When I was in grad school, I wanted desperately to find love. The kind that appears in sonnet sequences. Where the poet is clearly desperate. Because whenever he finishes one poem, he has to start another immediately. And while there were poets who could weave eagerness into a sophisticated tone of voice, like Shakespeare. I admit my love was more on brand with Sidney’s Astrophel and Stella. The poet as maniacal desire. Who projects himself entirely, encumberingly, and pathetically onto a situation he perceives, and relentlessly pursues. Love as a jigsaw of body parts. Love as an integument I thought I could wrap around my beloved. And, of course, the unfortunate side of love like this is it exist in only one person’s mind. Unfortunate for Astrophel, because he would never know the real love of mutual interest and attraction. And especially unfortunate for Stella, who would have likely known of Astrophel’s desire, but was tactfully avoiding a confrontation the whole time.
The sonnet sequence also proved a reasonable ground for me learning what feminism is. Sidney’s sonnets exemplify the male poetic fantasy. But their male-only point of view need not be the extent of what the reader is reading for. Consider how Yongyu Chen’s Perennial Counterpart disperses, broadens, and metabolizes attention paid to them by friends, or people around them. Not that Chen is referencing any part of the sonnet form. Instead consider the dynamics of a sonnet’s relationship. Chen’s poems, often addressed to and framed by correspondence with someone dear to them, like “Yun Qin” or “Peter” or “R,” operate in that poetics occupying the me and thee. But where the sonneteer would normally be reaching out to the beloved, I prefer reading Chen’s poems from the beloved’s point of view. Chen does not impose their feelings; they take a step back from the interpersonal and craft a poetic situation from their removal. Think of how it feels when someone has entered your space, and you concede that space to them, then fill the poem in around that.
The poems Chen crafts express a vivid and especially visual interpretation of concession. Like the space displaced should should have overwhelmed the poet, and to a degree it does. But there’s also that feeling when a poet harnesses the moment. It drives Chen’s lyric voice and shapes an immersion that blurs vision and sentiment. What does it mean when someone is coming close, but you’re unsure what that coming closer would really mean? Is is or should it be that intimacy must necessarily point to love? Chen’s poems have a relaxed pace, a compliance. And they’re filled with an anxious interest in what the relationship with this other person might be. It’s like in a canoe, when you pull the water in one direction, and the water fills into that space. That turbulent activity as the water seeks its equilibrium, that is the consistency and presence of Chen’s poems.
The following tags are a purely subjective approach I’ve used for reading this book. Tagging, for me, acknowledges that slotting a book into hard categories or “schools” can be elusive when it comes to 21st Century poetry. In response, I’ve developed tags whose lenses operate from subject matter, identity poetics, and stylistics.