A Review of Michael Chang's BOYFRIEND PERSPECTIVE

Publisher: Really Serious Literature
Release Date: September 9, 2021

In the battle of style versus substance, great writers seek the détente. If their substance is the ammunition, the bomb they are dropping, the style comes in like a spy, whispering into the eager ears of the reader, preparing, making the argument, for there is always an argument, palatable and charming. As Victor Hugo states, “Style is the substance of the subject called unceasingly to the surface.”

If poetic style is seduction and substance is the penetration, the poet Michael Chang offers both in 男友•视角BOYFRIEND PERSPECTIVE (Really Serious Literature, Fall 2021). As they say in the poem STRANGER DANGER, “A lot of ppl write pretty words but don’t say shit.” Michael Chang has the polish and the perspective to say so much in a way you won’t forget, and this full length is the rare book that will both teach you things and make you laugh.

I have to confess Michael Chang is one of my very favorite poets. I was honored to publish “Area Code 604,” in my anthology Pinkprint and nominate it for Best of the Net. This poem introduced me to Chang’s charmingly potent perspective. The poem seamlessly alternates between the personal, the sexual, the political from the Stanford Prison Experiment, Chinese Exclusion to sexual domination. It was love at first read to me, and I’ve been a big fan ever since.

I felt honored to get a sneak peek at 男友•视角BOYFRIEND PERSPECTIVE in order to write this review. Per usual with Chang’s poetry, it is full of:

wisdom – “everyone carries with them the capacity to wound, to disappoint; the sooner you realize that, the better off you’ll be,” ADMISSION

writing advice – “you can lie in poems,” PRAIRIE OYSTER

literary criticism – “good art is always smarter than the person who made it,” PINK STEGOSAURUS

philosophy – “Lately I have been so delighted by movies about shoplifters & scam artists & ppl really sticking it to the Man, stealing, but I find myself rooting for the underdog, revenge of the nerds & some such, you’re programmed in this country to want the underdog to win,” SEAN ★LENNON

survival tips – “When approached by law enforcement: avoid unprovoked / flight, do not call them pigs, do not be black, know your / rights (you have none), regret your existence, get a lawyer (if / still alive),” RULES FOR AMERICAN LIFE

political commentary – “we need a government where we don’t have to / depend on the mercy of bureaucrats or the kindness of / strangers,” 零 (ZERO)

queerness – “in China, ‘bitten peach’ is code for queerness,” UGLYCUTE

boys - “a boy, to put it plainly, is a loathsome thing,” ROSEBUD

film commentary – “I want to have never seen Jurassic Park / I want to be / unburdened by the knowledge of Jeff Goldblum as sex / symbol,” HIGH DRAMA PANDA FURY

racism – “we order duck confit & baked alaska / not knowing what to / expect / they say what a pretty family / too bad they are chinks,” FIELD NOTES ON THE PRODIGAL SON

pop culture – “is Ryan Murphy killing off the cast of Glee,” BRIGHT WHITE NOISE 天使脸 • 恶魔心

I could pull lines from this manuscript for pages that delight, enlighten, infuriate and encourage me. It’s the style of the poet to interpose the trivia of modern life with substantive universal truths about racism, homophobia, xenophobia and the judicial system. They do this uniquely well in a way that solidifies why Michael Chang is a poet’s poet – someone so many writers I know respect fiercely and admire.

In a poem like 零 (ZERO), Congressional testimony by the Director of Central Intelligence Roscoe Hillenkoetter on the subject of homosexuals being unfit to hold public office is dissected by Chang and annotated with personal commentary. It is a powerful juxtaposition of a broader policy that I myself, a bisexual person, was, naively, unaware of -- more aware of the modern and equally hate-filled debate about military service for the openly homosexual. Chang includes excerpts of the testimony like “homosexuals have ‘psychopathic tendencies which affect the soundness of their judgment, physical cowardice, susceptibility to pressure and general instability, thus making a pervert vulnerable in many ways.” While I’m sadly not completely shocked at this outrageous hate speech, it was very powerful to see the efforts to codify such beliefs and prohibit any kind of general public service.

