Just heard about Whorled, a new collection poetry by bestselling author Ed Bok Lee, whose work explores themes of globalization, transmigration, the legacy of Asian wars in America, race, class, and religious conflicts. That is a lot of stuff to cover! But that's where the poetry took him. Ed Bok Lee's debut book Real Karaoke People was a national bestseller in poetry and the winner of a Many Voices Prize, an Asian American Literary Award and a PEN/Open Book Award. So it sure sounds like he knows what he's doing. Here's the publisher's description of Whorled:
What does it mean to be a Global Citizen in an era of constant war, rampant industrialization, and ever-advancing technology? Lee's ever-wandering cultural and spiritual nomads struggle to make sense of what it means to be a citizen of an increasingly homeless world. In a world where "all love is immigrant," Whorled confronts and celebrates the many complications of global politics through meditations on war, migration, and culture. In settings from San Francisco to Seoul, the Midwest to Kazakhstan, Ed Bok Lee considers what it means to be a citizen in a world where "you can't win the past / or stalk redemption."Best of all, the book includes a poem entitled "Ode to Bruce Lee."
Whorled was originally scheduled to drop sometime next month, but the date got moved up a couple of days, and the book is out this week from Coffee House Press. You can pick it up now from Amazon. For more information about author Ed Bok Lee, go to his website here.