Chen Chen 
When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities [EPUB ebook] 

LONGLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FOR POETRY
WINNER OF THE A. POULIN, JR. POETRY PRIZE
A LIBRARY JOURNAL BEST BOOK OF 2017 SELECTION: POETRY & LITERATURE
ON NPR BOOKS’S LIST OF ‘POETRY TO PAY ATTENTION TO: 2017’S BEST VERSE’
A PUBLISHERS WEEKLY 2017 HOLIDAY GIFT GUIDE SELECTION



In this ferocious and tender debut, Chen Chen investigates inherited forms of love and family—the strained relationship between a mother and son, the cost of necessary goodbyes—all from Asian American, immigrant, and queer perspectives. Holding all accountable, this collection fully embraces the loss, grief, and abundant joy that come with charting one’s own path in identity, life, and love.

Table des matières

1


Self-Portrait as So Much Potential

In the Hospital

I’m not a religious person but

Things Stuck in Other Things Where They Don’t Belong

Summer Was Forever

Race to the Tree

West of Schenectady

Self-Portrait With & Without

How I Became Sagacious

First Light

Elegy

Please take off your shoes before entering do not disturb


2


Song with a Lyric from Allen Ginsberg

Talented Human Beings

To the Guanacos at the Syracuse Zoo

Elegy for My Sadness

Ode to My Envy

Irreducible Sociality

Antarctica

I will miss the earth

Second Thoughts on a Winter Afternoon

In the City

The Cuckoo Cry

Didier et Zizou

Kafka’s Axe & Michael’s Vest

Poem

In Search of the Least Abandoned Constellation

Frog-Hopping Gravestones

Sorrow Song with Optimus Prime


3


for i will do/undo what was done/undone to me

In This Economy

Night falls like a button

Song of the Night’s Gift

Chapter VIII

Nature Poem

When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities

For I Will Consider My Boyfriend Jeffrey

babel & juice

Song of the Anti-Sisyphus

Talking to God About Heaven from the Bed of a Heathen

Elegy to Be Exhaled at Dusk

Spell to Find Family

Little Song

Poem in Noisy Mouthfuls

Poplar Street


Acknowledgments

About the Author

A propos de l’auteur

Chen Chen was born in Xiamen, China, and grew up in Massachusetts. His work has appeared in two chapbooks and in such publications as
Poetry, Gulf Coast, Indiana Review, Best of the Net, and
The Best American Poetry. The recipient of the 2016 A. Poulin, Jr. Poetry Prize, he has been awarded fellowships from Kundiman, the Saltonstall Foundation, Lambda Literary, and in 2015, he was a finalist for the Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellowships. He earned his BA at Hampshire College and his MFA at Syracuse University. Currently, he is pursuing a Ph D in English and Creative Writing at Texas Tech University. Chen lives in Lubbock, Texas, with his partner, Jeff Gilbert, and their pug dog, Rupert Giles.

Jericho Brown is the recipient of the Whiting Writers Award and fellowships from the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University and the National Endowment for the Arts. His first book,
Please (New Issues, 2008), won the American Book Award, and his second book,
The New Testament (Copper Canyon, 2014), was named one of the best poetry books of the year by
Library Journal. His poems have appeared in
The Nation, The New Republic, The New Yorker, and
The Best American Poetry. Brown earned a Ph D from the University of Houston, an MFA from the University of New Orleans, and a BA from Dillard University. He is an assistant professor in the creative writing program at Emory University in Atlanta.