49 MILLION YEARS AGO, THE ANCESTORS OF MODERN WHALES LEFT THEIR TERRESTRIAL HABITAT TO EMBRACE THE UNKNOWN PERILS OF AN OCEANIC EXISTENCE. IN THIS NEW POETRY COLLECTION, JENNA LE REFLECTS WITH WIT AND LYRICISM ON THE WAYS THAT LAND AND SEA CREATURES ALIKE ARE DEFINED BY THEIR PREDECESSORS' IMMIGRANT NARRATIVES. IN DOING SO SHE WRITES FROM A WIDE VARIETY OF PERSPECTIVES, INCLUDING HER OWN AS A SECOND-GENERATION ASIAN-AMERICAN, DAUGHTER OF VIETNAM WAR REFUGEES, AND PHYSICIAN IN THE MELTING POT OF THE BRONX. HERE IS A BOOK OF VERSE STEEPED IN THE AROMAS OF SEA SALT AND AMBERGRIS, BLOOD AND ANTISEPTIC, LOVE AND DEATH.

A History of the Cetacean American Diaspora

Le, Jenna

Anchor & Plume

Able Muse, Winter 2022/23 (No. 30 - print edition): a review of poetry, prose & art (Able Muse, Print Edition)

Literature & Fiction

Salter, Mary Jo

Kampa, Stephen

Brodeur, Brian

Rogoff, Jay

Campion, Dan

Glynn, Amy

Pepple, Alexander

Staples, Natalie

Essays & Correspondence

Able Muse Press

Poetry. Asian American Studies. Jenna Le's debut book is a meditation on love and life, as refracted through the waters of six rivers, ranging from the mighty Mississippi River to the gloomy River Styx. Inspired by her experiences as a Vietnamese-American woman who earned a degree in mathematics before becoming a physician, these poems are sometimes autobiographical, sometimes based on flights of imagination. Peopled by a diverse array of characters drawn from the pages of history and mythology (including the computer programmer Ada Lovelace and the sculptor Louise Bourgeois), and displaying familiarity with a broad gamut of forms ranging from the European sonnet to the Asian haibun, this sensual and often funny book introduces a strong, original new voice in poetry.

Six Rivers

Poetry

NYQ Books

Le's furious and steeled voice leaves nothing unturned, propelling these poems through explorations on displacement, womanhood, the body and its endured violences, by confronting a history as tenuous and elusive as the ghosts it conjures. She has created her own version of the Ark, one where the whale, forgotten in the original, is now carried as 'a child of immigrants, like me.' In these tender, earnest yet fierce poems, Le does not reinvent myth, but expands it to include our most damned outsiders. And how lucky we are that, like the great Robert Hayden, she has created a vision where 'Nothing human is foreign...' As such, this book is as much about loss as it is about art-making and being human--and utterly, forgivably alive.
--Ocean Vuong, author of Night Sky With Exit Wounds
It has been a long time since I have read a book as memorable as Jenna Le's A History of the Cetacean American Diaspora. She makes the forms sound new, but it is also the memorability of her subject matter. An immigrant is compared to a whale; Noah's ark is replayed in a taxi; and physical self-love is transformed into 'fish's skin [that] will turn crisp / in a copper pan above a kitchen blaze.' The work is both clever and poignant, with unexpected characters like William Butler Yeats's mistress and a narcoleptic who is scripted into a romance narrative that involves abuse; yet, as Le writes, 'At seven years old, that's what I thought love was.' If you thought you knew what formal poetry was, you need to read Jenna Le's magical, original book.
--Kim Bridgford, author of Human Interest

Indolent Books

The third full-length collection from physician and poet Jenna Le blends traditional form and the current moment.\nIn Manatee Lagoon, sonnets, ghazals, pantoums, villanelles, and a “failed georgic” weave in contemporary subject matter, including social-media comment threads, Pap smears, eclipse glasses, and gun violence. A recurring motif throughout the collection, manatees become a symbol with meanings as wide-ranging as the book itself. Le aligns the genial but vulnerable sea cow with mermaids, neurologists, the month of November, harmful political speech, and even a family photo at the titular lagoon.\nIn these poems, Le also reflects on the experience of being the daughter of Vietnamese refugees in today’s sometimes tense and hostile America. The morning after the 2016 election, as three women of color wait for the bus, one says, “In this new world, we must protect each other.”\nManatee Lagoon is a treasury of voices, bringing together the personal and the persona, with poems dedicated to Kate Spade, John Ashbery, and Uruguayan poet Delmira Agustini. With this book, Le establishes herself as a talented transcriber of the human condition—and as one of the finest writers of formal verse today.

Manatee Lagoon: Poems

Acre Books

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