Do Not Write Poetry with Silence

Abstract

Poet Mai Mang presents a journey across time and across the Pacific and the North American continent, from the Bell and Drum Towers to Angel Island and to Hart Island. Mai Mang also discusses a poetics of silence. He confesses that he has become accustomed to listening to the voices buried in silence and wants to preserve these voices, or silence, in his own poems. Ultimately, the kind of poetry he is interested in and dedicated to is like this: it originated from silence, it carries history, it aims at infinity.