Yale Series of Younger Poets Competition

nine years old she knew that she “wanted to be the family chronicler” (“Cathy Song”). Song started her writing when she attended Kalani High School. After graduating, she attended University of Hawaii at Manoa for two years, where she worked alongside poet critic John Unterecker. Then she fished her undergraduate studies at Wellesley College, where she earned her first degree in English literature. While attending there she met her husband, where they returned to Hawaii to live and taught for the Poets in the school programs. While teaching, she would work on her own poems, which she felt she didn 't have any hope for winning the Yale Series of Younger Poet Award. Unterecker help achieved Song’s dream on winning the award. With the help of her teacher and professors, Song was able to succeed in her talent of writing poetry. In 1982, Song won the award for Yale Series Younger Poets on her volume of poems, Picture Bride. The volume lead there young poet to a national recognition and which lead to other awards. Song is known for her creative imagery, which critics say is like “muted tints of watercolor paintings” (“Cathy Song”). Song continues to write poems based on her culture and started teaching in Hawaii to help young poets become the best the can possibly be. Although she herself can be a harsh critic, Song works hard on training her students that poetry isn’t just words, but “you 've got to be willing to dismantle...to realize that poetry is something made outside of…

and urged the listeners to go out and test it in their business and social contacts, and then come back to class and speak about their experiences and the results they had achieved. What an interesting assignment! These men and women, hungry for selfimprovement, were fascinated by the idea of working in a new kind of laboratory - the first and only laboratory of human relationships for adults that had ever existed. This book wasn’t written in the usual sense of the word. It grew as a child…