After their release from Amache Camp in 1945,
the Inadas returned to Fresno to rebuild their life.
Back in his hometown, Inada resumed his formal
education at Lincoln Grammar School and, more
important, began immersing himself in Fresno’s
large multicultural community of Asians, blacks,
and Chicanos, which he later deemed a more im-
portant set of ABC’s for the different sets of norms,
values, and traditions he learned. Upon graduat-
ing from Edison High School in 1955, he attended
Fresno State College for a year but then transferred
to the University of California, Berkeley, as a soph-
omore. Although Inada virtually flunked out of
Berkeley, his “real” education began there since he
attended performances by such jazz greats as Lester
Young, Miles Davis, and John Coltrane, experiences
that cultivated his improvisationally based jazz
aesthetic. It was after meeting singer Billie Holi-
day one night in San Francisco that Inada wrote
his first poem, a tribute to her. After that night, he
dedicated the rest of his life to writing poetry.
The following year found Inada back at Fresno
State studying with poet Philip Levine, who in-
fluenced his use of colloquial diction and ex-
perimental jazz techniques. Levine helped the
burgeoning poet secure a fellowship to the Uni-
versity of Iowa’s Writer’s Workshop, where he
met fellow student Janet Francis. They married
in 1962. After teaching at the University of New
Hampshire for three years, Inada returned west
to finish his M.F.A. degree at the University of
Oregon in 1966. He revised much of his thesis,
“The Great Bassist,” for his first published book
of verse, Before the War: Poems as They Happened
(1971). A set of confessional poems that employ a
geographical structure by focusing on the places
Inada had traveled to in the previous 10 years, Be-
fore the War criticizes American society through
the poet’s use of scatological words, themes, and
images. Although Before the War gained some no-
toriety for being the first book of poetry written
by an Asian American to be published by a major
New York house, it wound up in remainder bins
the following year since it garnered little interest
from readers or critics.
Twenty-one years elapsed before Inada pub-
lished another full-length book of verse. In the
meantime, he settled into his teaching job at
Southern Oregon College, concentrated on writ-
ing such long poems as “Asian Brother, Asian Sis-
ter” and “Japanese Geometry,” and helped FRANK
CHIN, JEFFERY PAU L CHAN, and SHAWN WONG edit
Aiiieeeee!: An Anthology of Asian-American Writ-
ers (1974), which was notable for being the first
collection of Asian-American writing to be com-
piled and edited solely by Asian Americans. This
last project began an important scholarly phase in
Inada’s career. With Chin, Chan, and Wong, Inada
formed the Combined Asian-American Resource
Project (CARP), which undertook to revive the
works of such earlier Asian-American writers as
JOHN OKADA and TOSHIO MORI. However, during
this time, Inada did not abandon poetry. With
GARRETT HONGO and Alan Chong Lau, he wrote
and self-published The Buddha Bandits down
Highway 99 (1976), which contained his jazz ode
to Fresno, “I Told You So.”
In 1992 Inada reemerged with Legends from
Camp, his second full-length book of poems and
winner of the American Book Award for poetry
in 1993. While the book’s first section deals with
the myths and legends about internment camp life
that survive in the poet’s memory, the next three
sections return to such familiar places as Fresno
and Oregon and to such jazz figures as Miles
Davis and Billie Holiday. Especially powerful is the
volume’s last section, in which Inada collects his
performance poetry. Included in this section are
a series of haikus that he collected and composed
for inscription on stone monoliths that stand at
Portland’s Japanese American Historical Plaza on
the banks of the Willamette River.
Familiar in autobiographical theme and struc-
ture to Legends from Camp is Drawing the Line, his
third full-length book of verse, published in 1997.
Its difference derives from Inada’s use of playful
poems to highlight language’s transformational
nature. Throughout he runs the gamut of poetic
forms from epigrams and haikus to lyric, narra-
tive, and concrete poems. Whether Inada meant
Drawing the Line as a capstone to his poetic career
remains to be seen.
Semi-retired from teaching at Oregon State
University, Inada spends most of his time today124 Inada, Lawson Fusao