America's Favorite Poem - Tapa blanda

"There is, it seems, an invisible question mark behind America's Favorite Poem. What is it, who writes it? Jason Koo's ruminations are capacious enough to consider a Jumbotroned Jay Z, the BQE and LeBron James's elbow yet intimate enough to ask "whether I'll ever feel like I have enough, whether I am enough." America's Favorite Poem is full irreverent swag and swagger, but it's ultimately Koo's exploration of what we consume and what consumes us that makes this book such a provocative and mesmerizing achievement." Terrance Hayes "How would Whitman have written if he were the offspring of Stan Getz and Kim Gordon? The answer is like Jason Koo, but not the entire answer  alongside the jazz and propulsion of these muscular poems is a commanding voice that is at once comical and intimate. America's Favorite Poem is a brazen collection that swaggers as it sings." David Hernandez "If Frank O'Hara, Shakespeare and André Breton were alive today in Brooklyn, they might be Jason Koo. Jason Koo is alive today and he writes and I listen. I listen because he tells me something very important about what it means to be an American poet. Jason Koo is a live wire and the poems in America's Favorite Poem are shoots of ocean-colored electricity from the center of a country that listens to itself. These poems bluster and ask us, "What's the point of being ridiculous?" and then give us the answer just as quickly, because "Over and over and over again you dream." This is an American poetry that isn't afraid to dream again. So dream alongside of it and your new favorite poem just may be you again." Dorothea Lasky

Jason Koo is the author of AMERICA'S FAVORITE POEM (C&R Press, 2014) and MAN ON EXTREMELY SMALL ISLAND (C&R Press, 2009), winner of the De Novo Poetry Prize and the Asian American Writers' Workshop Members' Choice Award for the best Asian American book of 2009. He was born in New York City and grew up in Cleveland, Ohio. He earned his BA in English from Yale, his MFA in creative writing from the University of Houston and his PhD in English and creative writing from the University of Missouri-Columbia. The winner of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, Vermont Studio Center and New York State Writers Institute, he has published his poetry and prose in numerous journals, including the Yale Review, North American Review and Missouri Review. He is an assistant professor of English at Quinnipiac University and the founder and executive director of Brooklyn Poets. He lives in Brooklyn with his cat, Django.