Treadwinds: Poems and Intermedia Works. This item is unavailable.Treadwinds: Poems and Intermedia Works

Lew has been active as an editor (Premonitions: The Kaya Anthology of New North Asian American Poetry), critic and multimedia artist in the Asian-American literary community for years, and was an early champion of the work of Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, whose Dictee is now a classic of postcolonial literature. This collection, culled from 20 years of writing, puts forth a unique mixture of traditional, even ancient, poetic styles that extends across cultures: one poem is called "Two Handfuls of Waka for Thelonius Sphere Monk," while another peels off politically charged lexemes in a "language" vein: "mudlight moontruck bloodhope bonegun." "Intermedia" work includes several pages from Lew's out-of-print "critical collage" on Cha's work, Excerpts from: DIKTE for DICTEE; weird phonetic translations of poems in Japanese script; and the title poem, which is accompanied by several collages by filmmaker and animator Lewis Klahr. Further leaps across continents, time periods and narrative angles include a spooky ekphrastic meditation on the paintings of Francis Bacon ("The walls of the room have vanished. There is just the one glandular light Swinging, and the mattress With its skin flayed off"), lighthearted narrative montages ("An Apartment in the City"), prose poems and quasi magical-realist lyrics such as "Green": "At nightfall a huge crow Yanked my tongue out. From the inflammation grew this One transparent snake-nerve, Filament rippling with silver tox." This eclecticism is all held together by Lew's measured pace, lively sense of enjambment, condensed imagery and impatience with the facile wordplay that sinks other poetry covering similar themes. It fills in an important corner not only of Lew's multifaceted career but the larger portrait of Korean and Asian-American literature of the past two decades. (June)
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