零 (ZERO) is a poem that reflects a way of thinking that still exists in puritanical, conservative subcultures today. In the Deep South, where I’m from, it represents a lot of my fears of being discovered to be bisexual – an essential component of myself; my puritanically, abusive family still does not know. Chang educates, offers a substantive cultural commentary of the history of this prejudice. That they can do this while interspersing facts with chuckles about Snoopy and Dairy Queen is what eliminates the potential pedantry of such a discourse. Chang couches this horrible history between giggles and the personal.

They are the ultimate cool teacher who knows how to speak a startling intelligence in the language of the student. Their pithy, pop cultural references invite a reader, first, to relate, then to commiserate with the difficulties of their perspective and ultimately to celebrate -- for Chang’s is a voice that deserves to be celebrated. It imbues, ultimately, a joy in the details of the collective human experience. But what makes Chang inspirational and exceptional is their ability to hold one’s perspective in life inside the frame of a poem and write from it with utter confidence and authority. This full length is full of pretty words and says a lot of shit we all need to hear about hate and love in all its forms.

Kristin Garth is a Pushcart, Rhysling nominated sonneteer and a Best of the Net 2020 finalist. Her sonnets have stalked journals like Glass, Yes, Five:2:One, Luna Luna and more. She is the author of 23 books of poetry including Candy Cigarette Womanchild Noir (Hedgehog Poetry Press) and Atheist Barbie (Maverick Duck Press). She is the founder of Pink Plastic House a tiny journal and co-founder of Performance Anxiety, an online poetry reading series. Follow her on Twitter: (@lolaandjolie) and her website kristingarth.com

Taxonomy of Grief: A Review of Adedayo Agarau's the arrival of rain

Publisher: Vegetarian Alcoholic Press (2020)
ISBN: 978-1-952055-00-3

Like the author's first chapbook, For Boys Who Went, the significant theme in this book is of a country scarred by ineptitude and episodes of terrorist attacks – leaving a number of families broken, forever; whose major actors are corrupt leaders and the Boko Haram insurgent groups. But unlike the first chapbook, it explores the theme of Identity.

Naturally put, following the arrival of rain, man generally expects flowers to bloom and fruits to grow or ripen; in its metaphoric application and especially in this collection, this implies peace, freedom, birth and can even be the pleasure derived while worshipping the goddess of eros; as expressly enunciated by the poet in "two weeks before my birthday;"

"i am cumming ade / i am still waiting for the arrival of rain"

While exploring the governmental ineptitude amidst myriad challenges bedeviling the growth of Nigeria, Agarau recreates the various events that led to this sorry state in gory images. In "the origin of loss (pg. 33)" we read of a mother who lost her son to gunshot in an insurgent attack:

“there is nothing as lucid as a dead boy / & his mother kneeling beside the halved moon leaking out of his body / a shadow sinking into the ground / a fainting of bird songs;”

He lucidly narrates the ambush further towards the end of the poem: "...synagogue stacked with dead choirs / the mother of the boy sits beside her son and cries / there is nothing said that will take that loss away"

And in "a small dialogue about running (pg. 36)," he writes:

“in kubwa, this is how women match / the night with grief: / they go back into the village whose walls / opened for staccato of bullets / one goes into her house to find her husband's head split into a blend”

Amidst the insecurity staccato is the fear of been killed or detained to not be found again by the security operatives, is the issue of unemployment which has resulted to a number of graduates leaving the country for greener pasture elsewhere, is also those who have no where to go. The poet thus in “what it means to be freed by your country (pg. 25)” tells us what to expect from the citizens – especially the youth, in reaction to the failing country;

"the boy will someday rise into a / revolution, men revolting against a country that asks for heads / instead of thumbs, blood instead of nods..."

These lines for me validate the notion that poets are prophets (or gods) as what he referred to as "someday" happened following the publication of the book. After the Nigeria’s 60th Independence Day celebration on October 1st, 2020, Nigerian Youth expressed further their dissatisfaction over bad governance. They started with a protest calling for the ban of the Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS) of the Nigerian Police Force who have killed a number of young Nigerians extrajudicially. Represented by the #EndSARS hashtag with placards reading “Looking Good Is Not A Crime,” “Stop Killing the Leaders of Tomorrow,” among others, it began in Lagos, then Abuja until it became a nationwide demonstration and got international recognition. For days, #EndSARS was the leading trend on Twitter so much that Jack, CEO of Twitter, endorsed it by posting same and created an emoticon of a 'held up fist' in solidarity. Nigerians in diaspora also staged protest in their various places such as London, Toronto, Chicago, Dubai, Dublin and elsewhere with placards reading, among others, "We Don't Go Home Because of SARS." Police brutality is not the only pandemic eating up Nigerians, but tackling it was a first step to tackling bad governance amidst the insecurity issues.

