AUDIO TRANSCRIPT

Poetry Off the Shelf: Technically Roommates

(MUSIC PLAYING)

Helena de Groot: This is Poetry Off the Shelf. I’m Helena de Groot. Today, Technically Roommates. When I talked to Chen Chen, he had just come back from teaching his first post-Covid in-person writers’ residency, at New England College. It was definitely overwhelming, but it had also been balmy. Reading and writing together, of course, but also dozing on the grass together, feeling the wind stroke his cheeks and his friends’, sitting around a table together and eat. Because for Chen, that’s where any creative endeavor starts: being a body among other bodies.

Helena de Groot: Well actually the first thing I wanted to do was start with your book of writing prompts, You MUST Use The Word Smoothie.

Chen Chen: Yeah.

Helena de Groot: Do you have a favorite prompt? Is there like one that you reliably go to when you’re in a funk?

Chen Chen: The prompt that I come back to, is number 46: “Make an omelet large enough to share with at least one other dear friend.”

Helena de Groot: Yes.

Chen Chen: “Write a somelet (omelet sonnet) about the difficulty around deciding what to put in the omelet that both of you and your dear friend would enjoy.” And I think what I like about that one is, I mean, one, that involves food, which I’m all about.

Helena de Groot: Yes.

Chen Chen: Because so much of my writing starts and really grows as well out of conversation with friends, or with books, with writing that I consider companions. So, I like the idea of making something, right, the omelet and then the sommelet, that are both shared things and things that come out of conversation.

Helena de Groot: I love that, that you blur the boundary a little bit between what is a poetic act, like a creative act that results in poetry, and what is a creative act that results in an omelet.

Chen Chen: Yeah. I think it’s important to not be so strict about those categories of creativity of making and to see yourself as an artist.

Helena de Groot: Yeah, exactly. It made it a lot more approachable and kind of a natural part of our life anyway, you know, even for those of us who don’t call ourselves artists, that we are always creating something. And so we can just as well create a poem. I thought it was very generous and welcoming, you know. So, yeah, I thought that was beautiful. The other thing I thought was so nice was that in the introduction you write, “don’t worry, if you feel like you aren’t completing an exercise correctly, perhaps it’s better to be incorrect.” And so I was wondering, like, what is your personal relationship to embarrassment and shame?

Chen Chen: Oh my god, what a beautiful question. I think you have to do things incorrectly as an artist, actually. That’s sort of the imperative is to not do it correctly and to question what is doing it correctly. And I think a lot of art springs from that question. And as you were saying, sort of that natural impulse as well, to make things. And I saw this tweet yesterday, I forget who it was from. But it was someone—I don’t think it was a poet. But it was just someone talking about these acts of creativity that I think most everybody does from a young age. And they include singing, dancing. And there’s one other one. I don’t think it was poetry, but I would add poetry to that list if it wasn’t in there. And the post was saying, like, we do them whether or not we’re good at them. And I think it’s important to remember that, because I think within this capitalist system of production and productivity, there’s this expectation that, oh, you’ll keep doing things because you’re good at it and because you can make money from those things, when these are things that we all do or most of us do, very playfully and joyfully. And so tapping into that well of spontaneously and incorrectly doing these things, can lead to all sorts of insights. Yeah.

Helena de Groot: Yeah. But the reason I’m asking is that, I mean, you’re right. All of us do innately, we sing, we dance, we try things and fail and don’t mind. I mean, as kids, you know?

Chen Chen: Mm.

Helena de Groot: And then we internalize the things that people say, like, “Oh, don’t do that, you look silly.” You know, whatever. And so what I’m asking really, is do you come from a family where it was okay and encouraged to fail and try again?

Chen Chen: Yeah, I was definitely not encouraged to try and fail. (LAUGHS) I was encouraged, I was commanded, I was expected to do and do excellently from the start. So, yeah, there was enormous pressure. And I think that has affected me in certain ways, where, as an adult, I still feel nervous to try certain things that are outside of my comfort zone, including other creative activities. And so I’ve been reflecting a lot on that and sort of how to break out of that pressure. But yeah, I really see how, as adults and especially lately, working with graduate students, how there can be this fear around failing and a kind of comfort in the knowledge that one has already accumulated.

Helena de Groot: Yeah.

Chen Chen: It’s sort of funny. So the residency, the MFA residency that I was just teaching in it at New England College, Jericho Brown was the writer in residence there. And he led this amazing workshop on the duplex. And he walked us through it step by step. It was this generative workshop. And I could see folks feeling so nervous to mess it up or do it incorrectly or overthinking each step of it.

Helena de Groot: Right.

Chen Chen: And Jericho kept encouraging us to no, just like stay in that zone of, you know, you can call it prewriting or brainstorming or, you know, not even really drafting yet, but just playing around in language.

Helena de Groot: I love that, you know, never putting yourself kind of in this performative place—

Chen Chen: Right.

