National Poetry Month ended\u2014do you know where YOUR manuscript is? <\/p>
What I\u2019ve Been Reading This Week: <\/strong><\/p> 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\u2019m 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\u2019m talking, of course, about Facts For Visitors<\/em> by Srikanth Reddy and Root Fractures<\/em> by Diana Khoi Nguyen.<\/p> Facts For Visitors<\/strong><\/em> by Srikanth Reddy:<\/strong> let\u2019s 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\u2014in a positive way. The word \u201cmythopoetic\u201d is a word I feel like I only sort of understand, but these poems seem to operate in that space. They are \u201cin the shadow of empire,\u201d 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\u2019t too \u201ccomparing a white basketball player to Larry Bird\u201d of me, but some of the postcolonial stuff (including the line that\u2019s the epigraph of this blog) reminds me of Shalimar The Clown<\/a><\/em>, in the sense that empire and colonialism feel like a waste of time, like it\u2019d all so comic in its stupidity if so many lives weren\u2019t lost and so many things being done to fields by soiled princes.<\/p> Root Fractures<\/strong><\/em> by Diana Khoi Nguyen: <\/strong>what an ambitious collection! Real craft went into this book. We should be up front about some content warnings: the speaker\u2019s brother has died by suicide, the shadow of the Vietnam war (and wars in \u201cFrench Indochina\u201d before that) loom large, and the speaker\u2019s mother is abusive. There is heavy, heavy stuff here. Many of the poems are titled \u201cRoot Fracture,\u201d and many are shaped like people cut out of pictures, or have the text over mangled family photos. Many of the poems are called \u201c\u0110\u1ed5i M\u1edbi,\u201d which is a term both for economic reform in Vietnam<\/a> and \u201crenewal more generally.\u201d Many of the poems are called \u201cMisinformation.\u201d 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\u2019s being written about, and the amount of talent on display. What a book. <\/p> LINKS!<\/strong><\/p> Something to listen to while you browse? Hey, just to get it on record, \u201cIcronic\u201d is my absolute favorite Polyphia song ever. There may be more sublime moments, like the nylon-acoustic-to-heavy-electric transitions in \u201cChimera.<\/a>\u201d There may be more songs that typify the vibe I\u2019m always trying to go for, like \u201c40OZ<\/a>\u201d or \u201cYAS<\/a>.\u201d There may be more whoa-never-heard-THAT-before songs, like \u201cThe Audacity.<\/a>\u201d There may be more iconic<\/em> riffs, like \u201cGOAT<\/a>.\u201d Hell, there may even be more outright classical\/bossa nova mashups, like \u201cPlaying God<\/a>.\u201d But still, eight years into hardcore Polyphia fandom, \u201cIcronic\u201d is my favorite song, and I\u2019m listening to it while I type this, forgetting which link I was gonna lead with. <\/p>![\"Root](\"https:\/\/substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com\/public\/images\/f0ec29df-4469-4494-9c58-4d4d67f54210_3614x2849.heic\")
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