“When I first started working on ‘The Flood,’ the title piece from this collection of poems, I thought it was about the World, about Politics, about Race, about all the things that begin with capital letters that make up Life. And in 2005 when Hurricane Katrina came and left such destruction, opening up old social wounds and sins in the process, I thought this was my chance to be big, to be grand, to tackle the important subjects that important artists are seemingly never afraid of. I was going to make my statement. I was going to be heard. I was going to leave my mark.” With this statement, Chiwan Cho begins to describe the impulses behind this most promising and powerful collection of poetry. His voice gives his poems a deep level of intimacy, while his economy of language distinguishes his work as authentic and accessible. This collection is a journey to discover the poet, Chiwan, as a man, as a Korean, as a son, as a husband, as a writer. He embraces the smallest moments in his life―finding key details, examining them, breaking them down and rebuilding them, to see if, somewhere in the smallest fragments, both trivial and tragic, the poet can discover himself, reflected, resonating with his father teaching him how to survive. Chiwan says that in the process of writing the poems in “The Flood,” he often repeated to myself Ezra Pound’s Canto 117, the line “That I have lost my center/fighting the world.” By the time Chiwan polished each line in each poem, he’d found that center again, even if it was for a fleeting moment. “Over eight years after I wrote the first words of this poem I thought I’d never finish, I found what I had lost. My core. My heart,” Chiwan says. “It was never about wars and tyrants and poverty nor about any of the Isms that want to suffocate us each and every day. I realized how far off the track I’d gone without realizing it.”

The Flood

Literature & Fiction

Chiwan Choi

Poetry

Tia Chucha

Nathan Ota has gained a following over the last twenty years for his prolific work as an illustrator, painter, and graffiti artist. The surrealist world he creates is one of streaked green skies, off-color hues, and dripping paint a world reliant on recurring figures such as a blind bird in a striped dunce hat, a gelatinous robot lost in the woods, and an egg sprouting up protruding tree branches. Dark and engaging, this is a world of struggle that continues to clash and commune within each new painting. Nathan Ota combines his early influences of vintage comic books, punk rock fliers, and his graffiti-obsessed high school years with formal training at the Art Center College of Design to create technically adept pieces with a pop culture aesthetic reminiscent of Tim Burton. Nathan Ota is a member of the Society of Illustrators and has created illustrations for The Los Angeles Times, Communication Arts, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, LA Weekly, Electronic Musician, Writers Guild of America, and Capital Records. Nathan Ota - Ikiru is a full overview of Ota's work from his early street art to illustrations and gallery pieces to recent collaborations with the street artist RISK.

Nathan Ota - Ikiru

Arts & Photography

Nathan Ota

History & Criticism

Zero+ Publishing

The second collection by Los Angeles poet Chiwan Choi explores the arc of his life, and that of his family, through an alien abduction mythology. Abductions is Book #1 of Choi's "Home in Three Parts" trilogy. "On the surface, Choi's poems have a quiet, controlled quality to them. Underneath, there's danger and rage and sadness. His voice rings clear and true in this volume, and I can't stop hearing it in my head." --Charles Yu, author of How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe

Abductions

Civil Coping Mechanisms

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Chiwan Choi. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Chiwan Choi