Appreciating poetry is often about patience: sitting with a poem, meditating on it, and re-reading it multiple times. With spoken word, we don’t always get a chance to do that. This series is about taking that chance, and diving a little deeper into some of the new poems going up on Button.
“Year after year she makes flowers bloom in the hood, petals in the face of this land that doesn’t want her here.”
In a few of these writeups, I’ve written about the immense power of identifying moments. When poems are less like movies and more like photographs, when they force us to look at a single scene rather than telling us the whole story, it gives us space to really sit with an idea, to grapple with it, to process it. This poem does that as well as any I can think of. Through this “small” narrative moment, something very “big” is communicated– about the USA, about the immigrant/refugee experience, about dignity, respect, and rage.
For me, that really gets at what poetry is, on a fundamental level. Sometimes, by just telling a story, or painting a picture of a specific memory, you can say more than some 10,000 word think-piece or essay.
And Bao Phi is so good at that. I make no secret of the fact that Bao is one of my favorite poets of all time, and that his two books, “Sông I Sing” and “Thousand Star Hotel,” are always in my top five list of book recommendations when people ask me what poetry they should read. This poem is a great introduction to his work, which so elegantly weaves together powerful personal narrative, unblinking ferocity, and a whole lot of heart.
Don’t miss this week’s Best of Button playlist, featuring the top-viewed recent videos on the Button YouTube Channel. Today’s additions: Rachel Wiley, Talia Young, & Brittany Rogers. Congratulations poets!
Check out Rachel’s forthcoming book, NOTHING IS OKAY, dropping March 2018!
“‘That time of the month’ has about double the amount of syllables as ‘period’.”
Congratulations to Raych Jackson on topping 500,000 views on this amazing poem. Check out more videos from Raych and the 2017 Rustbelt Poetry Festival here.
“I’m not here to make you comfortable, I’m here to free myself.”
Don’t miss this week’s Best of Button playlist, featuring the top-viewed recent videos on the Button YouTube Channel. Today’s additions: Neil Hilborn, Sam Sax, & Paul Tran! Congratulations poets!
“Fat girl walks into the doctor’s to ask about anti-depressants and gets prescribed exercise instead, because obviously her depression is because of her fat, and obviously fat bodies never exercise and stay fat.”
Congratulations to Rachel Wiley on topping 100,000 views on this remarkable poem. Check out more videos from Rachel here and here.
Don’t forget to check out Rachel’s forthcoming book, NOTHING IS OKAY, dropping March 2018!
In-Depth Look: Talia Young – “While My Love Sleeps I Cook Dinner”
Appreciating poetry is often about patience: sitting with a poem, meditating on it, and re-reading it multiple times. With spoken word, we don’t always get a chance to do that. This series is about taking that chance, and diving a little deeper into some of the new poems going up on Button.
“I call her love, as if she herself is love: something glowing and untouchable…”
Note how this poem explores the big, universal idea/trope/archetype of the long distance relationship through some stunningly specific imagery. For example, we could do a deep dive into just this passage:
“I tell my friends: I’m moving to a new country, because I have already left Minneapolis entirely. What exists between us? A piano string. A cord strung between two cups. All the veins in my body pulled taut.”
That sequence of three images works so well because each one is concrete– something that isn’t just an idea or a concept, but that you can visualize, or imagine holding in your hand. But there’s another layer to the sequence: each concrete image also belongs to the same family of images: they’re all string-like structures that enable some form of communication. It’s one thing to think of some cool images; it’s something else to have those images be consistent and supportive of one another.
Finally, there’s the additional effect of the last of the three images being something fantastical– it’s still easy to visualize, but it’s also bizarre (in a good way) and evocative. That rhythm– example, example, fantastical example– powerfully reinforces what the line, and the poem as a whole, is trying to say about the relationship between love, distance, and technology.
The poem also includes lines like “Our love in the shaky hands of the wifi” and the climactic: “I imagine a room in which every text is preserved in its own carved wooden box; I imagine all of this is physical, somewhere.” Both of these lines say something profound not just about long distance relationships in a general sense, but about how those relationships work right now, in this historical moment. That impulse– to document the specificity of the actual experience rather than attempt to capture some storybook archetype of what we think that experience “should” look like– serves this poem so well.
