University of Pennsylvania ScholarlyCommons Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations 2016 Sensing Sounding: Close Listening To Experimental Asian American Poetry Ashley Chang University of Pennsylvania, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations Part of the Aesthetics Commons, Asian American Studies Commons, and the English Language and Literature Commons Recommended Citation Chang, Ashley, "Sensing Sounding: Close Listening To Experimental Asian American Poetry" (2016). Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations. 2210. https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/2210 This paper is posted at ScholarlyCommons. https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/2210 For more information, please contact [email protected]. Sensing Sounding: Close Listening To Experimental Asian American Poetry Abstract This dissertation examines a selection of Asian American experimental poetries from the 1960’s to the present day through the sensory paradigms of avant-garde aesthetic discourse. By approaching both the poem and racial formation in sonic terms, this dissertation project argues that rethinking the sensory as well as the political ramifications of sounding can help us ecuperr ate Asian American poets’ often overlooked experimentation with poetic form. Specifically, I read the works of Marilyn Chin, Theresa Cha, John Yau, Cathy Park Hong, Mei-mei Berssenbrugge, and Tan Lin. By tracing the historical conditions of Orientalist objectification and e-interrr ogating postmodern theories of sight, sound, and the body, I seek to show how these poets’ invocation of sonic paradigms reworks those theories and to broaden our critical vocabulary for writing about sound in poetry. Degree Type Dissertation Degree Name Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) Graduate Group English First Advisor Charles Bernstein Second Advisor Josephine Park Keywords Asian American, poetics, sensory theory, sound studies Subject Categories Aesthetics | Asian American Studies | English Language and Literature This dissertation is available at ScholarlyCommons: https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/2210 SENSING SOUNDING: CLOSE LISTENING TO EXPERIMENTAL ASIAN AMERICAN POETRY Ashley Chang A DISSERTATION in English Presented to the Faculties of the University of Pennsylvania in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy 2016 Supervisor of Dissertation Co-Supervisor of Dissertation ______________________ _________________________ Charles Bernstein Josephine Park Donald T. Reagan Professor of English Associate Professor in English and Comparative Literature Graduate Group Chairperson ________________ David L. Eng Richard L. Fisher Professor of English Dissertation Committee Charles Bernstein, Donald T. Regan Professor of English and Comparative Literature Peter Decherney, Professor of English and Cinema Studies Josephine Park, Associate Professor in English SENSING SOUNDING: CLOSE LISTENING TO EXPERIMENTAL ASIAN AMERICAN POETRY COPYRIGHT 2016 Ashley Chang This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution- NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 License To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/us/ ACKNOWLEDGMENTS First and foremost, this dissertation has been shaped at every stage by the generous and astute insights of my committee members, who have seen my project develop from the beginning of my graduate studies, and have supported me all along the way – many thanks to Charles Bernstein, Peter Decherney, and Josephine Park, without whom this piece of writing would not have been possible. For the courses I have taken with each of you, all of which have found their way into this dissertation in some form or another, and the many individual conversations we have had that have culminated in this moment, I thank you. I am grateful also to the Penn Poetry and Poetics Reading Group, and Davy Knittle, Howie Tam, and Orchid Tierney in particular, for workshopping my second chapter and offering their invaluable suggestions and careful readings of my work. Over the last two years, I had the pleasure of meeting John Yau and Tan Lin, and of corresponding with Mei-mei Berssenbrugge. My conversations with them have not only deepened my appreciation for their poems and the urgent importance of their work but have also left an indelible impression on me of their generosity as thinkers and artists. I am also indebted to Sean Metzger, my mentor at Duke to whom I owe my introduction to the field of Asian American studies and who has been fundamentally formative to my development as a scholar. Finally, I dedicate this dissertation to my family. This project is always already informed by the love, sacrifices, and histories of my parents, who