Raking the Hollow Bones

Poetry. Asian American Studies. The poetry of Bryan Tso Jones's RAKING THE HOLLOW BONES is haunted by the past, which mingles with the tastes and food of the present and creates a beauty which is light and clear and resonant. Bryan Tso Jones's ancestors, both literal and poetic---his mother is Chinese, his father American---speak in these poems, and Jones honors them with questions, echoes, speculations, and the proper reverence of a true poet: as the poet rakes leaves he identifies with his grandfather's gestures as he planted rice. Bryan Tso Jones's poems have appeared in the Connecticut Review, Crab Orchard Review, the Literary Review, and the Minnesota Review, among others. He has earned an MFA in creative writing and MA in literature from California State University, Chico, and attended the Napa Valley Writers' Conference and the Squaw Valley Community of Writers as a fellowship recipient. He was born in Oceanside, California, and has traveled widely, having visited or lived in Iran, the Philippines, Taiwan, England, Germany, Greece, and recently Australia. He currently makes his home in Chico, California.