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Reviews tagging 'Hate crime'
Your Emergency Contact Has Experienced an Emergency by Chen Chen
3 reviews
monalyisha's review against another edition
emotional
funny
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
sad
slow-paced
4.0
Chen Chen has a way of criticizing people who criticize his poems with such a succinct and biting wit that you NEVER want to criticize one of his poems. 🙈 However, I, too, would prefer that he not use the word “poop” or share so mindfully about his bowel movements. Some would label him immature for indulging in “potty talk.” Others would call the intensity of the taboo itself immature.
What’s not immature is the deep respect he has for language, how he parses it, and how he plays with it. He understands what (and who) is considered beautiful and what is not; what (and who) is considered intellectual, deep, and profound, and what is not; he embraces these ideas AND upends them to great effect.
I enjoyed this collection less than “When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities.” Still, there are poems I loved (“The School of Fury”, “a small book of questions: chapter iii”, “Summer” [Your emergency contact…], “Summer” [The sunflowers fall…], “The School of Eternities”, & “我疼你”) — poems which have nary a whiff of the aforementioned taboo. When I finished ““I am reminded via email to resubmit my preferences for the schedule”, I read it again. And I cried (with a sense of yearning). Then, I read it again.
I respect Chen Chen for being so very much himself. And when I grow up, I still want to be Chen’s friend (even if it means that he’d inevitably expose an invalid critique I made or something ignorant I said in one of his works; it’d be so beyond worth it. Imagine watching just a single episode of Buffy by his side).
*Some favorite lines include:
•from “Summer” [Your emergency contact…]:
“The mother cockroach says, “In the event of a sudden loss of cabin meaning, back-up meanings will drop from the overhead compartment…Please grab hold of a meaning & pull it to your face.”
•from “Summer” [the sunflowers fall…]:
“Many of the things I miss are pretty silly. Pretty & silly, & I miss them deeply.”
“I think it’s what any artist hopes for: not only to be remembered, but to be company.”
•from The School of Night & Hyphens”:
“come teach me a little bit
of nothing, in the dark
abundant hours.”
What’s not immature is the deep respect he has for language, how he parses it, and how he plays with it. He understands what (and who) is considered beautiful and what is not; what (and who) is considered intellectual, deep, and profound, and what is not; he embraces these ideas AND upends them to great effect.
I enjoyed this collection less than “When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities.” Still, there are poems I loved (“The School of Fury”, “a small book of questions: chapter iii”, “Summer” [Your emergency contact…], “Summer” [The sunflowers fall…], “The School of Eternities”, & “我疼你”) — poems which have nary a whiff of the aforementioned taboo. When I finished ““I am reminded via email to resubmit my preferences for the schedule”, I read it again. And I cried (with a sense of yearning). Then, I read it again.
I respect Chen Chen for being so very much himself. And when I grow up, I still want to be Chen’s friend (even if it means that he’d inevitably expose an invalid critique I made or something ignorant I said in one of his works; it’d be so beyond worth it. Imagine watching just a single episode of Buffy by his side).
*Some favorite lines include:
•from “Summer” [Your emergency contact…]:
“The mother cockroach says, “In the event of a sudden loss of cabin meaning, back-up meanings will drop from the overhead compartment…Please grab hold of a meaning & pull it to your face.”
•from “Summer” [the sunflowers fall…]:
“Many of the things I miss are pretty silly. Pretty & silly, & I miss them deeply.”
“I think it’s what any artist hopes for: not only to be remembered, but to be company.”
•from The School of Night & Hyphens”:
“come teach me a little bit
of nothing, in the dark
abundant hours.”
Moderate: Racism, Homophobia, and Hate crime
avisreadsandreads's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
funny
mysterious
reflective
sad
medium-paced
3.0
Moderate: Excrement, Hate crime, Racial slurs, Racism, Grief, Death, and Homophobia
Minor: Car accident
shellroch285's review against another edition
challenging
hopeful
reflective
fast-paced
5.0
Chen Chen is just…so good. I love his humor, I love the way he arranges his poems, I love how they talk about things I would never expect to appear together in a piece. I feel like this poems make my soul glow <3
Moderate: Racism and Hate crime
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