As one might be able to garner from the title of John Yau’s 2006 publication, Paradiso Diaspora, that he draws upon numerous writing styles for the crafting of his poems, including lyric, collage, paragraph and absurdist narrative. In order to keep the material manageable for the reader, the collection is divided into 6 different sections and with each comprised of its own particular mode and subject matter.
However, what all the poems do have in common is Yau’s extensive lingual playing field which pushes words out from their literal meanings and into associative and structural developments. And while the poems appear abstract, isn’t this what poetry has always set out to do? Despite whatever contexts which may have surrounded poetry through the history of its existence, there has always been an imparted effort to extend human experience and understanding into new directions through the imaginative use of language. So too with Yau.
While Yau’s reason for his writing style could be simplified to aesthetical choice, it is also grounded in a philosophical rationale, one comprised of the social and political. Being born to Chinese immigrants in 1950, a year after their move to the United States, Yau grew up in a home that was culturally half Chinese and half American. With Yau not being quite at home with either one of them, he was forced to come to terms with the pressures of assimilation within a country which is supposed to be a multitudinous Republic. Combine this background with what appears to still be pride for his citizenship as an American, Yau (at least in this volume and other more recent publications-- I haven't read his earlier books) replaces the “I” as it is used within the center of European-based poetry with a language style that exists in uncertainty and void of egocentricity. Within the first introductory poem for Pardiso Disaspora, Yau makes his position known that to single out a leader, a voice for the people, is a ‘hierarchical construction’, ‘undemocratic and antihumanist’. So Yau looks elsewhere.
Why not to human beginning? The second section of the book concerns the birth of his daughter and includes probably the strongest poem in the collection, 'Conversation after Midnight'. It’s a work modeled after Coleridge’s 'Frost at Midnight', but with the noticeable difference being that the voice of Yau’s work is not the ‘I’ of the poet, but a mercurial mixture of his baby daughter and the poetic muse. It’s a poem that holds a beauty because of its inspiration, but at the same time ironically humorous as the voice which emerges cuts through the usual sentimentality and while still hungrily screaming for its existence:
This is the tabula rasa state from which to enjoy the section that follows, where the writing turns more abstract and to the point where at times there is only the flow of the language and its recurrent patterns. Poems which sometimes ask to be enjoyed foremost through their surface qualities, such as sonic placement, bizarre imagery and nonlogical associations-- where you have to simply enjoy the presence of the words in your mouth and the surprise for where they may take you.
However, as Yau's non-ideology actually is a sort of ideology, Yau recoginzes the need for the self to take a position. But simultaneously with this, Yau places into question all forms of thought, symbolized partly through ‘the library’ and reminiscent of a reoccurring idead within W. C. Williams’ Paterson, "setting out while the libraries were still burning on the vast plains surrounding the artificial craters, plumes of aquamarine smoke dissipating in the cool westerly breezes". From here Yau goes into how we comprehend the historic events of our time. As Yau lives in New York City, 9/11 looms in the background and bringing the event into his poetry takes up the paradoxical challenge of not forgetting the atrocity while also keeping clear from the firmly centered interpretive ‘I’ to understand one's relation to the event. Which is not an either or proposition, but one which encourages the protean over the ideological, as is repeatedly suggested in all of Yau's poetry and the varied approaches he brings to his craft.
However, what all the poems do have in common is Yau’s extensive lingual playing field which pushes words out from their literal meanings and into associative and structural developments. And while the poems appear abstract, isn’t this what poetry has always set out to do? Despite whatever contexts which may have surrounded poetry through the history of its existence, there has always been an imparted effort to extend human experience and understanding into new directions through the imaginative use of language. So too with Yau.
While Yau’s reason for his writing style could be simplified to aesthetical choice, it is also grounded in a philosophical rationale, one comprised of the social and political. Being born to Chinese immigrants in 1950, a year after their move to the United States, Yau grew up in a home that was culturally half Chinese and half American. With Yau not being quite at home with either one of them, he was forced to come to terms with the pressures of assimilation within a country which is supposed to be a multitudinous Republic. Combine this background with what appears to still be pride for his citizenship as an American, Yau (at least in this volume and other more recent publications-- I haven't read his earlier books) replaces the “I” as it is used within the center of European-based poetry with a language style that exists in uncertainty and void of egocentricity. Within the first introductory poem for Pardiso Disaspora, Yau makes his position known that to single out a leader, a voice for the people, is a ‘hierarchical construction’, ‘undemocratic and antihumanist’. So Yau looks elsewhere.
Why not to human beginning? The second section of the book concerns the birth of his daughter and includes probably the strongest poem in the collection, 'Conversation after Midnight'. It’s a work modeled after Coleridge’s 'Frost at Midnight', but with the noticeable difference being that the voice of Yau’s work is not the ‘I’ of the poet, but a mercurial mixture of his baby daughter and the poetic muse. It’s a poem that holds a beauty because of its inspiration, but at the same time ironically humorous as the voice which emerges cuts through the usual sentimentality and while still hungrily screaming for its existence:
... I am the poem yes I am the one
you want to write or be written by
you boob or should I say Boobus Sanctimonius
I am the poem
you need to write to and for...
right now I am hungry
so go
get me something warm to drink
will you Bud
This is the tabula rasa state from which to enjoy the section that follows, where the writing turns more abstract and to the point where at times there is only the flow of the language and its recurrent patterns. Poems which sometimes ask to be enjoyed foremost through their surface qualities, such as sonic placement, bizarre imagery and nonlogical associations-- where you have to simply enjoy the presence of the words in your mouth and the surprise for where they may take you.
However, as Yau's non-ideology actually is a sort of ideology, Yau recoginzes the need for the self to take a position. But simultaneously with this, Yau places into question all forms of thought, symbolized partly through ‘the library’ and reminiscent of a reoccurring idead within W. C. Williams’ Paterson, "setting out while the libraries were still burning on the vast plains surrounding the artificial craters, plumes of aquamarine smoke dissipating in the cool westerly breezes". From here Yau goes into how we comprehend the historic events of our time. As Yau lives in New York City, 9/11 looms in the background and bringing the event into his poetry takes up the paradoxical challenge of not forgetting the atrocity while also keeping clear from the firmly centered interpretive ‘I’ to understand one's relation to the event. Which is not an either or proposition, but one which encourages the protean over the ideological, as is repeatedly suggested in all of Yau's poetry and the varied approaches he brings to his craft.
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