“you tatter at twilight. Soiled / little prince, what have you done? // What have you done to our field?” – Srikanth Reddy, “Fifth Circle”
Programming note: no column next Wednesday. I am taking the time off to finally migrate this thing off of the Nazi-loving, Useful Idiot-fomenting company that is Substack. Here’s a piece I wrote about this desire a long time ago. I regret that it has taken so long. Brendan and I are trying to make the Lazy & Entitled website a home for all of our music, VINE and future novel(la)s, the podcast, and yes, this blog. Unfortunately, we both work day jobs, and in my case, care for a child. So things take a long time. Remember those two albums we recorded last year? Yeah, don’t forget about those. Also, don’t feel the need to re-subscribe or anything—you, the reader, should just keep getting emails from me. Aren’t you excited about emails?
National Poetry Month ended—do you know where YOUR manuscript is?
What I’ve Been Reading This Week:
More poetry! Sometimes you gotta stretch poetry month into May, especially when half the week is April. This week spanned the entirety of my poetry-reading life: I re-read what I’m pretty sure is the very first collection of contemporary poetry I ever read, as well as my most recently purchased book (shoutout to Independent Bookstore Day). I’m talking, of course, about Facts For Visitors by Srikanth Reddy and Root Fractures by Diana Khoi Nguyen.
Facts For Visitors by Srikanth Reddy: let’s go all the way back to ENGL 317 in fall 2007! The poems felt beyond me then. Now? I really enjoyed this work, but something still felt slightly beyond me—in a positive way. The word “mythopoetic” is a word I feel like I only sort of understand, but these poems seem to operate in that space. They are “in the shadow of empire,” as one blurb reads, but not one-note postcolonial. Dante is invoked, the Wallace Stevens influence is felt, and some poems feel in the lineage of Heart Of Darkness. I hope this isn’t too “comparing a white basketball player to Larry Bird” of me, but some of the postcolonial stuff (including the line that’s the epigraph of this blog) reminds me of Shalimar The Clown, in the sense that empire and colonialism feel like a waste of time, like it’d all so comic in its stupidity if so many lives weren’t lost and so many things being done to fields by soiled princes.
Root Fractures by Diana Khoi Nguyen: what an ambitious collection! Real craft went into this book. We should be up front about some content warnings: the speaker’s brother has died by suicide, the shadow of the Vietnam war (and wars in “French Indochina” before that) loom large, and the speaker’s mother is abusive. There is heavy, heavy stuff here. Many of the poems are titled “Root Fracture,” and many are shaped like people cut out of pictures, or have the text over mangled family photos. Many of the poems are called “Đổi Mới,” which is a term both for economic reform in Vietnam and “renewal more generally.” Many of the poems are called “Misinformation.” These themes dance together and paint an intricate portrait of multi-generational, multi-angular trauma. The end result is devastating, both in terms of what’s being written about, and the amount of talent on display. What a book.
LINKS!
Something to listen to while you browse? Hey, just to get it on record, “Icronic” is my absolute favorite Polyphia song ever. There may be more sublime moments, like the nylon-acoustic-to-heavy-electric transitions in “Chimera.” There may be more songs that typify the vibe I’m always trying to go for, like “40OZ” or “YAS.” There may be more whoa-never-heard-THAT-before songs, like “The Audacity.” There may be more iconic riffs, like “GOAT.” Hell, there may even be more outright classical/bossa nova mashups, like “Playing God.” But still, eight years into hardcore Polyphia fandom, “Icronic” is my favorite song, and I’m listening to it while I type this, forgetting which link I was gonna lead with.
Right, we’re leading with a bummer. Remember that the United States disappears people now? Like more than we used to? No human is illegal, and I’m not getting into the weeds about Obama and Biden’s records on deportation and Trump’s unabashed the-Nazis-learned-it-from-watching-us stances. ICE needs to be abolished, and freedom of movement is a human right. Here is Mohsen Mahdawi, a Columbia student that ICE attempted to disappear the day he was set to become a citizen, being interviewed by NPR.
“See You In The Lobby” by Justin Carter in The Account
Published a while ago, but pretty cool read for the dads: “A Bronze Age-stle ship just sailed through the Persian Gulf 4,000 years after it was designed” by Ashley Strickland in CNN (am I reading that right? I’m linking a CNN piece?)
“Streetcar Funeral” by Elena Zhang in ballast
Honestly not sure if I’ve ever read any “cozy” fiction. It’s an identifier I both understand the desire for and am semi-put off by. Like, there should be stakes. Then again, I’m also on record as hating artificial conflicts, like misunderstandings that could be fixed with two sentences. Idk. But I did like Dorian Dawes’ essay in Typebar about the necessity of pain in cozy fiction.
What’re you still doing here? Don’t you know that Micah and Brendan have a show?
If you work in the service industry, may you clean up in tips this weekend. We live in the body of an empire, whether we like it or not. If we must be cells in this body, at least let us find a way to be malignant.
Sorry you got an email,
Chris