John Yau (born 1950) is an American poet and critic who lives in New York City. He received his B.A. from Bard College in 1972 and his M.F.A. from Brooklyn College in 1978. He has published over 50 books of poetry, artists' books, fiction, and art criticism.
According to Matthew Rohrer's profile on Yau from Poets and Writers Magazine , Yau's parents settled in Boston after emigrating from China in 1949. His father was a bookkeeper. Yau characterizes his father as an outsider - "My father was half English and half Chinese [...] so he never fit in." As a child Yau was friends with the son of the Chinese-born abstract painter John Way. By the late 1960s Yau was exposed to, "a lot of anti-war poetry readings in Boston [and] so I'd heard Robert Bly, Denise Levertov, Galway Kinnell, people like that. I don't know - Robert Kelly just seemed a different kind of poet. Mysterious, in a way. He was interested in the occult, in gnosticism and abstract art - things that had a particular appeal to me." According to Rohrer, Yau's decision to attend Bard College was motivated by his admiration of Kelly.
Yau's most recent books are Exhibits (Letter Machine Editions, 2010), A Thing Among Things: The Art of Jasper Johns (D.A.P., 2009), and The Passionate Spectator: Essays on Art and Poetry (University of Michigan Press, 2006). His collections of poetry include Paradiso Diaspora (Penguin, 2006), Ing Grish, with Paintings by Thomas Nozkowski (Saturnalia, 2005),Borrowed Love Poems (Penguin, 2002), Forbidden Entries (Black Sparrow, 1996), Berlin Diptychon with Photographs by Bill Barrette (Timken, 1995), Edificio Sayonara (Black Sparrow, 1992),Corpse and Mirror (Holt & Rinehardt, 1983), a National Poetry Series book selected by John Ashbery, and Broken Off by The Music (Burning Deck, 1981). Artists' books include projects with Squeak Carnwath, Richard Tuttle, Norbert Prangenberg, Hanns Schimannsky, Archie Rand, Norman Bluhm, Pat Steir, Suzanne McClelland, Robert Therrien, Leiko Ikemura, and Jürgen Partenheimer (a.o.), his books of art criticism include The United States of Jasper Johns (1996) and In the Realm of Appearances: The Art of Andy Warhol (1993). He has also edited Fetish (1998), a fiction anthology.
He has been the Arts editor of The Brooklyn Rail since March 2004. (See http://www.brooklynrail.org). He currently teaches art criticism at Mason Gross School of the Arts, Rutgers University.
Yau has received awards and grants from Creative Capital/Warhol Foundation, the Academy of American Poets [Lavan Award],American Poetry Review [Jerome Shestack Award], the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York Foundation for the Arts, the General Electric Foundation, the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, and the Foundation for Contemporary Arts.
The Language of Ethnicity: John Yau's Poetry and the Ethnic/Aesthetic Divide By: Mar, Christine. pp. 70—85 IN: Davis and Lee, Literary Gestures: The Aesthetic in Asian American Writing. Philadelphia, PA: Temple UP; 2006. (book article)
The Object of Experiment: Figurations of Subjectivity in Asian American Experimental Literature By: Liu, Warren Tswun-Hwa; Dissertation Abstracts International, Section A: The Humanities and Social Sciences, 2005 Aug; 66 (2): 594. U of California, Berkeley, 2004. (dissertation abstract)
John Yau By: Birns, Nicholas. pp. 348—58 IN: Madsen, Asian American Writers. Detroit, MI: Gale; 2005. (book article)
Two Hat Softeners 'In the Trade Confession': John Yau and Kimiko Hahn By: Zhou, Xiaojing. pp. 168—89 IN: Zhou and Najmi, Form and Transformation in Asian American Literature. Seattle, WA: U of Washington P; 2005. (book article)
John Yau By: Rohrer, Matthew. pp. 177—98 IN: Henry and Zawacki, The VERSE Book of Interviews: 27 Poets on Language, Craft, and Culture. Amherst, MA: Verse; 2005. (book article)
Postmodernism and Subversive Parody: John Yau's 'Genghis Chan: Private Eye' Series By: Zhou, Xiaojing; College Literature, 2004 Winter; 31 (1): 73-102. (journal article)
Pidginizing Chinese By: Huang, Yunte. pp. 205—20 IN: Sommer, Bilingual Games: Some Literary Investigations. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan; 2003. (book article)
Undercover Asian: John Yau and the Politics of Ethnic Self-Identification By: Wang, Dorothy J.. pp. 135—55 IN: Davis and Ludwig, Asian American Literature in the International Context: Readings on Fiction, Poetry, and Performance. Hamburg, Germany: Lit; 2002. (book article)
Remarkable Modernisms: Contemporary American Authors on Modern Art By: Morris, Daniel. Amherst, MA: U of Massachusetts P; 2002. (book)
John Yau By: Caples, Garrett. pp. 305—15 IN: Meanor and Lee, American Short-Story Writers since World War II: Third Series. Detroit, MI: Gale; 2001. (book article)
Strangers and Oneself: John Yau's Writings on Contemporary Art By: Morris, Daniel; Talisman: A Journal of Contemporary Poetry and Poetics, 2001 Winter-Spring; 21-22: 45-57. (journal article)
Form and Identity in Language Poetry and Asian American Poetry By: Yu, Timothy; Contemporary Literature, 2000 Spring; 41 (3): 422-61. (journal article)
Necessary Figures: Metaphor, Irony and Parody in the Poetry of Li-Young Lee, Marilyn Chin, and John Yau By: Wang, Dorothy Joan; Dissertation Abstracts International, Section A: The Humanities and Social Sciences, 1999 Sept; 60 (3): 747. U of California, Berkeley, 1998. (dissertation abstract)
Word and Flesh: Materiality, Violence and Asian-American Poetics By: Chang, Juliana Chu; Dissertation Abstracts International, 1996 Mar; 56 (9): 3579A. U of California, Berkeley, 1995. (dissertation abstract)
John Yau and the Seductions of Everything That Used to Be By: Foster, Edward Halsey; MultiCultural Review, 1994 Mar; 3 (1): 36-39. (journal article)
'Chaos Goes Uncourted': John Yau's Dis(-)Orienting Poetics By: Wald, Priscilla. pp. 133—58 IN: Colatrella and Alkana, Cohension and Dissent in America. Albany: State U of New York P; 1994. (book article)
