry humor and candid observations about difference, Kang Dean's poetry is delightful. --Susan Swartwout

Review:

Aloha, Aina
Back To Back
Because I Could Not Go Home For My Aunt's Funeral
Becoming One Of The Guys
Blue Apartments
Bruises
Calling From The Gate
Catch And Release
The Corsage
Courage, Temperance, And Wisdom
Distance
Fidelity
Fishing The Sky
Hawaiian Time
Heal-all: In Memory Of Kana Nakama
The Hollow
Homing Pidgin
Immigrants
In My Father's House
In The Way Back
Inside My House
Island Fever
Marginalia: Honolulu, 1970
New Year's Eve
No Pilikia; Or, Piece Of Cake
Obake
On The Eve Of My Thirty-fifth Birthday
Pineapples
Proteus
Prothalamion: Of My Brother In Los Angeles
Smoke
Spheres Of Influence
Stitches
Syllabus
Taproot
The Weep Line
Wild Horse Island
With My Mother And Aunts In The Kitchen
World Enough
-- Table of Poems from Poem Finder�

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