Best asian american poetry books according to redditors

Here is the Amazon link to the poetry winner. The preview has five poems and will allow you to get a taste for his work and this collection. If you're hesitant about poetry, any library will have Pulitzer winning books, so give it a risk-free try. Also, last year's winner, Stag's Leap by Sharon Olds, is clutch!

I love this Natalie Diaz poem, My Brother at 3 A. M.


Also, see Kaveh Ackbar's collection, Portrait of an Alcoholic

You can find some of the poems in his collection online.

I think all the actual suggestions I made in this post would apply here (disregard that it's about buying a poetry gift, you're the 'they' or 'she' in this haha) so I'll paste it in and make a few additional suggestions. But #1 suggestion is to read through Poetry 180 and when you find pieces you like to search those poets in google or at poetryfoundation.com (they also have a great browse function where you can search by theme, 'school', poet, subject, occasion etc)

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There's certainly a wide variety of options, the best options are mostly more poetry to read. All good poets read lots of poetry. I mean, sure, there's probably 3 or 4 out there that don't, but outliers aside, poets read poetry. So there's a couple options, if she only started writing a couple years ago, I would suggest a workshop type text book and a subscription to a nice literary journal like American Poetry Review, Rattle, Ploughshares, Iowa Review, Georgia Review, Arts & Letters, Five Points, Gettysburg Review, Paris Review etc. Depending on the type of poets she likes, different magazines would be better.

One good tact would be to ask them for a few of their favorite poets, maybe say you're thinking about reading more poetry or something, or just ask. Do a google search for their name and "literary journal" or "literary review". If you see that name in any of the above journals I mentioned, get her that subscription. If not, consider getting her one of their collections from Amazon. For anthologies, which are great for young poets especially, because it can help introduce a reader to many similar or dissimilar voices to broaden their reading horizons, and also some of the books I'll be recommending have a strong prompt/craft component to help them continue to develop. I especially recommend the bolded titles, and Seriously Funny, while good, may be a bit complicated for a newish reader of poetry. But I could be misreading what you mean by poetry career and they could be plenty comfortable with it.

Here are a couple that are good options:

Seriously Funny is a great anthology themed after poems that bring wit to serious topics. It's edited by husband/wife poetry duo David Kirby and Barbara Hamby.

Staying Alive has a great variety of poems organized by theme. These are mostly poems published in the last 50ish years, and lean slightly toward being more accessible (easy to understand) than the first anthology.

Contemporary American Poetry: Behind the Scenes was edited by Ryan G. Van Cleave and is more of a textbook (like the next 2). It has a CD with audio recordings of many of the poets in the book and it is broken up by poet, mostly chronologically I believe. It has some craft essays as well. Being a textbook, new copies are expensive, but used are cheap cheap.

The Poet's Companion is edited by Kim Addonizio and Dorianne Laux, both tremendous poets in their own right. This one is more oriented in using poems to spark your own writing, but it does have a good amount of poetry in there, and the craft essays are brief and to the point.

In the Palm of Your Hand: The Poet's Portable Workshop edited by Steve Kowit is also a great textbook for producing your own writing by looking at certain aspects of other poems. Stylistically this is similar to The Poet's Companion, and both are tremendous. Used they're each only $6 with shipping too.

Or, here are a few books that you can't go wrong with: Rose by Li-Young Lee, Tell Me by Kim Addonizio, Rail by Kai Carlson-Wee, The House of Blue Light by David Kirby, American Noise by Campbell McGrath, The Gary Snyder Reader—a huge book, but great, Some Ether by Nick Flynn

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If you find a few more specific poets you like and want to find more of feel free to message me, and if I'm familiar with them I'll shoot you some more suggestions. A couple other poets who get personal and focus on minutiae/details etc would be like Albert Goldbarth, Billy Collins, Stephen Dunn, Matthew Neinow, Nick Latz, Gaylord Brewer, Ted Kooser, Philip Levine and, a couple that do similar with a definitely stylistic approach would be like Bob Hicok, Dean Young, Alex Lemon and Emma Bolden. For other lyrics/audio you may enjoy Leonard Cohen, Paul Simon, Ani DiFranco, Utah Phillips, Sage Francis, Aesop Rock, Atmosphere/Slug, Josh Martinez...

Best of luck on your journey!

Could it be Rhapsody in Plain Yellow: Poems by Marilyn Chin? Or perhaps something else written by her? She wrote a semi-autobiographical novel about her and her sister working at a Chinese restaurant.

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I recommend:

[Yellow Light by Garrett K. Hongo] (http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=yellow+light+poetry&rh=n%3A283155%2Ck%3Ayellow+light+poetry)

[Colors of Desire by David Mura] (http://www.amazon.com/Colors-Desire-Poems-David-Mura/dp/038547461X/ref=sr_1_11?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1413476697&sr=1-11&keywords=david+mura)

[Saturday Night at the Pahala Theatre by Louis Ann Yamanaka] (http://www.amazon.com/Saturday-Night-at-Pahala-Theatre/dp/0910043310/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1413476771&sr=1-3&keywords=lois+ann+yamanaka)

Hey guys!

I’m the author of Euphoria, which is my debut poetry book. It has poems about self struggle, depression, happiness, and many more topics. It’s currently at $9.89, and it may stay at that price for a while. While the kindle book is $2.99. I would love for you guys to read it. I also run an Instagram, which I’ll link below.

Amazon // Instagram

I'm more into his poetry, so I will recommend the collections Zero Gravity and Amigo Warfare.

For novels I recommend his latest (just released in November), The Descartes Highlands. It has an Alex Garland feel to it. Empire of Memory is excellent - The Beatles in Manila, the Marcoses and protagonists who are drunk in love. Finally, My Sad Republic is probably the most popular, set during the Philippine Revolution.