Patrick Rosal

The debut collection from a vibrant, streetwise voice: Winner of the 2002 Members' Choice Award from the Asian American Writers Workshop. Patrick Rosal's poetry rings with the music of no-frills industrial towns of central New Jersey. Portraits of hip-hoppers and condemned men (whose misdeeds as boys forever shaped their futures) alternate with dynamic riffs on longingsexual and filialand on the poet's Filipino roots. Unpredictable and breathtaking as a sax solo, these poems are the indelible marks made by a world that has been simultaneously kept close and left behind.

Poems

Uprock Headspin Scramble and Dive

"Laced with a hopefulness born not just of Patrick Rosal's tremendous gifts as a poet, but of his humanity."—Terrance Hayes

Boneshepherds

"This pulsating collection picks up the beat and imagery of Patrick Rosal's thrilling debut, Uprock Headspin Scramble and Dive. Here, though, the poet's electric narratives and portraits extend beyond the working class streets of urban New Jersey. Modeling poems on the kundiman, a song of unrequited love sung by Filipinos for their country in times of oppression, he professes his conflicted feelings for America, while celebrating and lamenting his various heritages."--Publisher's website.

My American Kundiman

Rosal finds trouble he isn't asking for in his unforgettable new poems, whether in New York City, Austin, Texas, or the colonized Philippines of his ancestors. But trouble is everywhere, and Rosal, acclaimed author of My American Kundiman, responds in kind, pulling no punches in his most visceral, physical collection to date. "My hand's quick trip from my hip to your chin, across / your face, is not the first free lesson I've given," Rosal writes, and it's true--this new book is full of lessons, hard-earned, from a poet who nonetheless finds beauty in the face of violence.

Patrick Rosal

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