When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities (A. Poulin, Jr. New Poets of America)

by Chen Chen (Author), Chen Chen (Author), Jericho Brown (Foreword)

New
Paperback
2017
$12.74

In this ferocious and tender debut, Chen Chen investigates inherited forms of love and family--the strained relationship between a mother and son, the cost of necessary goodbyes--all from Asian American, immigrant, and queer perspectives. Holding all accountable, this collection fully embraces the loss, grief, and abundant joy that come with charting one's own path in identity, life, and love. In the Hospital My mother was in the hospital & everyone wanted to be my friend. But I was busy making a list: good dog, bad citizen, short skeleton, tall mocha. Typical Tuesday. My mother was in the hospital & no one wanted to be her friend. Everyone wanted to be soft cooing sympathies. Very reasonable pigeons. No one had the time & our solution to it was to buy shinier watches. We were enamored with what our wrists could declare. My mother was in the hospital & I didn't want to be her friend. Typical son. Tall latte, short tale, bad plot, great wifi in the atypical cafe. My mother was in the hospital & she didn't want to be her friend. She wanted to be the family grocery list. Low-fat yogurt, firm tofu. She didn't trust my father to be it. You always forget something, she said, even when I do the list for you. Even then. Chen Chen was born in Xiamen, China, and grew up in Massachusetts. His work has appeared in two chapbooks and in such publications as Poetry, Gulf Coast, Indiana Review, Best of the Net, and The Best American Poetry. The recipient of the 2016 A. Poulin, Jr. Poetry Prize, he has been awarded fellowships from Kundiman, the Saltonstall Foundation, Lambda Literary, and in 2015, he was a finalist for the Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellowships. He earned his BA at Hampshire College and his MFA at Syracuse University. Currently, he is pursuing a PhD in English and Creative Writing at Texas Tech University. Chen lives in Lubbock, Texas, with his partner, Jeff Gilbert, and their pug dog, Rupert Giles.

Synopsis

In this ferocious and tender debut, Chen Chen investigates inherited forms of love and family--the strained relationship between a mother and son, the cost of necessary goodbyes--all from Asian American, immigrant, and queer perspectives. Holding all accountable, this collection fully embraces the loss, grief, and abundant joy that come with charting one's own path in identity, life, and love. In the Hospital My mother was in the hospital & everyone wanted to be my friend. But I was busy making a list: good dog, bad citizen, short skeleton, tall mocha. Typical Tuesday. My mother was in the hospital & no one wanted to be her friend. Everyone wanted to be soft cooing sympathies. Very reasonable pigeons. No one had the time & our solution to it was to buy shinier watches. We were enamored with what our wrists could declare. My mother was in the hospital & I didn't want to be her friend. Typical son. Tall latte, short tale, bad plot, great wifi in the atypical cafe. My mother was in the hospital & she didn't want to be her friend. She wanted to be the family grocery list. Low-fat yogurt, firm tofu. She didn't trust my father to be it. You always forget something, she said, even when I do the list for you. Even then. Chen Chen was born in Xiamen, China, and grew up in Massachusetts. His work has appeared in two chapbooks and in such publications as Poetry, Gulf Coast, Indiana Review, Best of the Net, and The Best American Poetry. The recipient of the 2016 A. Poulin, Jr. Poetry Prize, he has been awarded fellowships from Kundiman, the Saltonstall Foundation, Lambda Literary, and in 2015, he was a finalist for the Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellowships. He earned his BA at Hampshire College and his MFA at Syracuse University. Currently, he is pursuing a PhD in English and Creative Writing at Texas Tech University. Chen lives in Lubbock, Texas, with his partner, Jeff Gilbert, and their pug dog, Rupert Giles.

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More Information

Format: Paperback
Pages: 96
Publisher: BOA Editions Ltd.
Published: 11 Apr 2017
ISBN 10: 1942683332
ISBN 13: 9781942683339
Book Overview: Galleys available: national mailing to key review/media outlets 4-5 months prior to publication.National advertising: Poets & Writers, American Poets, the Academy of American Poets newsletter, Rain Taxi, and Redactions.National print campaign: 100+ finished books will be mailed to key review outlets, specifically targeting Publishers Weekly, Library Journal, The New York Times Book Review, The New Yorker, The LA Times, Poets & Writers Magazine, The Rumpus, Huffington Post Poetry, Bookforum, LA Review of Books, PBS Newshour, NPR, etc.Outreach to blogs and online outlets for category features, including Buzzfeed, Bustle, etc. for such themes as LGBT (Pride Month), Asian American poets, etc.Buy-ins to relevant academic conferences, trade shows, and publications: American Library Association Annual Meeting, CBSD Sales and Academic catalogs, etc.Spring announcements will be submitted to Publishers Weekly.Online/social media campaign: Extensive promotion through BOA's website and blog; Facebook (6,500+ contacts), Twitter (6,100 followers), Instagram (1,500+ followers), and Pinterest (550+ followers) accounts; print and e-postcards; print and e-materials; and print and e-catalogs. Electronic postcards to announce book publication will be sent to Chen's academic contacts, bookstore contacts, and literary bloggers.Electronic newsletter feature will be emailed to BOA's database of 6,500+ contacts.Ebook will be available at the same time as print publication to maximize sales. Ebook ISBN will be included on all press materials, author and publisher websites, and whenever print ISBN is listed. Publisher and author will be promoting both e and p through social media.Author will attend the AWP Conference 2017 in Washington, DC, where he will have an author signing. Chen also regularly attends the Dodge Poetry Festival, the Massachusetts Poetry Festival, and the Round Top Poetry Festival in Texas.Plans for a multi-city book tour, including such places as Charleston, SC, and in Texas and the Northeast. Chen has strong personal and professional contacts in such places as Amherst, MA, Newton, MA, Syracuse, NY, and Lubbock, TX, where he will likely set up readings and author events. He is particularly well known at LHUCA, an art gallery in Lubbock, TX, which has a reading series; Texas Tech University in Lubbock, TX; Barnes & Noble in Lubbock, TX; Newtonville Books in Newton, MA; Trident Bookstore in Boston, MA; and Amherst Books in Amherst, MA.Possible joint readings and events with Jericho Brown (Copper Canyon Press), Bruce Smith (University of Chicago Press), William Wenthe (LSU Press), Aracelis Girmay (BOA Editions), Sarah Gambito (Persea Books), Craig Morgan Teicher (BOA Editions), Joseph O. Legaspi (Cavankerry Press), David Tomas Martinez (Sarabande), Solmaz Sharif (Copper Canyon Press), Hieu Minh Nguyen (Coffee House Press), and Kaveh Akbar (Alice James Books).Blurbs and endorsements from Jericho Brown and other acclaimed poets. Promotion through the author's social media platforms and website: www.chenchenwrites.com.

