|    Login    |    Register

Common Grace: Poems

(Paperback)


Publishing Details

Full Title:

Common Grace: Poems

Contributors:
ISBN:

9780807015889

Publisher:

Beacon Press

Imprint:

Beacon Press

Publication Date:

4th October 2022

UK Publication Date:

5th October 2022

Country:

United States

Classifications

Readership:

General

Fiction/Non-fiction:

Non Fiction

Main Subject:
Dewey:

813.6

Physical Properties

Physical Format:

Paperback

Number of Pages:

112

Dimensions:

Width 140mm, Height 216mm

Description

The first major poetry collection from an award-winning student of Robert Pinsky, exploring the inherited trauma within his Japanese American family, his life as an artist, and his bond with his wife In 65 lyric poems organized into a triptych, Common Grace offers an important new lens into Asian American life, art, and love. Part 1, "Soul Sauce," describes the poet's life as a practicing visual artist, taking us from an early encounter with an inkwell at Roseland Elementary in 1969 to his professional outdoor easel perched on Long Island Sound. Part 2, "Ubasute," is named after the mythical Japanese practice wherein "a grown son lifts / his aged mother on his back, / delivers her to a mountain, / leaves her to die." This concept frames a wrenching portrayal of his parents' decline and death, reaching back to his father's time in the American internment camps of WWII and his mother's memories of the firebombing of Tokyo. It also anchors the two outer parts in the racial trauma and joys passed down from his parents. Part 3, "Gutter Trees," gives us affecting love poems to his wife and the creative lives they've built together. Ranging in scope from private moments to the sweep of familial heritage, Caycedo-Kimura's poems are artful, subtle, but never quiet.

Reviews

Wry, tender, musical and unsentimental. . . . In these poems, the visible world radiates meaning, memory becomes palpable, and loss is acknowledged.
Robert Pinsky, 3-time United States Poet Laureate

Common Grace is an uncommon book, elegant, at times tough-minded, also moving.
Ha Jin, National Book Awardwinning author of Waiting

Pays fluent loving attention to life and artand their rewards glow!
Gail Mazur, author of Lands End: New and Selected Poems

Here is a poet of clear-eyed originality, big-hearted and wiseand a book to read again and again.
Matthew Thorburn, author of The Grace of Distance

Announces Caycedo-Kimura as an important new voice.
Jennifer Franklin, author of No Small Gift

Author Bio

Aaron Caycedo-Kimura is a writer and visual artist. His chapbook, Ubasute, was selected by Jennifer Franklin, Peggy Ellsberg, and Margo Taft Stever as the 2020 Slapering Hol Press Chapbook Competition winner. His honors include a Robert Pinsky Global Fellowship in Poetry, a St. Botolph Club Foundation Emerging Artist Award in Literature, and nominations for the Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net, and Best New Poets anthologies. His poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in the Beloit Poetry Journal, Poetry Daily, RHINO, upstreet, Verse Daily, DMQ Review, and elsewhere. He is the author and illustrator of Text, Don't Call- An Illustrated Guide to the Introverted Life.

See all

Other titles by Aaron Caycedo-Kimura

See all

Other titles from Beacon Press