About

My recent book, Contested Records: The Turn to Documents in Contemporary North American Poetry (University of Iowa Press, 2020), accounts for why so many contemporary poets have turned to source material, from newspapers to governmental records, as inspiration for their poetry. Synthesizing research in social ontology, cultural memory studies, art history, public sphere theory, and the history of the humanities, Contested Records argues that poems driven by the remixing and reframing of found texts powerfully engage with the collective ways we remember, forget, and remember again. Going well beyond Wordsworthian recollections in tranquility, authors of such research-driven and mnemotechnic work use previous inscriptions as a springboard into public intellectualism and social engagement. This is the first book-length study to examine conceptual writing and documentary poetry under the same cover, showing how diverse writers associated with different poetry communities have a common interest in documentation. Putting into provocative conversation writers such as Amiri Baraka, Kenneth Goldsmith, R.B. Kitaj, Mark Nowak, M. NourbeSe Philip, Vanessa Place, and Claudia Rankine, I analyze a range of twenty-first-century poems that have been reviled, celebrated, or in some cases met with equally telling indifference. In doing so, I offer nuanced and non-polemical treatments of some of the most controversial debates about race and ethnicity in twenty-first century literary culture.

Education

PhD, MA, Rutgers University

MFA, Sarah Lawrence College

AB, Dartmouth College

Publications

 

Books

Contested Records: The Turn to Documents in Contemporary North American Poetry (University of Iowa Press, 2020).

Sky-Quake: Tremor of Heaven by Vicente Huidobro (co•im•press, 2020). Co-translation of Temblor de cielo/Tremblement de ciel with Ignacio Infante. 

Words on Edge (Black Square Editions, 2018).

Who Unfolded My Origami Brain? (Fence Digital, 2017).

Cutting Time with a Knife (Black Square Editions, 2012).

e.s.p. (Silenced Press, 2009).

I, the Worst of All by Estela Lamat (BlazeVOX [books], 2009). Translation from Spanish.

Selected Poetry Chapbooks

Police Lineups (Epigraph, 2018).

Li Po Meets Oulipo (Belladonna *, 2015).

Fruits and Flowers and Animals and Seas and Lands Do Open (Burnside Review Press, 2015). Winner of the 2014 Burnside Review Chapbook Contest (Judge: Hannah Gamble).

Words on Edge (Plan B Press, 2012). Winner of the 2012 Plan B Press Poetry Contest (Judge: Robert Fitterman).

Articles

“Curating Japanese/American Memories of World War II in Twentieth-Century Poetry.” Verge: Studies in Global Asias 15.2 (Fall 2019). Special “Field Trip” portfolio, eds. Tina Chen, Josephine Park, and We Jung Yi.

“Conceptualisms in Crisis: The Fate of Late Conceptual Poetry.” Journal of Modern Literature 41.3 (Spring 2018).

“How Who Unfolded My Origami Brain? Unfolded.” Hyperrhiz: New Media Cultures 18 (Winter 2018).

“Towards a Disorientalist Poetics.” ARCADE: Literature, the Humanities, & the World. November 21, 2017.

“‘Poetry Homework’: Pedagogy, Memory, and Politics in the Visual Poetry of Juan Luis Martínez.” A Contracorriente: A Journal on Social History and Literature in Latin America 14.2 (Spring 2017).

“‘Work itself is given a voice’: Labor, Deskilling, and Archival Capability in the Poetry of Kenneth Goldsmith and Mark Nowak.” Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture 14.4 (Winter 2015).

“Neo-Surrealism’s Forked Tongue: Reflections on the Dramatic Monologue, Politics, and Community in the Recent Poetry of Will Alexander and John Yau.” Contemporary Literature 55.3 (Fall 2014).

“Notes toward an Interventionalist Conceptualism.” Modern Language Studies 41.2 (Winter 2012).

Book Chapter

“Oulipo, Foulipo, Noulipo: The Gendered Politics of Literary Constraints.” The Oulipo, eds. G. N. Forester and M. J. Nicholls (Verbivoracious Press, 2017).

Selected Book Reviews

“Forms of Asian Americanness in Contemporary Poetry.” Review of Dorothy J. Wang’s Thinking Its Presence: Form, Race, and Subjectivity in Contemporary Asian American PoetryContemporary Literature 57.1 (May 2016).

“Poetry for the Apocalypse.” Review of Christian Bök’s The Xenotext. American Scientist 104.4 (July/August 2016).

“Root Work.” Review of Nathaniel Mackey’s Blue Fasa. Boston Review. August 4, 2015.

“Rats Build Their Labyrinth: Oulipo in the 21st Century.” Omnibus review of Daniel Levin Becker’s Many Subtle Channels: In Praise of Potential Literature, Lauren Elkin and Scott Esposito’s The End of Oulipo? An Attempt to Exhaust a Movement, and Louis Bury’s Exercises in Criticism: The Theory and Practice of Literary Constraint. Hyperallergic Weekend. May 17, 2015.

“After Translation.” Los Angeles Review of Books. Review of Ignacio Infante’s After Translation: The Transfer and Circulation of Modern Poetics Across the Atlantic. February 5, 2015.

“Stephanie Strickland and Cynthia Lawson Jaramillo’s V: Vniverse.” Hyperrhiz: New Media Cultures 10 (Fall 2013).

“Geography Lesson: Lytle Shaw’s Fieldworks: From Place to Site in Postwar Poetics.” Hyperallergic Weekend. October 13, 2013.

“Reading the ‘Nothings that Are’: Craig Dworkin’s No Medium.” Hyperallergic Weekend. June 8, 2013.

“Archive and Appropriation.” Review of Laura Mullen’s Dark Archive. e-misférica 9.1 (Spring 2012).

Selected Literary Translations

“Excerpts from Sky-Quake: Tremor of Heaven” by Vicente Huidobro. Co-translated from the Spanish and French with Ignacio Infante. Boston Review. April 20, 2016.

“From Sky-Quake: Tremor of Heaven” by Vicente Huidobro. Co-translated from the Spanish and French with Ignacio Infante. Asymptote (April 2016).

“Selections from Pulverized Canine” by Estela Lamat. Translated from the Spanish. Mandorla: New Writing from the Americas/Neuva escriture de las Américas 15 (2012).

“Three Prose Poems” by Estela Lamat. Translated from the Spanish. Action, Yes: Online Quarterly 15.1 (Winter 2011).

“How to Make a Corner” and “La Llorona, I Endure for the Purpose of Crying” by Estela Lamat. Translated from the Spanish. Metamorphoses: A Journal of Literary Translation 17.1 (2009).

Blog Posts

    Memberships

    Modern Language Association

     

    Michael Leong

    Profile picture of Michael Leong

    @michaelleong

    Active 2 years, 10 months ago