Media Reviews

WINNER OF THE A. POULIN, JR. POETRY PRIZE ON NPR BOOKS'S LIST OF 'POERTY TO PAY ATTENTION TO: 2017'S BEST VERSE' ON TRACK FOUR JOURNAL'S LIST OF 'TEN OF THE MOST ANTICIPATED POETRY COLLECTIONS BY PEOPLE OF COLOR IN 2017' What does Millennial poetry look like? One answer might be this wild debut from Chen Chen. He seems to run at the mouth, free-associating wildly, switching between lingo and 'higher' forms of diction. Nothing's out of bounds or off limits, no culture too 'pop' to find its place in poetry ... nor anything too silly to point the way toward serious aims. And yet this is a deeply serious and moving book about Chinese-American experience, young love, poetry, family, and the family one makes amongst friends. --NPR Books The collection, as the title itself suggests, is about 'further possibilities,' about revising, reinventing, and reimagining the relational modes we currently have. If we are all tasked with being 'someone 'for' someone else--a son, a friend, a partner, a student, a dear love,' we cannot afford to be complacent or static in the ways that we inhabit and think about those relations. Interdependence is at the heart of Chen's writing, and if we are to survive in these troubled times, we must continue to believe that there really are new ways to find the impossible honey. --Up the Staircase Quarterly The word 'stanza' means one thing when it refers to a poem: a snippet of text, a line or several. In Italian, it means 'room.' Poet Chen Chen combines those definitions when he writes, thinking: what should be in the room of this poem? In his earlier work, he began to answer that question with pieces that explored his own intersecting identities, parts of himself that other people told him could not exist at once... --PBS Newshour Chen Chen refuses to be boxed in or nailed down. He is a poet of Whitman's multitudes and of Langston Hughes's blues, of Dickinson's 'so cold no fire can warm me' and of Michael Palmer's comic interrogation. What unifies the brilliance of When I Grow up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities is a voice desperate to believe that within every one of life's sadnesses there is also hope, meaning, and--if we are willing to laugh at ourselves--humor. This is a book I wish existed when I first began reading poetry. Chen is a poet I'll be reading for the rest of my life. --Jericho Brown Chen Chen is already one of my favorite poets ever. Funny, absurd, bitter, surreal, always surprising, and deeply in love with this flawed world. I'm in love with this book. --Sherman Alexie The radioactive spider that bit Chen Chen [isn't that how first books get made?] gave him powers both demonic and divine. The bite transmitted vision, worry, want, memory of China, America's grief, and People magazine, as well as a radical queer critique of the normative. What a gift that bite was--linguistic, erotic, politic and impolitic, idiosyncratic and emphatic. What a blessing and burden to write out of the manifold possibilities of that contact. --Bruce Smith I so deeply love this poet's imagination where old shoes might walk back up the steps of a house, where one speaker pledges 'allegiance to the already fallen snow' and another says 'Let's put our briefcases on our heads, in the sudden rain, // & continue meeting as if we've just been given our names.' In precise and gorgeous language, Chen Chen shows us that the world is strange and bright with ardor. He reminds us of the miracle of the sensual and sensory. This is a book I will return to whenever I forget what a poem can do, whenever I am in need of song or hope. If a peony wrote poems in a human language, I think that these would be his poems. If the rain wrote poems... I mean: this is an important work by an astonishing and vital voice. --Aracelis Girmay

Author Bio

Chen Chen was born in Xiamen, China, and grew up in Massachusetts. His work has appeared in two chapbooks and in such publications as Poetry, Gulf Coast, Indiana Review, Best of the Net, and The Best American Poetry. The recipient of the 2016 A. Poulin, Jr. Poetry Prize, he has been awarded fellowships from Kundiman, the Saltonstall Foundation, Lambda Literary, and in 2015, he was a finalist for the Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellowships. He earned his BA at Hampshire College and his MFA at Syracuse University. Currently, he is pursuing a PhD in English and Creative Writing at Texas Tech University. Chen lives in Lubbock, Texas, with his partner, Jeff Gilbert, and their pug dog, Rupert Giles. Jericho Brown is the recipient of the Whiting Writers Award and fellowships from the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University and the National Endowment for the Arts. His first book, Please (New Issues, 2008), won the American Book Award, and his second book, The New Testament (Copper Canyon, 2014), was named one of the best poetry books of the year by Library Journal. His poems have appeared in The Nation, The New Republic, The New Yorker, and The Best American Poetry. Brown earned a PhD from the University of Houston, an MFA from the University of New Orleans, and a BA from Dillard University. He is an assistant professor in the creative writing program at Emory University in Atlanta.