Through Poem-a-Day, which I sometimes check, I've discovered a delightful young poet named Chen Chen. The title of his first book, When I Grow Up, I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities, gives a sense of his playful wisdom. The poem I first encountered him through, "I Invite my Parents to a Dinner Party," gives a sense of some of the topics he takes up as a Chinese-born gay American poet. Imagine my pleasure at discovering the second poem in his book is called "I am not a religious person but." (You can read it here.)
His lines are generally too long for the format of this blog, giddy cataracts of words, sentences spilling from one line to the next. They're full of wit and humor, joy and pathos, and mock- and not so mock seriousness. Impossible to excerpt! A line from a poem later in the book, "Ode to My Envy" (it comes right after "Elegy for My Sadness"), has stayed with me all day. It's the penultimate line in this chunk:
... Every day I get
increasingly envious of my friend who dresses more smartly.
Of my friend who's more political. Of my friend who says,
Oh, that's good enough, why am I stressing out? & means it
& stops stressing & is happy. I'm envious of my friend who's
envious of me because he actually wants something I have.
I'm envious of those who learn Life Lessons from their envy.
...
His lines are generally too long for the format of this blog, giddy cataracts of words, sentences spilling from one line to the next. They're full of wit and humor, joy and pathos, and mock- and not so mock seriousness. Impossible to excerpt! A line from a poem later in the book, "Ode to My Envy" (it comes right after "Elegy for My Sadness"), has stayed with me all day. It's the penultimate line in this chunk:
... Every day I get
increasingly envious of my friend who dresses more smartly.
Of my friend who's more political. Of my friend who says,
Oh, that's good enough, why am I stressing out? & means it
& stops stressing & is happy. I'm envious of my friend who's
envious of me because he actually wants something I have.
I'm envious of those who learn Life Lessons from their envy.
...
(Rochester, NY: BOA Editions, 2017), 39
