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Wesleyan Poetry Program
Yellow Light: Poems
Book by Hongo, Garrett Kaoru
- GenresPoetryAsian American
78 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1982
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
October 20, 2018
Serene, wise collection of poems from a forgotten, working America, the Japanese immigrant experience and where they meet at midnight under a broken street light.
September 22, 2011
To call Hongo's poems lyrical or narrative is to limit the scope of his beautiful perception. I'm hopping around, enjoying each place I land. I've finished this book and rejoice that Garrett started out with beauty and has ended with a more studied and still lyrical view of the world. His later poems show a growth and maturity that elude many poets.
June 14, 2024
Hongo is from Hawai'i (Big Island) but has a distinctly Asian American or Japanese American sensibility in his poetry, since he grew up in Hawai'i but doesn't live in the islands. What's worthwhile about his poetry is its ability to strike you in its visual conjurings--pure beauty. Hongo's contribution is a good model for how to use line breaks and figurative language in your poetry.
Some examples--
"Yellow Light"
One arm hooked around the frayed strap
of a tar-black patent-leather purse,
the other cradling something for dinner:
fresh bunches of spinach from a J-Town yaoya,
sides of split Spanish mackerel from Alviso's,
maybe a loaf of Langendorf; she steps
of the hissing bus at Olympic and Fig,
begins the three-block climb up the hill,
passing gangs of schoolboys playing war,
Japs against Japs, Chicanas chalking sidewalks
with the holy double-yoked crosses of a hopsctoch,
and the Korean grocer's wife out for a stroll
around this neighborhood of Hawaiian apartments
just starting to steam with cooking
and the anger of young couples coming home
from work, yelling at kids, flicking on
TV sets for the Wednesday Night Fights.
If it were May, hydrangeas and jacaranda
flowers in the streetside trees would be
blooming through the smog of late spring.
Wisteria in Masuda's front yard would be
shaking out the long tresses of its purples hair.
Maybe mosquitoes, moths, a few orange butterflies
settling of the lattice of monkey flowers
tangled in the chain-link fences by the trash.
But this is October, and Los Angeles
seethes like a billboard under twilight.
From used-car lots and the movie houses uptown,
long silver sticks of light probe the sky.
From the Miracle Mile, whole freeways away,
a brilliant fluorescence breaks out
and makes war with the dim squares
of yellow kitchen light winking on
in all the side streets of the Barrio.
She climbs up the two flights of flagstone
stairs to 201-B, the spikes of her high heels
clicking like kitchen knives on a cutting board,
props the groceries against the door,
fishes through memo pads, a compact,
empty packs of chewing gum, and finds her keys.
The moon then, cruising from behind
a screen of eucalyptus across the street,
covers everything, everything in sight,
in a heavy light like yellow onions.
(11-12)
Other promising lines--
"Outside, 747s scream over runways,
tuck the talons of their landing gear
into gleaming bellies, fat with luggage" (15)
"Soft blue
in the key
of sleep
suffocates the air." (35)
"We drift back
to the highway,
holding our fists
like rattles,
shaking them
like bones." (35)
"All around me
the ten thousand things
of the universe go slack
in the day's new lagoon,
and I seep out of myself like
water from the soaked earth,
like rain from the black sky." (40-41)
"Stepchild"--this poem deals with over 100 years of painful Asian American history and is a good one for thinking through the Chinese Exclusion Act, the Alien Land Laws and Japanese incarceration, and Nisei sacrifice, and Filipino (and other) farmworkers.
"You waken to the
old worries, shining like loose
change in a church plate,
tears of light beading under
gas lamps while the hymns
rummage through shallow
pockets, and the memories
flicker into bloom
with the dawnlight bleeding through
porch screens into the
kitchen, where it falls
at your feet like scattered rice." (66)
"only the bamboo
growing lush as old melodies
and whispering like brush strokes
against the fine scroll of wind" (75)
Teacher Linda Christensen likes to use as a model for students to write about their own memories and how they were raised.
One comment that due to the time period, perhaps, that Hongo writes in, sometimes his descriptions of race and Hawai'i is awkward and definitely feels dated, and is no longer "comfortable"--if it ever was.