Helena de Groot: —where, like, now it has it has to be okay for the audience or something. I was wondering if you can read a poem that kind of ties into all of these ideas. It’s from the last collection that you published together with your best friend, the poet Sam Herschel Wein.

Chen Chen: Mm, yes.

Helena de Groot: It’s called GESUNDHEIT!, and it’s that poem on page five titled, “Circle ‘C’ If You Just Don’t Know.”

Chen Chen: Yeah, let me pull it up.

(READS POEM)

Circle “C” If You Just Don’t Know

I failed the multiple choice exam. I failed to thank the driver

before exiting the bus. I failed my pet fish in the third grade.

I am failing to recall if it was the third or in fact second grade.

I failed Facts but passed Fervor & have placed top of my class

in Least Profitable all twenty-seven years so far. I passed my loneliness

to the stranger sitting beside me on the bus, failing to stop

going on & on about the first chapter of Italo Calvino’s

If on a winter’s night a traveler. I failed to move very much

for much of the Monday that was part of the long weekend.

I failed not to masturbate first, then finish the task. I failed

to save him first before he saved me from “our loveless

relationship.” I failed every religion except the Quiet Cult

of Unrequired Reading. I passed Gay Best Friend on shopping trips

while failing to do anything when my mother said again,

Those people are sick & with a small click of the remote

erased the two smiling grooms. I failed to look at my mother

in the hospital bed, after she had failed to keep standing,

had collapsed in the bathroom. I failed to glance up at her

from the book I brought. I failed to put things aside, I failed

to put the book down, put it gently, saying to my father, Can we

go now? as she lay there, I failed to choose her, wanted to erase her.

Together we passed with flying colors the senior project in Family

Drama. No rubric, no final grade for all the times & ways we’ve failed

each other, named the other the fuel & engine of every fracture.

I am failing, right now, to see her, to look up from my dear

words, my dramatizing of failure. Can I retake this, unmake this

scene of us? Can we go another way, another now? Can we

go, can we fail, a little differently?

Helena de Groot: Thank you. I love this poem so much. I mean, already the sentence, “I failed every religion except the Quiet Cult of Unrequired Reading.”

Chen Chen: Thank you.

Helena de Groot: Yeah. And earlier you said that part of why doing things, you know, quote-unquote “incorrectly” when writing a poem is so important is because it is vital to that process of discovery. And so here, did you know when you started this poem and you started with all these sentences, like, you know, I failed at this, I failed that that, did you know that you were going to talk about your mother’s homophobia and her time in the hospital and your complicated relationship with her because of that? Or did that just come out as part of that discovery?

Chen Chen: I’m not sure. I’m trying to remember. I think I had a sense that I was going to write about family, in some way. I didn’t know how. And I don’t know specifically that it would revolve around my mother in the hospital and this memory of visiting her there and sort of refusing to engage with her. I mean, that’s still a very vivid memory to me. And that sense, especially looking back on it, of like, my failure to show her that compassion in that moment. And so, I’d known for a while that that was a moment I wanted to write about in some way, but I was I was afraid to. I was nervous to go into that moment fully, because it’s just so vulnerable. And I felt like I had failed her in some way. But that was, you know, sitting right next to how she had failed in certain ways, with the expression of her homophobia. In this case, not so much toward me, but in front of me. And so that was interesting to me as well, how often homophobia manifests not as, you know, directly saying something to a queer person, but sort of in passing and very casually saying or not saying something. Right, the lack of support, the lack of affirmation can be just as painful. So I knew there was something there that I wanted to go into and touch upon, but I really wasn’t sure how. And so I just, I had some lines where I was using that anaphora of, you know, I failed to do this, I failed to do that. And some of the lines were much lighter and some of them were getting more serious. So I knew I wanted to do something with that language. And then I don’t know if this was around the same time or before, but I remember listening to this interview with Tracy K. Smith in which she talks about writerly obsessions. And one of the great things that she said was, “Oh, you think you’re writing a poem about bananas or a banana peel or something, and then, oh! you realize it’s another poem about your father.”

Helena de Groot: (LAUGHS)

Chen Chen: And so there’s this idea, I think sometimes as writers, we worry that if we’re not tending to our obsessions in a direct way, you know, head on, then we’re not going to write in a thematically cohesive way. And I see this stress, this panic sometimes, especially when writers are putting together a book and feel like, “Oh, I need to write another poem about this.” But I think actually letting go of that pressure and just letting yourself write the poem, following the language that you have in the language that you’re interested in, your obsessions are going to surface one way or another. If you’re paying attention, if you’re staying alive to what’s going on on the page, it’ll come back. And I think when you let go and let it come back in that way, it can happen in a much more surprising way than if you sat down and told yourself, “Oh, I need to write another poem about my mother to go in this collection that’s about my relationship with my mother,” you know? So, allowing for that surprise.

