Angelo Mao : coda

Why is poetry important?

(I’m being a bit arrogant in trying to answer this one, but I’ll give it a shot!) To me, it seems that poetry engages with the world in a way that most accurately mimics the human mind, compared to the other art forms. We think symbolically and associatively. For example, when I use a microwave, I don’t go through all the steps of its function—it’s just a magic box that makes food warm. That “magic” isn’t all that far from poetic association. And when I think of a microwave, I’ve a few vivid images and names, like anchoring points; so the images and diction in a poem. I think we also experience narrative in a similarly loopy way. Time lives nonlinearly in memory, with gaps and distortions, even when we configure it chronologically. 

I also love that poetry doesn’t need any advanced technology or material goods; it doesn’t need a crew. It doesn’t have “originals” you need to fly to New York or a big city to see. In that sense, poetry is a very free art.

Angelo Mao : part five

How did you first engage with poetry?

Quite late, for English-language poetry. I learned Chinese before I learned English, and my parents had me memorize some Chinese poems early on. I think the rhythms of those Tang poems occupy a very deep stratum in my subconscious. We didn’t study any lyric poetry in high school. I did begin writing then, but it was fanfiction. I wrote three novel length fanfiction pieces by the time I was midway through undergraduate. My engagement with poetry at that point involved trawling it for beautiful lines, out of which I’d fashion evocative chapter titles. I also composed music for fun, and had written all sorts of things—fugues, an opera—before I seriously engaged with poetry. And I only did so because I found it difficult to transition from fanfiction to fiction. Writing fanfiction was easy, because I could make up things about preexisting characters; “real” fiction was hard. I felt that I had to use myself as a resource, and I wasn’t ready to do that.

So I looked into poetry as an unexplored alternative. I wouldn’t have gotten very far, though, if I hadn’t discovered Helen Vendler’s criticism. I could sense and savor the music in poetry, but Vendler helped me see that the words, forms, and artistic choices weren’t there just to “sound good,” but harbored huge possibilities of expression. (It is the same thing with operatic music: you can treat an embellishment as just that, or as an opportunity for conveying an emotion or mood.)

Angelo Mao : part four

What other poetry books have you been reading lately?

I recently read Jenny Qi’s Focal Point and Jackie Wang’s The Sunflower Cast A Spell To Save Us From The Void, both of which I enjoyed. I sought out Focal Point in particular because Qi, like me, comes from an immigrant background and has a postgraduate degree in a science field. I was curious how those influences would inform her work.

A wonderful piece of poetry criticism I read recently is Xiaofei Tian’s essay on the 6th century poet Yu Xin. She describes how he dealt with personal trauma and displacement coinciding with the end of empire. I’ve always felt that trauma and displacement underlies much of the classical Chinese lyric tradition—from Du Fu to Li Qingzhao and others. To me, Tian’s approach recalls Helen Vendler’s in Breaking of Style. It’s an approach I feel is missing from literary analyses of Chinese lyrics in English, so I’m grateful Tian paid this kind of attention in her essay.

Angelo Mao : part three

When you require renewal, is there a particular poem or book that you return to? A particular author?

I love the energy from reading young, contemporary poets. To somehow respond to each other, whether stylistically or in terms of poetic subject, is, I think, a healthy and energizing challenge.

Partly because I was in her workshop for many years, I revisit Jorie Graham’s poems, if only to remind myself of her voice—not just the voice in her poems, but her “real life” voice reminding us in workshop to attempt what really matters. The challenge is never: write a poem. Instead, try to create a document of being human. I feel it’s a liberating and democratic attitude to take, and opens the space of what texts and shapes of texts to consider.

I also derive a strong sense of renewal from Yeats’s poems, especially those from the second half of his career. I probably have a lot of sympathy with his sensibility, and—although certainly the situations were different—his poems of the Irish Civil War were helpful to me during the Trump presidency.

Angelo Mao : part two

How important is music to your poetry?

“It is not enough to have a beautiful voice. You must take that voice and break it up into a thousand pieces so it can be made to serve the needs of music, of expression.” This is a quote by Maria Meneghini Callas, and it’s fascinated me. We poets often strive to find our “voice” and develop it. But what is a voice for? What is a beautiful voice, and what is it for?

I used to review operas for Opera News before the pandemic. The ecstasy and drama of opera, as well as the flowing, continuous nature of the Italian style, have influenced me. I also love classical and baroque music. I know there are echoes of the sonata, fugue, theme and variation, etc. in what I write.

Angelo Mao : part one

Angelo Mao is a research scientist and writer. He received his PhD in bioengineering from Harvard University. His first book of poems is Abattoir (Burnside Review Press, 2021). His work has appeared or is forthcoming Lana Turner, The Georgia Review, Poetry Magazine, and elsewhere. He has also reviewed for Opera News and Boston Classical Review.

What are you working on?

My first book, Abattoir, comes out in November 2021 from Burnside Review Press. I wrote it during my PhD in bioengineering as an investigation of my experiences using live animal subjects for my scientific endeavors. It’s been great working with my editor Dan Kaplan, who has very kindly held my hand throughout the literary publishing process.

In addition to that, I’m working on a mass of poems focused on my Chinese-American heritage. The Black Lives Matter movement and the pandemic together inspired me to explore this side of my identity and experiences.