Lawson inada biography
- Lawson Fusao Inada (born May 26, 1938) is a Japanese American poet.
- Poet, writer, and educator, Lawson Fusao Inada is an emeritus professor of English at Southern Oregon University in Ashland.
- Lawson Fusao Inada was born in 1938 in Fresno, California, a third-generation Japanese American.
- •
Lawson Fusao Inada
Japanese American poet (born 1938)
Lawson Fusao Inada (born May 26, 1938) is a Japanese American poet. He was the fifth poet laureate of the state of Oregon.
Early life
Born May 26, 1938, Inada is a third-generation Japanese American (Sansei). His father, Fusaji, worked as a dentist, while his mother, Masako, helped run the family fish market in Fresno's Chinatown.[1] In May 1942, at the age of three years, Inada and his family were interned for the duration of World War II at camps in Fresno,[2] the Jerome War Relocation Center in Arkansas,[3] and Granada War Relocation Center in Colorado.[4] After the war, the Inadas returned to Fresno and once again ran the fish market, having trusted the business to family friends who operated it on their behalf during their confinement.[1]
Jazz influences
Following the war, Inada became a jazz musician, a bassist, following the work of Miles Davis, John Coltrane, and Billie Holiday, to whom he would later write tributes in his works.[2]
- •
Lawson Inada
Lawson Fusao Inada (born 1938 in Fresno, California) is an Americanpoet and was the fifth poet laureate of the U.S. state of Oregon.
Early life
[change | change source]Inada is a third-generation Japanese American (Sansei). As a child, Inada and his family were interned during World War II.[1]
Inada became a jazz musician, and this affected his writing.[1] Inada cites jazz and his time in the internment camps as his chief influences as a poet.[2] He studied writing at the University of California, Berkeley, the University of Oregon, and the University of Iowa.[3]
Career
[change | change source]He joined the faculty of Southern Oregon University in 1966.
In 1994, Inada's Legends from Camp won an American Book Award; and he was awarded poetry fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts.[3]
In 2006 Inada was named Oregon's poet laureate.[4][5]
Quotations
[change | change source]- With new hope.
- We build new lives.
- Why complain when it rains?
- This is what it mean
- •
Lawson Fusao Inada
The Best Poem Of Lawson Fusao Inada
Memory
Memory is an old Mexican woman
sweeping her yard with a broom.
She has grown even smaller now,
residing at that vanishing point
decades after one dies,
but at some times, given
the right conditions—
an ordinary dream, or practically
anything in particular—
she absolutely looms,
assuming the stature
she had in the neighborhood.
This was the Great Valley,
and we had swept in
to do the grooming.
We were on the move, tending
what was essentially
someone else's garden.
Memory's yard was all that
in miniature, in microcosm:
rivers for irrigation,
certain plants, certain trees
ascertained by season.
Without formal acknowledgment,
she was most certainly
the head of a community, American.
Memory had been there forever.
We settled in around her;
we brought the electricity
of blues and baptized gospel,
ancient adaptations of icons,
spices, teas, fireworks, trestles,
newly acquired techniques
of conflict and healing, common
concepts of collective survival. . .
Memory was there all the while.
Her house, her shed, her skin
Copyright ©bandfull.pages.dev 2025