Helena de Groot: You know, what is so beautiful about what you’re saying right now is that it seems like, you know, the real goal of homophobia seems to be keeping people from listening to themselves.

Chen Chen: Mm. Yes.

Helena de Groot: And my question is, in the face of the homophobia that you’ve experienced at the hands of your mother, which is like another thing than the more distant homophobia in society, can you tell me about how you have kept yourself whole in the face of it. Like how you keep listening to yourself when you’re supposed to not.

Chen Chen: Yeah. (EXHALES) So, maybe this is a bit of a roundabout answer, but this is sort of mirroring the movement of that poem that I read. So, I’ve been watching the second season of Love, Victor on Hulu, and it’s been bringing up a lot of this stuff, a lot of these memories, because in the show—so Victor, who is a high school student, has just come out to his family at the end of the first season. Spoiler alert, sorry. Which he’d been struggling to do, I mean, basically coming out to anyone, including to himself, right.

Helena de Groot: Yeah.

Chen Chen: And so this second season really focuses on Victor’s relationship in particular with his mother. And so it’s just really hitting close to home in many ways because it’s his mother who has more trouble accepting her son compared to his father and other members of the family and friends, you know. But I just, I so appreciate that depiction, because I think, especially these days, we don’t see as often queer kids really running into trouble around coming out and coming out to family, in particular. There might be initial sort of difficult conversation, but then that’s sort of it. And we just have this celebratory, triumphant narrative around coming out. And I think, you know, sometimes that’s really wonderful to see, you know, just that level of acceptance. But other times I just feel really alienated by that narrative, because that was not my experience at all.

Helena de Groot: Yeah.

Chen Chen: And so, I came out at a pretty early age. But it was kind of a hesitant half coming out at age 13. Where I really wasn’t sure, because I didn’t have a lot of the language for it myself. And wasn’t sure how to articulate it, especially to my parents. And so, I was still struggling to find the right language for myself and for my identity and sort of how to name what I was experiencing. And I was very young, but I did know. I knew on an emotional level what I was going through, even if I couldn’t precisely name it.

Helena de Groot: Yeah.

Chen Chen: And so it was really hard, because looking back on it, I realized, oh, what I would have loved in that moment, you know, other than just wholehearted acceptance, I mean, that would have been great, too, but also, just some support around, and some gentleness around, not quite knowing how to talk about it then. You know, if someone had just said to me, “Oh, it’s okay that you don’t have all the words for this right now, or that you’re still figuring it out, or that you’ll continue to figure it out as you get older,” right.

Helena de Groot: Yeah.

Chen Chen: It’s not a one and done step. Right. And so, yeah, I so wish that there had been someone who just, you know, sort of held my hand through that and told me, you know, “You’re loved, it’s okay, and you can continue to think about this however you need to and for however long you need to.”

Helena de Groot: Yeah.

Chen Chen: And so, yeah, it’s been a very long process since I was 13 for myself internally and then also with my relationship with my mother.

Helena de Groot: I have a question that’s maybe a little tangential and not really sort of the meat of the issue. But since you said that you didn’t yet have the language, I was just curious, did you have that conversation with your mother, when you first kind of hesitantly came out at age 13, did you have that in English or in Mandarin or, do you remember?

Chen Chen: I think it was a mix. I think for me, I was mostly saying it in English, because I really didn’t have—

Helena de Groot: Right, that’s what I was thinking.

Chen Chen: Right.

Helena de Groot: Where would you have learned that, not from them, I suppose.

Chen Chen: Yeah. I didn’t have the terminology in Chinese at all. And they didn’t either, because they didn’t know any gay people or they didn’t know that they knew any gay people.

Helena de Groot: Yeah. Yeah.

Chen Chen: And so they just had never associated being gay and being Chinese. You know, they couldn’t say that in the same sentence, and for that to feel true to them. So, yeah, they didn’t really have the vocabulary for it either.

Helena de Groot: I mean, okay, my information may be super outdated. You’re going to probably know this better than I do. But the last thing I heard about this is that the word that the gay community in China uses for gay is—or like for their gay brothers and sisters—is the word “comrade.” I mean, you know, the Chinese.

Chen Chen: Yeah.

Helena de Groot: Tóngzhì, something like that.

Chen Chen: Yeah, yes.

Helena de Groot: I’m saying the tones completely incorrectly, of course. So, apologies. Can you say it correctly?

Chen Chen: Let me just double-check the tones myself so that I don’t mess it up. Yeah. It’s tóngzhì.

Helena de Groot: Right. Yeah. And the person who told me this told me a story around it, and they said, you know, it’s really basically, young people use the word “comrade” a little bit to mess with their elders, you know, especially like the loyal communist elders.

Chen Chen: Yeah.

Helena de Groot: You know, to be like, “Oh, you think this is not Chinese. Well, here you go.” You know?