Teacher's note: Again, Hongo serves as a great model for students. Some of his poems are dated (he mentions Wolfman Jack, after all) and of a specific Asian American sensibility of the 1970s or so, but the other poems are useful as model to evoke imagery (see above).
Some examples--
"Yellow Light"
One arm hooked around the frayed strap
of a tar-black patent-leather purse,
the other cradling something for dinner:
fresh bunches of spinach from a J-Town yaoya,
sides of split Spanish mackerel from Alviso's,
maybe a loaf of Langendorf; she steps
of the hissing bus at Olympic and Fig,
begins the three-block climb up the hill,
passing gangs of schoolboys playing war,
Japs against Japs, Chicanas chalking sidewalks
with the holy double-yoked crosses of a hopsctoch,
and the Korean grocer's wife out for a stroll
around this neighborhood of Hawaiian apartments
just starting to steam with cooking
and the anger of young couples coming home
from work, yelling at kids, flicking on
TV sets for the Wednesday Night Fights.
If it were May, hydrangeas and jacaranda
flowers in the streetside trees would be
blooming through the smog of late spring.
Wisteria in Masuda's front yard would be
shaking out the long tresses of its purples hair.
Maybe mosquitoes, moths, a few orange butterflies
settling of the lattice of monkey flowers
tangled in the chain-link fences by the trash.
But this is October, and Los Angeles
seethes like a billboard under twilight.
From used-car lots and the movie houses uptown,
long silver sticks of light probe the sky.
From the Miracle Mile, whole freeways away,
a brilliant fluorescence breaks out
and makes war with the dim squares
of yellow kitchen light winking on
in all the side streets of the Barrio.
She climbs up the two flights of flagstone
stairs to 201-B, the spikes of her high heels
clicking like kitchen knives on a cutting board,
props the groceries against the door,
fishes through memo pads, a compact,
empty packs of chewing gum, and finds her keys.
The moon then, cruising from behind
a screen of eucalyptus across the street,
covers everything, everything in sight,
in a heavy light like yellow onions.
(11-12)
Other promising lines--
"Outside, 747s scream over runways,
tuck the talons of their landing gear
into gleaming bellies, fat with luggage" (15)
"Soft blue
in the key
of sleep
suffocates the air." (35)
"We drift back
to the highway,
holding our fists
like rattles,
shaking them
like bones." (35)
"All around me
the ten thousand things
of the universe go slack
in the day's new lagoon,
and I seep out of myself like
water from the soaked earth,
like rain from the black sky." (40-41)
"Stepchild"--this poem deals with over 100 years of painful Asian American history and is a good one for thinking through the Chinese Exclusion Act, the Alien Land Laws and Japanese incarceration, and Nisei sacrifice, and Filipino (and other) farmworkers.
"You waken to the
old worries, shining like loose
change in a church plate,
tears of light beading under
gas lamps while the hymns
rummage through shallow
pockets, and the memories
flicker into bloom
with the dawnlight bleeding through
porch screens into the
kitchen, where it falls
at your feet like scattered rice." (66)
"only the bamboo
growing lush as old melodies
and whispering like brush strokes
against the fine scroll of wind" (75)
Teacher Linda Christensen likes to use as a model for students to write about their own memories and how they were raised.
One comment that due to the time period, perhaps, that Hongo writes in, sometimes his descriptions of race and Hawai'i is awkward and definitely feels dated, and is no longer "comfortable"--if it ever was.
Teacher's note: Again, Hongo serves as a great model for students. Some of his poems are dated (he mentions Wolfman Jack, after all) and of a specific Asian American sensibility of the 1970s or so, but the other poems are useful as model to evoke imagery (see above).
November 4, 2015
Stepchild is the first poem I read because I opened the book to a random page, and it's one of the most powerful things I've read in a long time. It's a long epic poem about the history of Japanese americans.
A lot of the poems follow that kind of trajectory. They're long and full of emotion and thought.
Hard not to recommend.
A lot of the poems follow that kind of trajectory. They're long and full of emotion and thought.
Hard not to recommend.
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May 15, 2009Yellow Light: Poems (Wesleyan Poetry Series) by Garrett Kaoru Hongo (1982)
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews