A review by jayisreading
Monsters I Have Been by Kenji C. Liu

challenging reflective medium-paced

4.0

These poems are really going to make you think, especially with how challenging they were. For one, Liu plays a lot with form in different ways. He effortlessly switches between English and Japanese (and not romanized, I should add), Frankensteining existing texts to create new meaning, incorporates half-finished musical notation, and more. In other words, Liu becomes Dr. Frankenstein himself in crafting monstrous poems that come alive with care and ferocity.

Another challenge is understanding Liu’s intentions in these poems. I’m aware of his particular interest in masculinity/ies, the monstrosity of it all, and the ties to other monstrosities such as racism and capitalism (among others). Frankly, I never would have pieced these together from the poems alone, and it was his notes at the end of the collection (titled “The Monstrosity: Notes Towards a Frankenpo”) that made things a lot clearer. (I’d even go so far as to suggest reading these first before the poems themselves.) Even with these notes, though, I found myself struggling a bit to fully grasp how these poems connected to these ideas. With that said, I know one of the reasons for this struggle was due to a lack of familiarity with a few of the referenced texts in this collection.

I’m going to have to revisit this collection again in the future. I’m intrigued by what Liu laid out in so many ways, but I definitely had a tough time making sense of a lot of it.
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