Saturday evening, June 24, 2023
I just received an email from Phil Taggert that Amy Uyematsu has died. As a poet and cultural worker, Amy earned the respect and admiration of all who had the good fortune to work with her in any capacity.
Amy and I attended U.C.L.A. at the same time, but we never met there because she was a mathematics major, whereas I specialized in theater arts. She went on to teach math at a high school in the Los Angeles area for several decades, but that was merely her profession. By the beginning of this century, her writing had attracted national attention. I remember being in John Lowney’s office at St. John’s College when I was working as an adjunct there in the Fall, 2005, and picking up an anthology and perusing the table of contents. A lot of the usual suspects, and then suddenly …. there was her name… Amy Uyematsu. When I say that Amy had gained the attention of serious poets, I am not merely referring to some so-called “local” scene. She may have often focused on what it meant to be a sansei, but her imagination expanded that domain into the shared experience of truthful transformation.
I have taken the liberty of including some of the links Phil provided in his notice to recordings of Amy reading over the years
ARTLIFE reading at Museum of Ventura County
Art City Gallery “Water and Stone” reading
Miramar reading at the Art City Gallery
Day of Remembrance 2017 – EP Foster Library
Three – Beyond Baroque
On Poetry – EP Foster Library
Ave 50
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Here is a poem I wrote for Amy two years ago.
NUMBER THEORY
for Amy Uyematsu. (born, 1947)
the bunchstem of
greater than / lesser than
the number of grains of sand
on the beaches of all continents:
Gondwana’s
surf
must have had fabulous curls
apocatastasis with its tambourine in tow!
or the totality of pedicles of all the grapes ever eaten
and being eaten in the future
perfect tense
2.
I dreamed two nights ago I was still a typesetter even though all
I remember of the Compugraphic 7500
Is that the cursor had to be below the typed text,
You could sit there working for a half-hour
And if you waited until you finished to create a file
And the cursor was not below
What you had typed, you lost it all
In weary haste, I sometimes forgot
to check where the cursor
Was. There was no afterbirth
Of monotony, In 1995, I lost my job
And didn’t have a clue as to what my next move
Should be. To pass a test to be a substitute
Teacher, I had to study math. It seemed more elegant
Than I remembered from my high school classes.
Maybe if I had had Amy Uyematsu teach me algebra
I would loved the art of numbers. Instead I memorized
“some equation given” //// It is too difficult a Grace
To justify the Dream” – Since then, I count
The missing ones born in 1947: Jerry Estrin; Len Roberts,
Jane Kenyon; Ai; Ron Allen; Leslie Scalapino;
I saw William Oandassan in the lobby where I typeset
Six months before he died. His foot was broken,
But he was in good spirits. Tonight, I read your poems, Amy,
And think of the strength of that which has yet to be proven:
The Collatz Conjecture asks you to pick a number.
Any number. If that number Is even, divide it by two.
If it’s odd (1947), multiply It by 3 and add 1. Keep repeating
The process. Whenever a number is even, divide it by two;
if odd, multiply by 3, add 1. Divide or multiply until one
Attains an inevitable reduction to singularity,
As when we ponder how many thousands
Of syllables we start with, and how many we need
To utter what each most needs to share
Like the simplifying contractions of a spiraling cone:
The quietness of admiration with no need to compare.
About Bill Mohr