Chen Chen: Right. Yeah, I love that act of rebellion, but also this claiming of Chinese history and culture at the same time. So, yeah, I just, I love that. Because there’s the more sort of technical term, tóngxìng, which basically means like “same sex” or “same nature.”

Helena de Groot: Okay.

Chen Chen: And it’s very much akin to the term “homosexual” in English, more like kind of clinical, medical, psychiatric feel to it.

Helena de Groot: Yeah.

Chen Chen: And so I think, yeah, the other term, tóngzhì, right, “comrade” is kind of a tongue-in-cheek response to that term.

Helena de Groot: Yeah.

Chen Chen: And to have a different have a different name. Yeah.

Helena de Groot: Yeah. Has your mother come around?

Chen Chen: So, yeah, I think, I get asked this a lot. And it’s always kind of tricky to answer. Because I feel like readers—and I understand this. And I guess I should feel proud, in a sense, because the writing has had an effect on people, where they’re very concerned about what’s happened. And so, yeah, I often get this question. And I feel like I always end up saying something a little different, because I feel like in some cases, especially when it’s in person, and the person’s looking at me with this look of concern in their eyes—

Helena de Groot: Yeah, yeah, yeah. You want to kind of reassure them basically.

Chen Chen: Yeah! I sense that that’s what they’re looking for, that it’s sort of more for them than it’s for me, the reassurance. And so, it’s complicated. But yeah, I feel like the truth is, it’s that. It’s very complicated, still. I’d say it’s better in certain ways, but it’s not completely resolved. And I think a part of me is … resigned to or, maybe the more positive way to put it is accepting of the fact that, perhaps it’ll never be really where I would like it to be, or where I thought it could be, when I first came out, because there have been there have been multiple coming outs to my parents at various points in my life, because they were really unable to accept it initially. They were in denial about it for a very long time. We really couldn’t talk about it. And this was over, you know, all through high school, all through college, for a good part of grad school as well. So, quite a long time to be dealing with this problem.

Helena de Groot: Yeah. Yeah.

Chen Chen: And there was even, there was a time when I was in grad school, and I met the guy that I’m still with now, my partner Jeff. We had met in Syracuse. And for a while I just described him as my roommate to my parents. And that was true.

Helena de Groot: Sure.

Chen Chen: That was like factually, empirically true because we were living together.

Helena de Groot: Yeah.

Chen Chen: But it felt a bit like, oh, what is this? Like a novel or like a sitcom from, like, decades ago? You know, because there’s that whole trope of, “Are they roommates, or are they, you know, romantically involved? Are they actually, like, together?” And so it just felt so weird to me and uncomfortable and I felt really bad for doing that. But there was just no other way to talk about things, because they were so vehemently opposed to even bringing it up, because they felt like, “Oh, he’ll change eventually. He’s just young, he’ll grow out of it. He just needs to focus on his studies for a while. And then, you know, he’ll find a nice girl” (LAUGHS)—

Helena de Groot: (LAUGHS)

Chen Chen: —and it’ll change.”

Helena de Groot: Yeah.

Chen Chen: “And he’ll settle down. He’ll get older and wiser and he’ll settle down in a wonderful heterosexual marriage. And deliver the grandchildren that we’ve wanted.” So, it took a long time. And I would just say that, yep, you know, at this point, they’ve met my partner as my partner several times now. He’s been over for dinner. We just spent the afternoon on the Fourth of July together as a whole family. So I did feel like there was this change. A lot of it’s still not very verbalized. But that’s how my parents have been about a lot of things, anyway. So I’m trying not to read into that too much now. That they express their care and affection and love in other ways. So, you know, like my mother will ask if Jeff is going to come over for this meal, because he has some dietary restrictions. So she asks about those. So she asks, like, what he can eat and makes sure that she prepares something that he can have as well. So, to me, that’s huge. That’s a really big change. Yeah.

Helena de Groot: Yes. Totally.

(MUSIC PLAYING)

Helena de Groot: What I found so striking about your work is how many love poems there are.

Chen Chen: Yeah.

Helena de Groot: And I came to the realization, because it struck me so much, that this is quite rare in contemporary poetry.

Chen Chen: Yeah.

Helena de Groot: And I was just wondering, given that you write love poems, fully aware of the world that we live in and the pain that exists, what does writing it anyway mean to you?

Chen Chen: Yeah, I guess it’s sort of funny because I … I was never really daunted or I guess afraid to write love poems. And I’ll hear from poets all the time now that they’re really afraid to write them themselves. (LAUGHING LIGHTLY) And I guess I just didn’t have that hang up.

Helena de Groot: (CHUCKLES)

Chen Chen: But I got a lot of early encouragement in that direction. I remember working with Martín Espada at UMass Amherst. And I just remember reading, you know, for instance, this poem by Roque Dalton that’s called “Like You.” And it just starts with, “Like you I / love love, life, the sweet smell / of things, the sky-blue / landscape of January days.” And so just that directness and this address to the “you” as well. And so I think a lot of the impulse to write love poetry comes from my obsession with direct address in poems. Of writing to a “you” and writing to a “you” that is an actual person.

Helena de Groot: Yeah.

Chen Chen: And often that is the beloved, but sometimes, well, it’s a beloved, in another sense. It’s a beloved family member, it’s a beloved friend. So, it’s not just romantic love. And so I think there’s just great possibility and magic to the love poem to be expansive in that way and not just be about romantic love. And I just think for, you know, the queer love poem. And not keeping bringing up on Jericho Brown, but he was just at that residency that I was also at. And he closed his reading with four love poems. And he introduced them in that way. He said, “Here are four love poems.” And they’re beautiful. And he read one of my favorites, which is “Heart Condition.” And then during the Q&A, I asked him, you know, like, “What is your approach to love poetry?” And he said, “I just don’t think there could ever be too many queer love poems.”

Helena de Groot: Yes.

Chen Chen: Because, in a sense, we have so much catching up to do, still. And so, as a queer person, as a person of color, in particular, I feel this drive to contribute to that body of poems, the queer love poem. And yeah, queer love poems that also think about race and immigration and all of these other larger issues, which, to me, very much have to do with how we think about love. I mean, there’s that famous Cornel West quote, which (TYPING) let me, I want to pull it up, just to get it right.

Helena de Groot: Yeah.

Chen Chen: Right, yeah, “Justice is what love looks like in public.”

Helena de Groot: Mm-hmm.

Chen Chen: “Just like tenderness is what love feels like in private.” I just, I love that so much.

Helena de Groot: Yeah. Yeah. Well, I was wondering if—there are two love poems that I had picked out, but I also want to open it up. Like, if you are like, “No, actually this poem I’d rather read, I also consider that a love poem.” sort of in that broader sense, feel free. The ones that I had picked, they’re both in your book, When I Grow Up, I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities. The first one is “For I Will Consider My Boyfriend Jeffrey,” which is on page 72.

Chen Chen: Yeah.

Helena de Groot: The other one is right after it, I think. “Song of the Anti-Sisyphus.”

Chen Chen: Yeah.

Helena de Groot: On page 75. But if you think of another one, please feel free.

Chen Chen: Yeah. I’ll read—yeah, I’ll read the one for Jeff because when he hears this, he’ll get a big kick out of it.

Helena de Groot: (LAUGHING) That’s great.

Chen Chen: He loves being written about and talked about, so. But the other one I’ll read is called, “Spell to Family,” because it’s kind of a different sort of love poem.

Helena de Groot: Great.

Chen Chen: So, first I’ll read, “For I Will Consider My Boyfriend Jeffrey.”

(READS POEM)

after Christopher Smart

For I will consider my boyfriend Jeffrey, for he is an atheist but makes room for the unseen unsayable for he is a vegetarian but makes room for half off Mondays at the conveyor belt sushi place for he must vacuum, mop, scrub, rinse, hand sanitizer fresh and the entire apartment to deal with the stress of having received a traffic ticket for he dances in his seat while driving us to the supermarket for despisers tarantula’s sharks flying on planes and flightless birds such as the cassowary of New Guinea, which she has only seen in videos and things, looks like a goddamn velociraptor, for he likes to claim he is the butch one, for he is Jeffrey Gilbert of Gilbert’s Spell, New York, for he lets his beard grow for when his beard is going up and down and out. He takes it tenderly. Long time to shave for this. He performs in ten steps for first. He looks upon his furry countenance to assess and accept that difficult journey that lies before him. For a second, he washes with holistic care, his whole foxy face. For thirdly, he applies as much shaving cream as I use in a month for forcedly, he puts on Eric Satie or LCD Soundsystem for fifthly. He sways a little to the music before lifting to his cheek the buzzing razor for sixthly, he shaves for Seventhly. He shaves for Iffley, he shaves for nine cliche’s then asks me to come help for Temperley. He holds back a giggle while I tickle the back of his neck with the buzzing razor for having shaved. He declares that he is ready to get back to work for his work involves many instruments, including a large, completely unnecessary keytar or keyboard guitar, which she plays beautifully for. He plays and then transfers his playing onto a computer where he works on it further, for he wears big headphones like little moons on his ears and begins to bounce in his chair. For the room is becoming a continent of rhythms and almost meanings and just discovered birds only he can hear. For though he does not fare well on planes, he will fly to those he loves for his beard is already going back for he looks happy and doesn’t know I’m looking and that makes his happiness free.

Helena de Groot: Oh, thank you so much. This is really, you know, what I love so much about this poem is, yes, it is a love ode to your partner, but it’s also an ode to the moments, you know, like the shaving, for instance. You know, this whole moment with this whole ritual around it and all these different steps. It’s like, yeah, you are noticing, you are noticing moments. You’re not just letting them slip through your fingers. And it makes me think like, oh, is that what a love poem is actually about, you know?

