The first major poetry collection from an award-winning student of
Robert Pinsky, exploring the inherited trauma within his Japanese
American family, his life as an artist, and his bond with his wife
In 65 lyric poems organized into a triptych, Common Grace offers an
important new lens into Asian American life, art, and love.
Part 1, "Soul Sauce," describes the poet's life as a practicing visual
artist, taking us from an early encounter with an inkwell at Roseland
Elementary in 1969 to his professional outdoor easel perched on Long
Island Sound.
Part 2, 'Ubasute," is named after the mythical Japanese practice wherein
"a grown son lifts / his aged mother on his back, / delivers her to a
mountain, / leaves her to die." This concept frames a wrenching
portrayal of his parents' decline and death, reaching back to his
father's time in the American internment camps of WWII and his mother's
memories of the firebombing of Tokyo. It also anchors the 2 outer parts
in the racial trauma and joys passed down from his parents.
Part 3, "Gutter Trees," gives us affecting love poems to his wife and
the creative lives they've built together.
Ranging in scope from private moments to the sweep of familial heritage,
Caycedo-Kimura's poems are artful, subtle, but never quiet.
