i liked all of the poems in this chapbook – my favorite line is “I thinke/ they are more afraid of me/than I am/ of them” – i liked how it talked about being trans and being at work, because it made me think about what it means to try and make art when you also have to work.
the format fits in with that – using office paper forms as the actual material for writing is [chef’s kiss]
caveat: i don’t speak spanish, so that limits my ability to fully get this as a work. however, the visual design is really fucking cool and something i haven’t seen before; the fragments and the effort involved in trying to read the poems/look at the drawings seems to reflect trying to decipher ourselves/other people. of the poems in english, i liked “Look! A seeker of eternal death” the most; because i’m from the united states, i think everything is about the united states, but i also felt like it had to do with colonialism/imperialism/the lessons former colonies learned from their colonizers.
because i am very mature, my first response is “lmao gay” bc i am not yet good at accepting praise but my second response is that i’m glad that you felt strongly about this. the poetry i like is poetry that makes me feel. if i can do that, i feel like i’m doing well.
i really like what you’ve done so far and i’m excited to read more of it.
the poem “So, I’m lucky, I think?” kind of killed me – all of it kind of killed me but esp. the part that goes “I know how to be a lazy daughter./I know they do not know how to have/a lazy daughter who is not” – i can see my own family in it.
i also like your visuals; i don’t know what kind of art style/form they are, but i feel like the use of negative space/whatever it’s called when picture looks like a photo negative without being a photo negative lends a sort of flip-flopped feel to it. the feeling of being in an in-between stage/in a very strange time.
i liked this chapbook a lot, esp. in how the photos worked with the poems. my favorite poem was “II.” – i think that there are a number of traumas/traumatic things that we don’t discuss because they’re so commonplace, and the increase in surveillance/weaponization of the state is one of them. the simplicity of the poem emphasizes the dread.
although this is labeled as trash and although the purpose is for them to become meaningless, i will say that i enjoyed this chapbook, especially the concept that vivid descriptions can give something “transcendental power”.
“…it feels like something stupid to cry about but I’ve been learning as of late that,/when mourning someone,/when the little things do get to you it can be a reminder of the love you once felt.”
i liked all of the poems, but these lines made me think about people i’ve lost/people i’ve had to leave and all the times i’ve seen something small/“stupid” and wanted to tell that person about it/remembered some fragment of a memory. it’s good!
What makes writing poetic enough to count as poetry, rather than prose?
I'm a registered nurse; I want to write about my experiences as nurse who's trans, but I also realize that there are plenty of people who've been mistreated/traumatized by shitty nurses and/or shitty hospital systems. How would I tag for that? Should I even try to participate in the jam, in case that makes things weird?
