Chen Chen: "Sometimes poets forget to be entertaining..." | Poet of the Week 28/4
7 new poems & an interview with one of the most prominent poets writing today!
Attn: The $3600 ONLY POEMS PRIZE, closes in TWO DAYS!!!
Chen Chen is the author of two books of poetry, Your Emergency Contact Has Experienced an Emergency and When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities, both published by BOA Editions. He teaches for the low-residency MFA programs at New England College, Stonecoast, and Antioch.
Corresponding with the Heterosexuals
Hi, enthused teacher or bewildered student or concerned parent! Thank you for emailing out of the blue or as the French say, out of the bleu. To answer your urgent & original question, I am not inspired, ever. I write just so you will assign/do/ help with—while disapproving of— all this homework about me & grow up or finally be well-adjusted, capable of taking out the recycling on a semi-regular basis while talking to your semi-handsome neighbor who’s sitting outside. Ah, the fresh air becoming hotter & oranger by the minute. Oh, that’s not a gay thing, sorry, that’s a planet in deep doo-doo thing. To answer your less urgent & unoriginal question, yes. Your dreams will die & so will you. But if you’re lucky, you’ll go first. Meanwhile, someone in Switzerland is sending their very first email, now isn’t that a sight for sore eyes. Oh, a cliché! Quick, let’s revise. Now isn’t that a kite for sore lives. Much better, n’est-ce pas? Sorry, I know French is filth & the gayest of langues. & now I must go feed my second pug, Symposium. Yup, that’s a Plato thing. Oui, that’s a gay thing, so sorry. Désolé. Je suis vraiment, vachement désolé.
What frustrates me is when a poem seems the result of the poet striving to an excruciating degree to be serious and ending up with dour dullness.
t sounds cheesy, but it’s real: poetry happens all the time, everywhere, and you just have to know how to pay attention. Or you don’t have to know. You just have to try. Pay attention to weird things your friends say. I think if they’re really your friends, they will say weird things to you. That’s what intimacy means. And vulnerability. Pay attention to the weird things you say to your friends. Love your friends more deeply by saying weirder things to them — this could be the title of my next poem.
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I love this idea of “poetry of the mind, body, heart and soul.” I’d add that there’s a poetry of the belly that I’m very interested in. And a poetry of the armpit. And a poetry of the cock. Can I say “cock” in this interview? I say it a whole bunch in that poem.
There are times I get annoyed by poems where “the body” shows up a lot but the poems still lack physicality. “The body” has become so abstract. I want the body to be more embodied in poetry. I want to know where the hairs are and if they’re curly. I want smells. Odors. I want crevices.
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Awesome poems, for the most part, and interview. Love especially the discussion about humor, which is surprisingly challenging to weave into ‘serious’ poems, and which is really important to me. There can never be enough humor :). Am I allowed to respectfully disagree with a poet as talented as Chen? I disagree somewhat about the body. I don’t want or need to be given intimate imagery of body fluids and hair and odor. Those things are incredibly private to me, not to mention clinical and often associated with locker rooms. I agree it’s all too easy to describe the body vaguely, and I don’t want that either, but I’d much rather see sexy metaphors, displaced language, funny plays on fifth grade humor, etc. Those closeups (which Chen does so well) are off putting to me, not just with sex, but with birth, death, illness, anything body-related. Perhaps this is one of those subjective things, and I may be in the minority on this, lol.
Huge love for this interview and these poems. Instant new fan.