Chen Chen: Well, it makes me think of that definition of prayer, Simone Weil.

Helena de Groot: Yeah.

Chen Chen: Where she says, “attention taken to its highest degree is the same as prayer.” And so I think about that with the love poem as well. If it’s a form of prayer as well, it’s this highest attention.

Helena de Groot: Absolutely.

Chen Chen: Deepest attention.

Helena de Groot: Yeah.

Chen Chen: Should I read the other one?

Helena de Groot: Yes, please.

Chen Chen: So this is from the same book. It’s on page 80.

Helena de Groot: Okay.

Chen Chen: It’s called, “Spell to Find Family.” And this is dedicated to Kundiman, which is an organization that supports Asian American readers and writers. And I love that they added that to their mission statement that it’s Asian American readers and writers. That, yeah, as readers, we need that nourishment and support as well.

Helena de Groot: Yeah.

Chen Chen: And so, I wrote this one … I started writing it during my first Kundiman writer’s retreat, which was in 2014, which feels like ages ago now. But I was just so moved to be there around all these other Asian American writers and in these rooms where I felt like I didn’t need to explain so much and I could just be there.

Helena de Groot: Yeah.

Chen Chen: So this is “Spell To Find Family.”

(READS POEM)

I thirst for the starlight

that opens elephant skin.

I thirst for the raven

conjugated into riven

by summer storm.

My job is to trick adults

into knowing they have

hearts. My heart whose

irregular plural form is

Hermes. My Hermes

whose mouths are wings

& thieves, begging

the moon for a flood

of wolves, the reddest

honey. My job is to trick

myself into believing

there are new ways

to find impossible honey.

For I do not know all the faces

of my family, on this earth.

Perhaps it will take a lifetime

(or five) to discover every

sister, brother. Heartbeat

elephantine, serpentine,

opposite of saturnine.

I drive in the downpour,

the road conjugated

into uproar, by hearts

I do not know.

By the guttural & gargantuan

highway lion. The 18-wheeler

whose shawl of mist is a mane

of newborn grandmothers.

Helena de Groot: Thank you. Tell me about this poem. I want to hear why you chose it as an example of a love poem.

Chen Chen: Yeah, I think this is a poem about community love. And about family in the sense of chosen family, found family, the family that you find along the way, once you’re traveling on a certain path. And for me, this poetry path has led me to all of this family that I did not know and I couldn’t have known otherwise.

Helena de Groot: Yeah.

Chen Chen: The very fact of our gathering is premised on this shared dreaming.

Helena de Groot: Yeah.

Chen Chen: To dream together about, what else could a family look like, where, instead of shared, you know, biology or shared origins, it’s more about, I think, turning toward the future, which does involve a lot of thinking about the past, obviously. But, yeah, that’s what I mean by this shared dreaming. That the kind of family that we can be is the family that we’re making and we’re building toward, you know, right now. And so, it was just so moving to me to be in that space that was also just incredibly nonhierarchical, where the instructors, which that year included Marilyn Chin, the legendary poet—

Helena de Groot: Right, yeah.

Chen Chen: —and trailblazer Marilyn Chin, Eugene Gloria, and Michelle Naka Pierce. So they were the faculty. And then on staff, there was Jennifer Chang, and the cofounders of Kundiman were at the retreat that year as well. So Joseph Legaspi and Sarah Gambito are just such incredible poets as well as mentors and just community builders. Where I just saw so much of what was possible. You know, Sarah and Joseph just, they had a conversation one day in New York where they were like, “Why isn’t there a space like this, you know, for Asian American writers? Why don’t we make that space?”

Helena de Groot: Right.

Chen Chen: And then they did! Which is just, so beautiful and astonishing to me. And that was one of the biggest lessons, other than, you know, craft and, you know, writing.

Helena de Groot: Yeah.

Chen Chen: But being in that space was really like, oh, like if you can dream it, and if you can dream it with other people who are just as passionate and inventive and resourceful, then you can make it. You can make it together, right. And that’s the whole point, is that none of us can do this by ourselves, but if we talk to each other and see, oh, this is what’s needed. This doesn’t exist yet, but it should and it can if we come together and build it. Yeah.

Helena de Groot: What you’re saying now reminds me of what we were talking about at the beginning, you know, when we were talking about these … the way that there is no sharp delineation between creating a poem and creating an omelet, let’s say, or dancing, you know, that we are constantly creating. That that’s just who we are as creatures.

Chen Chen: Yeah. Yes. Yes. And that includes—

Helena de Groot: Yeah. Creating community.

Chen Chen: Yes, exactly. Yeah. Creating community can also be a poetic act.

Helena de Groot: Yeah.