arrived in the U.S. thirty years ago as of this month, to whom I owe so much. To David – who left everything and moved to Philadelphia for me as I studied at Penn, who has shared in every moment of doubt, struggle, and small triumph – this is for you. iii ABSTRACT SENSING SOUNDING: CLOSE LISTENING TO EXPERIMENTAL ASIAN AMERICAN POETRY By Ashley Chang Charles Bernstein Josephine Park This dissertation examines a selection of Asian American experimental poetries from the 1960’s to the present day through the sensory paradigms of avant-garde aesthetic discourse. By approaching both the poem and racial formation in sonic terms, this dissertation project argues that rethinking the sensory as well as the political ramifications of sounding can help us recuperate Asian American poets’ often overlooked experimentation with poetic form. Specifically, I read the works of Marilyn Chin, Theresa Cha, John Yau, Cathy Park Hong, Mei-mei Berssenbrugge, and Tan Lin. By tracing the historical conditions of Orientalist objectification and re-interrogating postmodern theories of sight, sound, and the body, I seek to show how these poets’ invocation of sonic paradigms reworks those theories and to broaden our critical vocabulary for writing about sound in poetry. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS .......................................................................................................... III ABSTRACT ................................................................................................................................ IV INTRODUCTION ........................................................................................................................ 1 CHAPTER SUMMARIES ........................................................................................................ 15 CHAPTER 1 – PHONOTEXTUAL VOICINGS: ENDOPHONIC READING AND THE EXOPHONIC WRITING OF MARILYN CHIN AND THERESA CHA .............................. 19 CHAPTER 2 – SOUNDING ANIMAL AND CYBORG OTHERS: RACE AND ALTERNATE ALTERITIES IN CATHY PARK HONG’S TRANSLATING MO’UM AND JOHN YAU’S ING GRISH, MY SYMPTOMS AND BORROWED LOVE POEMS .............. 50 CHAPTER 3 – NANCIAN HEARING, TOUCH, AND RESONANCE IN MEI-MEI BERSSENBRUGGE’S EC(H)OPOETICS OF SELF AND OTHER .................................... 92 CHAPTER 4 – AMBIENCE AND THE AUNT: MUZAK, SIMULATING ASSIMILATION AND THEORIZING THE TV IN TAN LIN’S INSOMNIA AND THE AUNT ................... 125 EPILOGUE .............................................................................................................................. 158 WORKS CITED ...................................................................................................................... 161 v INTRODUCTION This dissertation examines a selection of Asian American experimental poetries from the 1960’s to the present day through the sensory paradigms of avant-garde aesthetic discourse. By approaching both the poem and racial formation in sonic terms, this dissertation argues that rethinking the sensory as well as the political ramifications of sounding can help us recuperate Asian American poets’ often overlooked experimentation with poetic form. Specifically, I read the works of Marilyn Chin, Theresa Cha, John Yau, Cathy Park Hong, Mei-mei Berssenbrugge, and Tan Lin. By tracing the historical conditions of Orientalist objectification and re-interrogating postmodern theories of sight, sound, and the body, I seek to show how these poets’ invocation of sonic paradigms reworks those theories and to broaden our critical vocabulary for writing about sound in poetry. Historical Conditions of Orientalist Visuality In this section I show how ocularcentrism in modernist poetics influenced (and continues to be relevant to) ideas about transliterations and translations in order to trace the connections between the visual immediacy aspired to by 20th century theories of grammatology and racializing visual readings of race and otherness, particularly regarding the “Orient.” Examining this interconnected history helps us better understand why the visual so dominated the landscape of American modernist poetry’s aesthetic preoccupations (because it was linked to technological-grammatological fantasies) and how sensory theories of grammatology are - and continue to be - linked to the racialization of othered bodies. It is fundamental to this study of sound in poetry to talk 1 about the visual component of the grapheme of the written word and to (re)interrogate the postmodern figuring of theories of writing, because this has shaped how racialized bodies have been read, and also continues to inform modern practices of close listening because of the relationship between speech and writing. In Apparitions of Asia, Josephine Park elucidates how American