Genghis Chan on Drums (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9781632431004)

A diverse and cacophonous poetry collection tackling subjects from identity to current events.

At once comic and cantankerous, tender and discomfiting, piercing and irreverent, Genghis Chan on Drums is a shape-shifting book of percussive poems dealing with aging, identity, PC culture, and stereotypes about being Chinese. Employing various forms, John Yau's poems traverse a range of subjects, including the 1930s Hollywood actress Carole Lombard, the Latin poet Catullus, the fantastical Renaissance painter Piero di Cosimo's imaginary sister, and a nameless gumshoe. Yau moves effortlessly from using the rhyme scheme of a sixteenth-century Edmund Spenser sonnet to riffing on a well-known poem-rant by the English poet Sean Bonney, and to immersing himself in the words of condolence sent by a former president to the survivors of a school massacre. Yau's poems are conduits through which many different, conflicting, and unsavory voices strive to be heard.


Author: John Yau
ISBN-10: 1632431009
ISBN-13: 9781632431004
Publisher: Omnidawn
Language: English
Published: 10/06/2021
Pages: 152
Format: Paperback
Weight: 0.55lbs
Size: 9.00h x 6.00w x 0.50d

Review Citation(s):
Library Journal 11/01/2021 pg. 91
Publishers Weekly 11/22/2021