50 Ways to Leave Your Letter: On Michael Chang’s “Synthetic Jungle” (Excerpt)
Michael Chang | Synthetic Jungle | Curbstone Books | March 2023 | 106 Pages
1. Lit-ographer-ologist-ogeny, Jenny
Alphabetized references: alex dimitrov, arthur sze, ashbery, barbara guest (lol that when bob dylan got the nobel ppl wr upset), bruce weber, caconrad, edmund white, francis bacon, george magazine, guy fawkes, heidegger, jesus, keats, kleinzahler, koestenbaum, lee daniels, mr bovary, nabokov, one hundred years of solitude, peggy g, push by sapphire, RILKE, ratemyprofessor chilipepper, rukeyser, valzhyna mort, verlaine, voltaire, yvor winters (by this point your goal is to become a Michael Chang reference: all publicity = good publicity!)
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3. Intro The Reader, Oh Dear
Bear with me. Michael Chang, I have many questions and you have many ways you like to play (kinky), which I will explore in 50 ways. Some of those ways will be poems due to the sheer amount of Michael Chang poems I have been inspired to write, for, A poem makes you feel poetic (Paul Valery). I now find the 50-ways system obnoxious, but ((like “Octet” (which borders FstrWllce’s genius for the delirious dull (among his various other genius)))) I stuck to the idea and believe the idea will do something, aesthetic and/or ridiculous, similar to that of————good, very well, this intro is finished and hot take hot take the best image in Wlf’s “Room” is the manx cat.
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5. What Does That Have To Do With Anything, 周美玲
The only review I will leave, for those who have fought so hard, to reach number forty-nine, to get a reward, is here, this review/reward. (Oh, but this is number five! Move it back! No one will read any further!)
I think sincerity is a value absolutely at odds with you/Michael Chang. Personality, whoever’s it may be, is yours/theirs. Personality, the jumping between is demonstrative of a lack of sincerity; sincerity is continuous dedicated action over time, but these poems are quippish, to quote you. Quippish, which sounds like a whip, like the snap of words quick and flippant and right. Quippish personality before dedicated sincerity? — is the kind of question that could have started your poem, “My Mother Said I’m Too Romantic” — but a much better start instead: They say you become what you most desire. If the last forty-eight-ish (some of them really didn’t count (cf. 7, 8, 10, 16, 18, 19 (which was just plagiarism), 23, 24, 28, 25, 35 (wait ((no)) that one’s great (scratch that)), 36, 37, 41, 47 (47, but I really liked that one!) (+ (bc u moved this to 5) they’re all off now anyway) ways to leave my lover, leave my letter, leave your letter, have shown you anything, they have shown that there is a great desire of mine at least to be like you, to be like the insincere genius of personality that rebounds within these poems. If anyone wants lessons in irony, backhanded lines, see the biggest bussy in the poetry club; and, don’t worry, laughing helps. Synthetic Jungle does two things very well and very basic, what I would call poetry fundamentals. First, it transforms image almost spontaneously, keeping an ingredient from before, keeping a color, a compass, a hush of its former life about it like a glamorous glaze. Your transforming of image, which is in the advancement of metaphor and simile, literally invents metonymies. Second, it is yours. I would never believe the person behind those words to be anyone else, which you have in common with mid-late Dickinson. That’s my two cents, now please go buy a yacht with it to have yourself big poet bangers.
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12. Tragedaddy, Sally-Anney
every word of this is bullshit
Bullshit is telling stories, making it up as you go, which requires talent. In “明太子 Mentaiko,” the bifurcations “//” disintegrate by deconstructing the poem — as a meal: this poem is like eating a burger prepared by a cuisinie(è)r(e) wunderkind — beef marinated (“martian”) in a “haze” of “cold-water” and “tea,” topped with “lavender” and “fungi.” Mm!
“明太子 Mentaiko”’s bullshit refuses narration (a story without narration!). Yet, by all appearances a prose poem, it contemplates the 2000-year-old question in philosophy of appearances and essences (things and ideas), leaving only a “contrail” — its vapor the heat of Chang’s fishy anti-this’ing-that’ing. Mm… mm…
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14. Buy A New Key, Lee
A poem is about a thing! This much we poets can agree upon (so long as we open up the definition (the ever-extensive reason to do away with “thing”) of thing (idea, cartoon, city, mother, poetry, porn, art, Amelia Earhart, memory, death, sex, tragedy, set))).
For it to be about no-thing requires gall. “Your Place, Or Another Trip To Dean & Deluca,” tosses aside — — racism (that (“the very serious function of racism, which is distraction… It keeps you explaining, over and over again, your reason for being” (Morrison, 1975)) o(l’)), politics (I’m aching for some local action), art (of bronze gods), sex and tragedy (what the cool kids call “edging”) — tosses it all for the very real ‘now’ and for the sake of an even more real ‘next.’
consider (!!!) [strikethru my own]
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21. Poetry Of The Everyday Is Minced, Alice
“poetry of the everyday” means boring poetry
The ability to connect assumes a structure of connection. But a disconnection structure? a poem sans vectors? Political disconnect:
remember when kamala did an event with aka & her sorors went skee-wee
& a white reporter, not recognizing the calls, said they were hissing at her?
