Exploring Poetry with Kenton K. Yee: Insights and Inspirations
June 27, 2026
Kenton K. Yee’s recent poems appear (or will soon) in Kenyon, Threepenny, Cincinnati, RHINO, Quarterly West, Poetry Northwest, Plume Poetry, Poetry Wales, Rattle, Best Microfiction 2026, and other venues. His debut poetry chapbook is due to drop from Bull City Press in 2027. He writes from Northern California.
His poem, Ode to the Guest Star, appears in Issue #23.
Tell us a bit about yourself.
Originally trained as a theoretical physicist, I’ve delved into fields ranging from math and physics to law and business, trying on more hats than I’ll list here. One of my favorite hats is poet, which I put on during the work-from-home COVID years with no formal training. I’ve been writing ever since. Like Ode to the Guest Star, many of my poems have science allusions, but my aims in poetry are always artistic, not didactic or scientific.
What was the inspiration behind Ode to the Guest Star?
Memories of Caltech’s Millikan Library, my interest in astronomy, the long history of the Guest Star from its original sighting in China to its subsequent rediscovery centuries later in England—a reminder that humanity is just a blink of an eye in cosmic time.
What unique or surprising detail can you tell us about the revision process, and/or the final version of it?
I’m an obsessive, compulsive reviser. The more I like a poem, the more I keep tweaking it. I’ve been tweaking this poem for almost three years. The most noticeable recent change is the addition of two words, “Ode to,” to the original title.
What did you learn (about yourself, craft, or life in general) through writing and revising it?
What I learned is that life and everything in it—especially poetry—is a journey, not an end-goal or trophy, so one had better enjoy the journey, which means one has to pay attention. With each poem, I learned to pay closer attention, attention to every pattern, turn, break, word, comma, and surprise.
What do you hope readers take from it?
I want to pique readers and leave them curious about my work. Beyond this, I don’t have any message or meaning. I want a poem to be a “thing-in-itself and the thing-for-you,” to quote Rae Armantrout out of context.
At what point in your life did you begin writing and working on poetry?
When I began working from home in 2020 during COVID. I had participated in online writing and poetry courses off and on beginning in 2012, but never took writing seriously until I had the time to do it during COVID.
Do you write in other genres, and if so, what?
When I took up writing in 2012, it was to write my great American novel. But it was too hard to get the kind of handholding and feedback I needed as a novice to get far. I found poetry writing much easier to get into than longer-form writing. A few lines drafted every morning accumulated quickly into short poems, which I used to get feedback (mostly rejections) from literary journals, but this practice drew me in, made me feel like I was making progress.
What fuels your desire to write (or engage in other creative outlets)?
I guess I’m addicted now to the serotonin kick of an occasional acceptance. Also, since there’s no money, career, love, or friendship at stake, poetry submission is the closest approximation to a stress-free game I can play. And working on a poem for a couple of hours is a helluva lot more gratifying than playing video games or TV, which invariably leaves me feeling hollow.
When or why did you decide to start publishing your work?
Besides the serotonin kick I get from an occasional acceptance, I need the motivation and discipline that submission due dates provide to sit and finish poems. Without submission deadlines, my poems would all languish in revision purgatory. And without acceptances, I’d keep revising a poem forever. In short, the submission-acceptance process helps me pace myself.
What have been the biggest influences in your writing?
I’m primarily influenced by specific poems, not bodies of work. That said, several poems of Wallace Stevens, Frank O’Hara, John Ashbery, Stanley Kunitz, Larry Levis, and Rae Armantrout spring to mind. This is an incomplete list.
Are there any special projects, other pieces, or books you’d like to promote? Feel free to include links.
My debut chapbook, “Making the Best of It,” will drop from Bull City Press in August 2027. It’s a series of poems that metaphorically and playfully tracks my circuitous journey from a blue-collar immigrant family to academic math and physics, Wall Street, Silicon Valley, and (perhaps not so finally) art and poetry. I like to think of “Making” as my bungling attempt at Joyce’s “A Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man.”
What do you think when you hear, “the good life”?
I think of a lit journal that curates art that sees the uplifting side of a situation, e.g., finds a burst of light in an otherwise dark sky.
Thank you, Kenton, for sharing your poetry with us and for the time you spent on this Q&A. We wish a peaceful and prosperous summer, and also the best with your writing endeavors!
