Host Jonathan Zarov interviews Timothy Yu who has recently published his first book of poems, 100 Chinese Silences. Yu wll be reading from this work of poems this Thursday, Feb 11, 2016 at 7 pm, Room 205, Pyle Center, 702 Langdon Street, UW-Madison Campus
Quoting writer John Yau on Timothy Yu’s recently published, first book of poems, 100 Chinese Silences
[It] brims with sharp, angry, sarcastic and tender poems. He delivers dazzling lines with the deadpan wit and precise timing of Buster Keaton, the stone-faced master of silence. In fact, I had not realized until now—and I mean NOW—that Keaton is really the Timothy Yu of silent films, while Yu is Yu, a slayer of dragons, who knows the millions of sinister and inscrutable ways the Chinese have been silenced in blockbuster films, best-selling novels, Broadway musicals and award-winning poems read on NPR, and closely scrutinized in graduate classes and parking lots of Asian fusion take-out joints with funny names. Not only does Yu make Ezra Pound and Gary Snyder stand on their pointy heads in ways that are illuminating and funny, but he also skewers Jeb Bush, Billy Collins, Mary Oliver, Marianne Moore, and Eliot Weinberger right through their bright yellow Chinese hearts. You got to love a poet who can do that and never miss his mark. I present you with Timothy Yu, noble Chinese archer and master poet.
Timothy Yu is an an Associate Professor of English and Asian American Studies and the Director of the Asian American Studies Program at UW-Madison. He is also the author of Race and the Avant-Garde: Experimental and Asian American Poetry Since 1965