Hey guys, sorry I haven’t really had a chance to write earlier, but I also went to hear Cathy Park Hong, and I really enjoyed listening to her. She read a bunch of different poems from her book “Translating Mo’um” and then from “Dance Dance Revolution”, as well as a few other pieces. My favorites were her pieces from “Translating Mo’um”; they were kind of abstract, and I couldn’t work out that the title had anything to do with the poem itself, but all of the poems she read from that first book had incredible diction. Every line and phrase sounded so powerful and perfectly crafted, as if she chose each word with careful consideration. Some lines and phrases sounded odd but in a wonderful way because she would use a pairing of words that one would never think to put together, but that same reason was why her poems sounded so fresh and different. They also had awesome flow and description, and they were funny too! She was a very enjoyable reader to listen to.

Also, “Dance Dance Revolution” made a whole lot more sense when she read it aloud and sounded a million times better than when I read it in my head. Like we were saying in class the other day, its brilliance is in the way Hong creates this language/dialect of the desert, so in order to get the full effect, you have to hear it aloud. Then, with her being the poet, she knows how she meant each line or word to sound, and it just sound a billion times better than when I read it aloud to myself. Like I said, I really enjoyed her readings and she was a great speaker to listen to!