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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.
Life and career
According to Matthew Rohrer's profile on Yau from Poets & Writers Magazine, Yau's parents settled in Boston after emigrating from China in 1949. His father was a bookkeeper. 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 (poet) 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 "Egyptian Sonnets" (Rain Taxi, 2012), Exhibits (Letter Machine Editions, 2010), A Thing Among Things: The Art of Jasper Johns (Distributed Art Publishers, 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.
Yau was the Arts editor of The Brooklyn Rail, from 2007-2011, but left to edit an online magazine, Hyperallergic Weekend. He also runs a small press, Black Square Editions, which publishes translations, poetry, and fiction. Yau currently teaches art history and criticism at Mason Gross School of the Arts, Rutgers University.
Awards
Yau has received awards and grants from Creative Capital/Warhol Foundation, the Academy of American Poets (Lavan Award), The American Poetry Review (Jerome Shestack Award), the Ingram Merrill Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York Foundation for the Arts, the General Electric Foundation, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, and the Foundation for Contemporary Arts.
Selected bibliography
- 1983 – Corpse and Mirror (Poems)
- 1989 - Radiant Silhouette: Selected Writing 1974-1988 (Poems and prose)
- 1992 – Edificio Sayonara (Poems)
- 1993 – In the Realm of Appearances: The Art of Andy Warhol (Critique)
- 1995 – Berlin Diptychon (Poems)
- 1995 – Hawaiian Cowboys (Short stories)
- 1996 – Forbidden Entries (Poems)
- 1996 – The United States of Jasper Johns (Critique)
- 1998 – Fetish (Editor)
- 1998 – My Symptoms (Short Stories)
- 1999 – In Company: Robert Creeley's Collaborations (Essay)
- 2002 – Borrowed Love Poems (Poems)
- 2005 - Ing Grish
- 2006 - Paradiso Diaspora
- 2006 – "andalusia" Authors: John Yau (Poems), Leiko Ikemura, Verlag: Weidle Verlag, ISBN 3-931135-96-9
- 2008 - A Thing Among Things: The Art of Jasper Johns, Distributed Art Publishers, ISBN 1933045620
- 2010 - Exhibits (Poem)
- 2012 - Further Adventures in Monochrome (Copper Canyon Press) (Poetry)