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"Jee Leong Koh is a vigorous, physical poet very much captured by the expressive power of rhythm, rhetoric, and the lexicon. He is also, paradoxically, a poet in pursuit of the most elusive and delicate of human emotions. The contradiction is wonderful and compelling, and so are his poems."
"I was several times reminded of Joni Mitchell's conversational, outsider-styled song lyrics while reading this book." Read more.
A new book of poems by Jee Leong Koh
About Me
To preview and buy book, click here.
--Vijay Seshadri, author of The Long Meadow (Graywolf Press)
"His poems are like the sexy nerd you meet at a bar, the one you really want to get to know better-- with his glasses and tie on and nothing else." Read more.
"His poems are like the sexy nerd you meet at a bar, the one you really want to get to know better-- with his glasses and tie on and nothing else." Read more.
--Christopher Hennessy, Outside the Lines: Talking with Contemporary Gay Poets (University of Michigan Press)
"Equal to the Earth is characterised by enquiry, technical curiosity and emotional questioning." Read more.
--Eshuneutics
"I was several times reminded of Joni Mitchell's conversational, outsider-styled song lyrics while reading this book." Read more.
--Robert Urban, Urban Productions, NYC
Followers
Retakes 1
After my book party I invited people to give me their takes on my poems, in the form of poems, art, photography, videos or readings in their own voice. AH responded to the poetry and the photography with an elegant sonnet.
Portrait
alcun’altra beltà nel cor traluce.
--Michelangelo (76).
Unable to discern the solar eye
(In dark before the alba’s light) I hill
The brightness settings through degrees until
At thirty-seven there is symmetry;
And mid-tones, shadows, highlights re-concur,
To form a formal elegance. Your look,
Now balanced, burning bright, unfolds that book
Of love that stirs inside the connoisseur
Of eyes “Some other Beauty in the heart
Not issuing from light’s first cause.” Observed
At this intensity, you are reserved,
Ethereal, as others hear: pure art.
I note, then turn again to what was good:
The cockcrow dark of man in Morningwood.
AH is a writer and teacher who lives in the United Kingdom. Since Spring 2006, he has written a poetry blog using the name Eshuneutics. (In a past incarnation, his field of academic research was Ezra Pound and The Cantos). His main interests are modern poetry, the Hermetical tradition from the Renaissance onwards, and gay poetries.
Portrait
alcun’altra beltà nel cor traluce.
--Michelangelo (76).
Unable to discern the solar eye
(In dark before the alba’s light) I hill
The brightness settings through degrees until
At thirty-seven there is symmetry;
And mid-tones, shadows, highlights re-concur,
To form a formal elegance. Your look,
Now balanced, burning bright, unfolds that book
Of love that stirs inside the connoisseur
Of eyes “Some other Beauty in the heart
Not issuing from light’s first cause.” Observed
At this intensity, you are reserved,
Ethereal, as others hear: pure art.
I note, then turn again to what was good:
The cockcrow dark of man in Morningwood.
AH is a writer and teacher who lives in the United Kingdom. Since Spring 2006, he has written a poetry blog using the name Eshuneutics. (In a past incarnation, his field of academic research was Ezra Pound and The Cantos). His main interests are modern poetry, the Hermetical tradition from the Renaissance onwards, and gay poetries.
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10 comments:
My comment seems to have disappeared! I remember Francis Bacon writing somewhere about the pain in his paintings, the scintilla of pleasure exacted from the precision of pain. Two poems, "For lonely" and "New Year Resolution" gain from your reading voice: they have a sharp loneliness within them...even a sense of aloneness. Beautiful
When I read somewhere, in a bar, say, I can always tell whether the audience is with me. "Reading" on the net (which was a reading into a recording software) is either too much or too little directed. I'm glad that something so mechanically and electronically produced captures something of the human.
Hi Jee Leong. Happy Birthday! I'm looking forward to the reading.
Greg
Thanks, Greg! Glad you could make it.
Hello Jee and happy birthday! I just downloaded your MP3 files, which will permit me to listen more carefully at leisure--my aural comprehension is not as good as my reading comprehension. But I did listen to the interesting opening, with the plane going past on its way to LaGuardia, just like you said. Your apartment looks spacious and light-filled, very nice. And close to the #7 train, perfect for visitors!!
One very productive thing about my visit here today: one of the at-home photos you posted is actually a much better one to use for your author thumbnail in your Ganymede section. So I already Photoshopped it and plugged it in...very nice. Your face is always in shadow in the other pix.
And thanks to you, I've looked into Philip Larkin and ordered his Collected Poems from the library. At some point we can talk about them. Have you read Samuel Menashe, the only living poet in the Library of America poets series? Very delicate and gay-cultural, everything clear and thoughtful. You might like him. Know him socially--he has no computer or email, imagine that!
Back to the bash! Best wishes, John Stahle
PS: next Saturday, at that fair at the Center, if you need help getting stuff back home, I'll be happy to help you.
Hi John,
Thanks for coming by! I'm sure you will enjoy the Larkin.
Thanks so much for the reading Jee Leong. I enjoyed it. It was good to hear your voice, and especially the poem about loneliness & smiling at fear - that moved me. & what a gorgeous picture!! if only everyone could look that handsome at 39 (or at any age).
I'm happy you enjoyed the reading, Greg, and was even moved by something heard. Have a great weekend.
Hi Jee Leong! Happy Birthday!! Despite my good intentions I left work late and got home to find the party in full force--and there is so much to read and hear. So please do leave it up at least a couple of days--I can't rush through poems, though I hear lines and verses I want to hear at leisure. Your voice is an important part of it, too--it carries and opens to the listening ear such a steadily inviting sense of words and their balance/ play/sound on multiple levels, a table spread with visual, tactile, sensory, subtle-hearing experience. but there are details that started to pull me into various directions and that need a bit of attention. and I didn't even get my virtual glass of wine! But I wanted you to know I did make it and will be back to read more. Thank you for the celebration, meanwhile! Best, Karen
Karen,
The readings will be left up on the blog. Thank you for coming by, and do come back. The spread will be here.
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