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Cathy Park Hong's first
book, Translating Mo'Um,

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was published in 2002
by Hanging Loose Press.

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Her second collection,
Dance Dance Revolution,

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was chosen for the
Barnard women Poets Prize

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and published in
2007 by W.W Norton.

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Her third book of
poems, Engine Empire,

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was published in 2012
also by W.W Norton.

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Hong is the recipient of
a Fulbright fellowship,

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a National Endowment
for the Arts Fellowship,

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a New York Foundation
for the Arts Fellowship,

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and a Village Voice Fellowship
for minority reporters.

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Her poems have been published
in A Public Space, Poetry,

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Paris Review, Conjunctions,
McSweeney's, Harvard Review,

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Boston Review, then
it goes on and on,

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The Nation, American
Letters & Commentary.

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And I'm not even going to--
and other journals, I'll say.

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She's an assistant professor
at Sarah Lawrence College

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and is regular faculty at
the Queen's MFA program

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in Charlotte, North Carolina.

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I first encountered
Kathy's poetry

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here at the Poetry Center in a
class on American 21st century

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poetry.

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We spent time in the
class sorting poets

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into categories, flarf,
Gurlesque conceptual poetry,

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the new formalism.

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That seemingly endless
list of cubbyholes

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we're sticking
current poetry into.

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Alas, Cathy Park Hong shares
a cubbyhole with no one.

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Her poems are
ambitiously eclectic,

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exploring a huge range of genres
and voices of tone diction

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and form, ballads fragmented,
lyric poems, prose poems,

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vignettes sonnet variations.

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Her settings range
from the Civil War West

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to the digital future,
from California

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to a fictionalized East.

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What a gift to discover a poet
so surprising and mysterious.

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Much of Hong's work explores
borders and the difficulty

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or impossibility of
communicating across them,

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geographical,
linguistic, cultural,

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borders between past, present,
and future, borders of genre.

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In Rain Taxi
Gabriella Ekman says

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that Hong takes us far beyond
the borderlands of the usual

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and expected.

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This is language that takes
no prisoners, that startles,

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and threatens rather than
entices language simultaneously

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beautiful and furiously
anti-beautiful.

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Hong examines the
misunderstandings and injustice

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that happens where
cultures collide.

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The tension of living in a
place both strange and familiar.

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Molly Quinn in
Fiddle Book Review

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calls Engine Empire
a terrifying study

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on imperialism, which
turns political and lyrical

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traditions on their heads.

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Well, yes, but there's
also the love stories,

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as in the narrator's
love for the Rembrandt

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painter in the Chengdu
section of ancient empire.

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And the father's
concerned for his child

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involving the use of a water
pick told by the historian

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in Dance Dance Revolution.

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And always, always the
mystery of the swim cap.

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Please help me welcome
Cathy Park Hong.

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