Chen Chen: If we think about, you know, poetry at its best, what it can do for us as people, then we can apply that same logic and that same dreaming to, yeah, creating and fostering community, because I think sometimes we get stuck thinking that this thing that we want has to look a certain way. Right. Doing it correctly.

Helena de Groot: Right.

Chen Chen: That this is the correct way that a poetry retreat should go. This is the correct way that a residency should go, or a prize should go, or editing should go. And a journal should only look like this. But if we are really using our fullest poetic imagination and we’re bringing that to not only our poems, but all these other human activities that we love and are engaged in, then we can start talking about and start creating very different kind of spaces.

Helena de Groot: Yeah! I’m curious how, you know, because you and your friend, Sam Herschell Wein have created a magazine, Underblong.

Chen Chen: Yeah.

Helena de Groot: A poetry magazine. And so I’m wondering, can you give me an example of, like, a thing that you do at that magazine that is maybe not the correct, you know, way of doing things, but that you feel is important?

Chen Chen: Yeah, I’ll talk about two things, which both I think are really Sam’s ideas. So I’ll just give him all the praise and credit, because I love these two aspects of the magazine. One is with our editor’s notes. So that’s, I mean, that’s a common feature for many literary magazines where you have this letter, a note from the editors at the beginning of each issue. But the way that we write them. Well, one, we write them together. So it’s coming from both of us and it is a complete collaboration. It’s like, we write each sentence together. (LAUGHS)

Helena de Groot: (LAUGHS) Wait, how does that—can you walk me practically how that works? I know it, like, really detailed.

Chen Chen: I never thought I could do that, right.

Helena de Groot: Right.

Chen Chen: You’re used to thinking of writing coming from this kind of private place. And often poems are like that, but even—because we’ve written poems together, too, so it’s just mind blowing to me. So we, as with many of our collaborations, it happens in Google Docs. And so, Sam will just start a fresh Google doc, and we’ll get in there together and start talking about what have we been thinking about, and what are the poems that we have picked for the issue? What are they making us think about differently or anew? And the poems are just so full of life and strangeness that inevitably, you know, that affects our language as editors, trying to describe what putting together the latest issue has been like. But also, you know, we include life updates. You know, we talk about what’s been happening, what’s been on our minds since the previous issue. And so it gets quite personal as well. And I love that aspect, too, because it’s also kind of this documented way for us to check in with one another. And then it’s this little archive that is then saved. So I love that. And then the other—and we just, you know, we get really kind of funny and vulgar in those notes, too. So (LAUGHING) I think that’s also very different from the typical editor’s note.

Helena de Groot: Yeah.

Chen Chen: Where we just let ourselves speak how we speak to each other. So you get a glimpse of that close friendship and what sparks it. But they’re kind of like aggressively anti-professional. (LAUGHS)

Helena de Groot: Yes. This is so important, by the way. I really, you know, the professionalization of poetry irritates me to no end.

Chen Chen: Yeah! Like, if we’re talking about language as poets, right, we don’t—this is the whole point—we don’t want everything to sound the same.

Helena de Groot: Yeah.

Chen Chen: And we don’t want everything to look the same. And so, why shouldn’t we use that poetic imagination in these other places too, right?

Helena de Groot: Yeah.

Chen Chen: Oh, the other thing, which is, it’s very related to how we do these editor’s notes. It’s just, because we’ve brought on this whole team of readers, and we’ve brought on a managing editor, and this has happened over the past year. And we were really serious and in-depth about this process, because we felt like the people that we’re bringing on, they weren’t just joining a literary magazine, but they were joining a community. And we wanted that to be very clear. And we wanted to bring on people who were interested and invested in creating community and sort of pushing us further, right, in terms of our tastes and what we’re doing with the magazine, but also expanding the community. So when we have team meetings, we do these check-ins. You know, we don’t jump right into business, even when maybe we should, (LAUGHS) because we’re always behind in getting the issue together.

Helena de Groot: Yeah.

But it’s just such an important, vital reminder that we are also people to one another and together. And so we always have some kind of check-in. And sometimes it’s very quick. Sometimes there’s sort of an icebreaker-y question that we all answer. And then other times it’s just like, “How has your week been?” Or, “What’s changed in your life since the last time we talked?” And so there’s just this sharing, and people can get as personal as they want, as professional as they want. I mean, it’s great to celebrate each other’s achievements as well. But yeah, often it’s just like, “Oh, what are you making for dinner today?” Like, “What are you going to eat later?” (LAUGHING) And—

Helena de Groot: (LAUGHING) Back to food.

Chen Chen: Yeah! Or like, “Did you go on a good date?” Or, “Did you go to a horrible date?” Like, “Tell us all about that.” Like, “What is the gossip?” And so, it’s just really lovely. And I feel like that really informs then how we’re able to talk about poems together or talk about other projects of the magazine, because then it just feels like, oh, like we’re all getting to know each other as well.

Helena de Groot: Yeah.

