Real Karaoke People

By Ed Bok Lee

Poetry. A dramatic debut, REAL KARAOKE PEOPLE juxtaposes tradition and pop culture to bridge generations and continents in a way both heart-rending and real. Poems and prose engage readers with vivid... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0898232260
• ISBN13: 9780898232264
• Release Date: October 2005
• Publisher: New Rivers Press
• Length: 99 Pages
• Weight: 0.40 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.3" x 6.4" x 8.9"

Customer Reviews

This Is Real!

Modern poetry tends to run in a spectrum ranging from pure, sublime material to cheesy imitations of the real thing. Some very good work may also be tainted by the night soil that nurtured it, infected by the environment it strives to describe. It's very difficult to escape the influence of a culture in which one is immersed, and this is often reflected in the art of an ephemeral, throw-away society. It is an almost inescapable effect, where as a part of the measurable landscape, the observer is also part of the equation. For a poet to step outside one's self, and share with us a true distillation of the spirit, triple filtered by a questioning mind, is the most we can ask for. Ed Bok Lee does it. He convinces us, not only through his complete avoidance of sugarcoating, but through his natural talent as a wordsmith. He is doing what he was meant to do. This is good writing, written by an Asian-American poet from an Asian-American perspective, in a way that resonates with readers universally. If Ed had been of Norwegian, Brazilian or Sudanese birth, we would still receive the same insight on human nature, the same heartbreak, and the same imaginative metaphors. If you're a person who likes poetry, or just good writing, who wants to be moved by artfully conveyed images of real humans, who craves something fresh and completely original, then buy this book and read it.

A Stunning New Book

An Asian Allen Ginsberg? A Minnesotan Walt Whitman? Ed Bok Lee's first book of poetry weaves a plethora of polyphonic voices into a symphony of the city. As brash as a porn king, as silent and suffering as a mail order bride, as beautiful as a lotus, as ugly as vomit in the back seat of a speeding car, this book creates an urgent, honest portrait of America. In these lovely lyric poems, this young poet is urgently speaking the unspoken. Listen.

A Real Voice for Our Times

Real Karaoke People is a collection of poetry and prose that is meant to be read aloud, alone or to your friend and family. It is a book that speaks out for those people -- immigrants, refugees, biracial children, and others -- who feel silenced in a country that is their own but which does not always receive them as such. Hearing him perform, reading his words in print, each time I am left feeling the yearning and heartache of Asian America. Ed Bok Lee has a gift with words which evoke images, tastes, and smells of immigrant families like my own. Finally, someone who can give them a voice.

A Book To Make You Sing

Real Karaoke People adds deeply to the great body of Asian American poetry in a way that remains socially conscious and artistically relevant. Epic and humane, Ed Bok Lee's poetry shines through with poems that feel personal and universal, without reducing itself to expected stereotypes or the tired tropes we've received from other poets. Many of the pieces reveal his experience as a spoken word artist and performing poet, but they make the transition to page easily and resonate with a thoughtful energy crouching, ready to pounce at your throat like a rare wildcat. Only a few of the poems feel shoe-horned into the text, and when you step away, you can still feel them lingering, and if they feel isolated, perhaps that too, is a more deliberate decision than one might expect. Real Karaoke People has tremendous soul and it is worth bringing his work to classrooms and other textbooks as a great example of what contemporary Asian American poets are doing today.

A Love Letter to Asian America

Real Karaoke People is nostalgic in the best way; full of longing, homesickness, grief, as well as love, humor, eroticism, and grit. If you are interested in the heart and guts of Asian American masculinity, the mettle of Korean Americans, and poetry with a theatrical/fictional sensibility, read this book!