Reviews

I tried to ask my parents to leave the room,
but not my life. It was very hard. Because the room was the size
of my life. Because my life was small. & wanted to eat candy corn
instead of confrontation. Raising one's voice in a small place
felt at once godlike & childish.

Chen Chen's poetry echoes this sudden and quite overwhelming transition from adolescence to adulthood, with all its demands to live up to this or that expectation, and to do it all so effortlessly, as if breaking out of the child-mould you've lived in your entire life came naturally. It is relatable needless to say, but at times I couldn't help feeling like it was slipping into some terribly mundane, self-evident tirades. This is not a bad approach, objectively speaking, I'm just not a fan of what once could call 'millenial rant' poetry. And there's a LOT of that in this collection.

Otherwise, Chen Chen has a distinct and rather confident poetic voice; he maintains a very teenager-ish point of view, which allows him a funny and painfully honest exploration of adult life; but mostly he's very wise, and it's fun to read & see where this childlike sincerity meets the wisdom. I can't wait to see how his writing will change throughout the following years!

barnesbookshelf's review

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4.0

I will admit, some of the poems in this collection were a little too abstract for me. But others were welcomed punches in the gut.

I like a lot of the contradictions Chen uses. They don't always feel like they should make sense, but they do. I really like "Poem in Noisy Mouthfuls".

I would like to check out more of Chen's poetry in the future.

ddillon154's review

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3.0

A good book but poetry just isn't my thing.

roseandswan's review

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5.0

I wrote a five-page paper analyzing one stanza of one poem in this collection, and I think that says everything.

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