Chen Chen: And we’re also not assuming that we’re all going to be on the same page. And we’re not assuming that, you know, we’re all close friends before that’s really happened. And I think that’s so crucial for an actual community, because I think sometimes the term itself “community” becomes purely symbolic. It’s just a signifier pointing to something that’s actually much more complicated or something that hasn’t even really grown yet in an organic way, where people actually know each other. And that doesn’t mean, like, agreement. In fact, it means being open to all sorts of difference. But you have to be in real conversation with each other for community to happen. So, yeah, I think, it bothers me sometimes when people say “community” in a very similar way to the way that I see, you know, huge institutions and corporations using that term. You know, like, oh, “the LGBT community,” right, during Pride month, when all the corporations are suddenly interested again.

Helena de Groot: Mm-hmm.

Chen Chen: But like, what does that mean? You know? I think actual community is, it has to be a very localized. You know, it’s like, oh, what are we gathering around, and why? Can we actually talk about that?

(MUSIC PLAYING)

Helena de Groot: Yeah. Yeah. Well, let’s shift gears a bit. At the beginning we were talking about listening to yourself. And how important that is, to be kind of finely attuned to the rhythms of your own aliveness. And it makes me think about this—you know, one of the things I loved so much about your prompt book is that, the first the very first prompt is make an omelet. You know, number nine is “Rest.”

Chen Chen: Yeah.

Helena de Groot: A lot of numbers are “Rest,” by the way, which I thought was great. And I was wondering if you can read number 32, which is on page 17.

Chen Chen: 32. Oh, yeah, yes. This is all based on visiting Sam in Chicago and going to this Korean spa, King Spa, which is just a great place. Yeah, so this is 32.

(READS PROMPT)

If you can afford to:

Go to King Spa and Sauna in Niles, Illinois. Shower. Smoke. Steam. Soak. Steam.

Try the Amethyst Room. Try the Fire Room, the Ice Room.

Sit.

Drink a mango smoothie.

Eat sundubu-jjigae with seafood medley.

Meditate on the word medley until you feel your own gooey melty center.

Drink slowly. Eat with relish.

Notice how your body is a body and yours.

Helena de Groot: Thank you. I think it’s such an inviting way to enter a prompt. You know, that this is the writing prompt. This is how you nourish your writing body.

Chen Chen: I also just think it’s so important to eat and drink. (LAUGHS)

Helena de Groot: Yes.

Chen Chen: I mean now I feel like I am becoming my mother (LAUGHING) in ways.

Helena de Groot: (LAUGHS)

Chen Chen: Or I just start finding myself, like, going around like at this residency that I was teaching at, like, just wanting to check in with people and being like, “Oh have you eaten yet? Do you feel full? Are you still hungry? Do you need water?”

Helena de Groot: Yeah.

Chen Chen: Because it’s just like, you know, I used to kind of scoff at that when I was younger. (LAUGHS)

Helena de Groot: Yes.

Chen Chen: Like, oh, that’s not as important as, you know, the real work of writing.

Helena de Groot: Yeah.

Chen Chen: You know, of study. But no, it’s just as important. It’s just as important. Like, have you gotten enough sleep. Like, what’s your energy? Just, how are you feeling in your body right now? That’s always important.

Helena de Groot: I love that. Thank you so much. Yeah, for the reminder as much as anything, you know, I mean, seriously, I do these interviews in part for like, it’s really an advice show is what it is. I don’t tell people that, because it doesn’t sound serious, but, you know. (LAUGHS)

Chen Chen: (LAUGHS) But it’s the most serious thing, actually.

Helena de Groot: Yeah.

Chen Chen: You know? If you really pause and think about that. It’s like you really, you can’t do anything, you’re in no place to do anything properly or fully until you’ve nourished yourself. Yeah.

(MUSIC PLAYING)

Helena de Groot: Chen Chen is the author of the full-length collection When I Grow Up I Want To Be a List of Further Possibilities, which won the A. Poulin, Jr. Poetry Prize, the Thom Gunn Award, and was longlisted for the National Book Award. He’s also written four chapbooks, Set the Garden on Fire, Kissing the Sphinx, You MUST Use the Word Smoothie (his book with writing prompts), and his latest, GESUNDHEIT!, which he co-authored with his best friend, Sam Herschel Wein. Chen is also coeditor (again with Wein) of a poetry magazine called Underblong, and he is working on his PhD at Brandeis University, and on his next-full length collection, Your Emergency Contact Has Experienced an Emergency, which will come out from BOA Editions next September. He has received two Pushcart Prizes and fellowships from Kundiman and the National Endowment for the Arts, and lives in Waltham, MA with his partner Jeff and their pug dog, Mr. Rupert Giles. To find out more, check out the Poetry Foundation website. The music in this episode is by Todd Sickafoose. I’m Helena de Groot, and this was Poetry Off the Shelf. Thank you for listening.

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