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To Be the Poet
"I have almost finished my longbook," Maxine Hong Kingston declares. "Let my life as Poet begin...I won't be a workhorse anymore; I'll be a skylark." "To Be the Poet" is Kingston's manifesto, the avowal and declaration of a writer who has devoted a good part of her sixty years to writing prose, and who, over the course of this spirited and inspiring book, works out what th...more
Hardcover, 128 pages
Published
September 16th 2002
by Harvard University Press
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Very much enjoyed this little book (111 pages).
Helped me to be still.
Here's a snippet I liked:(p.66)
I avidly look at women with long white hair.
I walk fast, catch up with them, and look at their faces.
They're always beautiful.
They always smile back at me.
Always.
From Library Journal:
On the opening page of this slim volume, Kingston (creative writing, Univ. of California, Berkeley) declares that after decades of writing acclaimed memoirs and fiction such as The Woman Warrior, China Men, and Tripma...more
Helped me to be still.
Here's a snippet I liked:(p.66)
I avidly look at women with long white hair.
I walk fast, catch up with them, and look at their faces.
They're always beautiful.
They always smile back at me.
Always.
From Library Journal:
On the opening page of this slim volume, Kingston (creative writing, Univ. of California, Berkeley) declares that after decades of writing acclaimed memoirs and fiction such as The Woman Warrior, China Men, and Tripma...more
Interesting book. On one level it's very self-indulgent, Kingston's diary of her decision to move away from prose and enter into the world of poetry. But I loved that such an accomplished and widely-admired writer as she would be willing to make these fumbling steps in public, baring this awkward process to the world.
She shares her first attempts at poetry and some of them actually made me cringe. Maybe not such a new experience in the age of the internet, but she was one of my favorite writers...more
She shares her first attempts at poetry and some of them actually made me cringe. Maybe not such a new experience in the age of the internet, but she was one of my favorite writers...more
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A short and delightful read (finished in one sitting: about 2 hours). I sense an almost sarcastic, sardonic wit to it (listing off your to-do list as "poetry") which really begs one to reconsider how one defines "poetry" at all. There was only one poem which really struck out to me: "Dreaming Awake". The book is fairly autobiographical and reveals the writer's coming of age ("oh, I'm 60 now... after x years writing prose, I'm going to WILL myself into being a "poet") and seems more cathartic in...more
I enjoyed reading what was in her mind before the Oakland fires and after she finished the replacement of that lost novel. Loved her point about poets expressing the now and not the past or the made-up future. Enjoyed reading about what it is like to be an older lady gracefully aging. Also, as an alum that just missed her on campus, I enjoyed the Cal and Berkeley references. One point I liked to make with my own kids was her cultural reference to growing up with one or two toys, verses how life...more
More about her intent to become a poet than how to do so, or even how she attempted to do so.
Interesting peripheral information about growing up Asian in America; about relationships among a broad range of writers; about Chinese poetry, etc.
Interesting peripheral information about growing up Asian in America; about relationships among a broad range of writers; about Chinese poetry, etc.
. . . No comment other than it took less than an hour to read .
I liked it because it was different. I had to learn to be quiet; it made me quiet. That said, it's definitely not everyone's cup of tea.
May 18, 2013
Heather
marked it as to-read
Mar 28, 2013
Katherine Wilkins Bienkowski
marked it as to-read
Mar 23, 2013
Preston
marked it as to-read
Feb 25, 2013
Igraine
marked it as auf-gar-keinen-fall
Dec 01, 2012
Jinny
marked it as to-read
May 06, 2012
Alys
marked it as to-read
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She was born as Maxine Ting Ting Hong to a laundry house owner in Stockton, California. She was the third of eight children, and the first among them born in the United States. Her mother trained as a midwife at the To Keung School of Midwifery in Canton. Her father had been brought up a scholar and taught in his village of Sun Woi, near Canton. Tom left China for America in 1924 and took a job in...more
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