Radiant Silhouette: New and Selected Work, 1974-1988
(Critics view Radiant Silhouette as a critical point in th...)
Critics view Radiant Silhouette as a critical point in the career of acclaimed author John Yau. Publishers Weekly, for example, has recently remarked that: "Yau's poems churn along with the bright inventiveness that has characterized his work...since the selected Radiant Silhouette from 1990." The inventiveness in question is one borne of an ethnic background that is at the fore in the work of Yau. Radiant Silhouette created the buzz about John Yau, and it is worth seeing what in turn created that title: the celebrated poems herein plumb the rejections, joys and confusions of growing up Chinese-American, and they are essential reading for any American, Chinese or not, in today's America, more a melting pot than ever.
In the Realm of Appearances: The Art of Andy Warhol
(In this unique series of prose meditations, poet and art ...)
In this unique series of prose meditations, poet and art critic John Yau examines the artist's identity in the inseparable context of his work, bringing fresh insight both to "the surface" and what may in fact be "behind it". Yau balances the polarized opinions about Warhol by considering the general state of affairs in twentieth century visual art and placing him in the context of such artistic influences and compatriots as Marcel Duchamp, Jasper Johns, Jeff Koons and composer John Cage. He also explores Warhol's creative energy in terms of cultural stereotypes and psychological factors such as voyeurism, vindictiveness, fear of intimacy and need for acceptance.
(Forbidden Entries brings together fifty-four new poems in...)
Forbidden Entries brings together fifty-four new poems in verse and prose by New York writer John Yau, who has been called "the most important Chinese-American poet of our time" (MultiCultural Review).
(My Symptoms, a six-sectioned book of short stories, does ...)
My Symptoms, a six-sectioned book of short stories, does much to showcase Chinese-American poet John Yau's formidable lyrical abilities. This statement is especially true of the second section, which, as Publishers Weekly says, is filled with "spare, sure, lyrical vignettes reminiscent of Lydia Davis's work." Alienation and isolation are two of the book's main preoccupations, but in it Yau plumbs all of the oftentimes-distressing aspects of the human condition. The Review of Contemporary Fiction remarked, "These are stories that recount the symptoms of many, if not most."
(In John Yau's new collection, Borrowed Love Poems, the re...)
In John Yau's new collection, Borrowed Love Poems, the reader encounters artists (Hiroshige and Eva Hesse), poets (Marina Tsvetayeva and Georg Trakl), actors (Boris Karloff and Peter Lorre), and memorable figures (a retired wrestler and a private eye named Genghis Chan). Each becomes a spectral, sonorous presence inhabiting the polymorphic body of the page, a shadow of a shadow lit from within.
(Yau's comic and cutting poetry collides with the work of ...)
Yau's comic and cutting poetry collides with the work of Nozkowski, whom the New Yorker has termed "the Chardin of contemporary abstraction." The end result is a dazzling and vibrant concoction of visual and written imagery. All the poems in Ing Grish are new, as are Nozkowski's paintings and illustrations, which he created expressly for this collection. Ing Grish was named "Book of the Year" by Small Press Traffic in San Francisco.
(As the anagram of its title suggests, the poems, prose, l...)
As the anagram of its title suggests, the poems, prose, lyrics, and memoir in John Yau's new collection focus on an inescapable duality. It is the duality of living in both painted gardens and in the shadows of historic events that sweep one along. Yau explores the language of telling, of biography, auto and otherwise, of landscapes that are simultaneously imaginary and real, of ways to enter and leave "the kingdom of poetry." This is a book of displacements and unpredictable associations, of "last confessions" and "coming attractions," at once haunted and haunting.
(This beautifully illustrated and profoundly original volu...)
This beautifully illustrated and profoundly original volume of essays by the New York poet and critic John Yau mounts one of the most eloquent defenses of the art and vision of Jasper Johns ever written - going well past tired and traditional Formalist readings of the artist's work to propose a completely new way of reading them: One that is intensely human.
(In the nearly fifty essays collected in The Wild Children...)
In the nearly fifty essays collected in The Wild Children of William Blake, John Yau explores the careers of a wide range of poets and artists who are, like the nineteenth century poet, dissenters from consensus Wallace Berman, Alfred Starr Hamilton, Jay DeFeo, Hilma af Klint, Katherine Bradford, Barbara Takenaga, Forrest Bess, Emmet Gowin, Sophia Al-Maria, and Simon Gouverneur, to name but a few.
John Yau is an American critic, curator, educator, and poet. He has published over 50 books of poetry, artists' books, fiction, and art criticism.
Background
John Yau was born on June 5, 1950 in Lynn, Massachusetts, United States. Yau's parents settled in Boston after emigrating from China in 1949. His father was a bookkeeper.
As a child Yau was friends with the son of the Chinese-born abstract painter John Way.
Education
John Yau received his Bachelor of Arts from Bard College in 1972 and earned a Master of Fine Arts from Brooklyn College in 1978.
John Yau's first book of poetry, Crossing Canal Street, was published in 1976. Since then, he has won acclaim for his poetry’s attentiveness to visual culture and linguistic surface. In poems that frequently pun, trope, and play with the English language, Yau offers complicated, sometimes competing versions of the legacy of his dual heritage - as Chinese, American, poet, and artist.
His latest poetry publications include a book of poems, Further Adventures in Monochrome (2012), and the chapbook, Egyptian Sonnets (2012). His most recent monographs are Catherine Murphy (2016), the first book on the artist, and Richard Artschwager: Into the Desert (2015). John Yau has also written monographs on A. R. Penck, Jasper Johns, and Andy Warhol. In 1999, he started Black Square Editions, a small press devoted to poetry, fiction, translation, and criticism.
Yau was also the Arts Editor for the Brooklyn Rail (2007-2011) before he began writing regularly for an online magazine Hyperallergic Weekend.
John Yau is currently a Professor of Critical Studies at Mason Gross School of the Arts (Rutgers University). He lives in New York City.