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.
Inhoudsopgave
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
Over de 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.