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by Brynn Saito (Author)
Guided by the character of the Woman Warrior--witty, swift, and ruthless in her wonder--readers of Brynn Saito's second collection of poetry travel the terrain of personal and historical memory: narrative poems about family, farming towns, and the bravery of girlhood are interspersed with lyric poetry written from the voice of a stone found in a Japanese American internment camp during the wartime incarceration. What histories can be summoned with poetry? What are the forces shaping an American life in the 21st century? Car accidents, patriarchy, and television fall under this poet's gaze, along with the intergenerational reverberations of historical trauma. As with The Palace of Contemplating Departure, Saito's first award-winning collection, Power Made Us Swoon strives for wonder and speaks--in edgy and vulnerable tones--of the fraught journey toward a more just world. "Learn to lie to survive," sings the woman warrior, "Learn to outlast the flame / learn the art of surprise."
Author Biography
Brynn Saito is the author of The Palace of Contemplating Departure, winner of the Benjamin Saltman Poetry Award from Red Hen Press and finalist for the 2013 Northern California Book Award. Brynn co-authored, with Traci Brimhall, Bright Power, Dark Peace, a chapbook of poetry from Diode Editions (2013). Her work has been anthologized by Helen Vendler and Ishmael Reed; it has also appeared in Virginia Quarterly Review, Ninth Letter, Hayden's Ferry Review, and Pleiades.Brynn is the recipient of a Kundiman Asian American Poetry Fellowship, the Poets 11 award from the San Francisco Public Library, and the Key West Literary Seminar's Scotti Merrill Memorial Award. Recently, Brynn served as the Kundiman Writer-in-Residence at Sierra Nevada College. Born and raised in Fresno, CA, Brynn currently lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.