In furtherance of this big theme, the poet explores “Identity;” and to analyze identity is to dissect how a man is seen, how he sees himself and how he wants to be seen.

While Agarau gives us five clear portraits of how he wants to be seen with five poems from the "first portrait as adedayo..." to the "fifth portrait as adedayo...;" he gives us another set of five portraits of how sees himself. On this, see "a portrait of me standing by the sea (pg. 17)," "self portrait as a castaway (pg. 18)," "self portrait as an urchin in agbowo praying during maghrib (pg. 19)," "untitled (pg. 22)" and "boy, down (pg. 31);" then, the portraits of how he is seen are littered across the book like fallen nests in harmattan. Quickly, in “third portrait as adedayo (pg. 28),” he reveals that: “my shadow carries another sunrise on its back / still, there is no ounce of light in the corner / of my mouth.”

To determine which is most important among these three perspectives is both psychological gymnastic and emotional sophistry; it differs from person to person. However, there is a common burden placed on the boy child in every home in our own part of the world: the burden of expectations – to be strong, to not cry when sad, to always be on the street hustling and should not sleep when ill; as if boys are stones. In the "fourth portrait as adedayo, or the barren tree at the mokola cemetery," we read:

"i reimagine myself as choir singing a cathedral / out of my father's little wounds / i reimagine every house as a fire singeing a boy's skin”

In the spirit of identity and while further deepening the theme of grief, the poet says in “untitled” that “my name is adedayo / that is crown becomes joy / but i carry a coronet nursed by slaves / means i am a diadem in the mud”

In the end, we can describe the mood of the work as chiefly one of grief, the atmosphere as unsettling and the tone, of anger, frustration, fear and "hope." Yes, notwithstanding these confusions and tumults, a community reading of some lines points at hope and certainty. See:

"ija dopin ogun sitan / halleluyah / dancing / halleluyah," pg. 12.
"i am still waiting for the arrival of rain," pg. 29
"everything gone will someday return as rain," pg. 42

A work of art, in as few as it does not fail in depth, grammar and velocity of language, is perfect. Thus, “the arrival of rain” is successful in the art and aesthetic brilliance. Therefore now, as you pick the arrival of rain, look for agbowo, mokola, zawiyah, and their significance in the poet's Nigerianness; as well as hozier, placards, minarets, clarinets, ololufe, banderner, and their roles in the delivery of this collection of thirty-five electric poems, this collection of rainwater.

Taofeek Ayeyemi fondly called Aswagaawy is a Nigerian lawyer, writer and author of the chapbook Tongueless Secrets (Ethel Press, 2021) and a collection aubade at night or serenade in the morning (Flowersong Press, TBD 2021). His works have appeared or forthcoming in Contemporary Verse 2, Lucent Dreaming, Ethel-zine, Up-the-Staircase Quarterly, FERAL, ARTmosterrific, Banyan Review, tinywords, the QuillS and elsewhere. He won the 2021 Loft Books Flash Fiction Competition and Honorable Mention in 2020 Stephen A. DiBiase Poetry Prize among others.

Adedayo Agarau is the third-place winner of the Frontier Industry Prize, 2020. His chapbook, Origin of Names, was selected by Chris Abani and Kwame Dawes for New Generation African Poet (African Poetry Book Fund), 2020. He is the author of three chapbooks, For Boys Who Went, The Arrival of Rain and The Origin of Names. Adedayo is the Editor for New International Voices at IceFloe Press and the Assistant Editor at Animal Heart Press. His works have appeared or are forthcoming in Agbowo, Frontier Poetry, Glass Poetry, Mineral Lit, Perhappenned, Temz, Linden Avenue, Headway Lit, The Shore, and elsewhere. Adedayo curated and edited a newish poetry anthology by Nigerian poets, Memento: An Anthology of Contemporary Nigerian Poetry.