A perfectly reasonable question in post-roe mid-late capital early-mid anthropo’ America: do we live here — wedreamstories&scenesbutwedontlivethem (Notley) — or here — ppleatcronuts&frankoceanieatbusilybetweenyourlegs (Chang)?
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23. Kinda Late To Still Be Writing Intro, But Okay Mo
(Self-refer-reverential irony-as-sincerty has hayday’d.) Play is wisdom and savvy is synonymous with this review stipulates unambiguously that Michael Chang is in a league of their own — wait! — not that they’re better than us (those reading this review (and all the people who will hear about it (and then so rave about it to their friends))) but that Chang has made a realm leagues and leagues large and inhabits (parentheses can be ignored like footnotes, or read like footnotes (that’s on you (no, not you (you)))) (ignore (at your leisure) (;))) it. Questions will be laid out, answers will go unquestioned. Follow along but don’t fall for it. Without further ado, dj hit the track.
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25. They Don’t Build Statues Of Critics, Charlie XCX
Criticism’s absolute is ‘Absolutely not!’ a parental exclamation. Poetry’s is ‘Absolutely!’ an extension and acceptance. Both quintessentialize. There seems in criticism a stick up the ass ((which Chang turns to ((a) playdoh) dildo)). Criticism Asks: Is the Language (dam)aged? Is this work (dam)aging? Well? Poetry Wonders: Language dam(n)’d? dam(n)ing? Poetry is syntactical mazes of fragments, and criticism sententiae masquerading as prose.
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29. Sexualize the End, Fred
Innuendo is not my forte (ceci n’est pas un fort). Too vulgar or too palatable (or somehow both) your hautish ((odious)) “Motivational Speaker With No Motivation”
the best-kept secret
the hole-in-the-wall chicken shop
employs hyphens to entriplicate (v) juxtaposition (n), the interior sardonic (adj) becomes oxymoronic kate-durbin-esque. It’s a grow-er not a show-er:
it gets lonely at the top
30. No Binary Zone, Desdemona
LIBIDO SPECTRUM
monk to himbo
mouth ripe avocado and cry
ex boo embodied clean dick
dread marriage but get married
the remedy to life is death
in kid years i’m five hundred
munch chicken nuggees drink coffee
free the mind breed a look
no really, look
il faut garder la mort
cool?
31. UGH ChatGPT, Rih-Rih
Because of you, Michael Chang, I am not (!) afraid (I’m plying on Kelly Clarkson lyrics): I asked that godforsaken originality pit to write a song like Rihanna and…
“With every step, I’ll light the way / Just like Rihanna, I’ll slay, slay, slay”
It’s, as you might say, as in your titular poem…
dumb as a peach
And when I asked that godforsaken originality pit to write a poem like Michael Chang…
“Fence magazine’s pages, a canvas divine, / Where minds intertwine, thoughts align. / In the footsteps of poets, I humbly stand, / Crafting a legacy with my pen in hand.”
You’re, as you might say, with dripping wry, as in your titular poem…
outdone by gps, rendered obsolete
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43. No More Politics, Kris
In another combination of culturati-literati
through the sheer permuting power of sass,
“My Mother Said I’m Too Romantic”
starts with desire and ends with DoorDash.
Maybe, I should do all my critiques
in quatrains ++ couplets ++ in heat.
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49. A Little Bit More About ‘a scatalogical anti-Rokeby Venus’, Pen15
Blanche Gardin (who (I’m gonna Karen Green her here) dated Louis C.K. for four years(-ish)) a French comedienne, has this (paraphrased) joke about trash-tv: tv is a hard drug, because if it’s there you’re going to use; plus, you know this, people watch tv just to see how shitty it is; I mean, I agree that life doesn’t have meaning, but there’s a limit, no? imagine that, watching something just to see how shitty it is, like ‘I was watching this thing to see if it was shit, and then it was shit, and I was like — alright — thought so.’
Mais je pense que c’est parce qu’on s’aperçoit pas quand on devient con. C’est ça le problème. On se voit pas devenir con. Moi, je sais, j’ai plein d’amis que sont devenus cons, sans s’en aperçevoir. J’ai leur dit — je dis, «tu est devenu con — l’an dernier.»
If Kim Hyesoon can clout-admit to reading contemporary fiction until she’s fed up, that is until the point when she realizes (waiting for, indeed anticipating, this moment) that it’s shit, I can twit-admit that sometimes (…oftentimes…) I read poems doing the same. (This shitty habit is pretty much exclusive to contemporary work, and usually only when I’m reading (prestigious) quarterlies, especially the award-winners in quarterlies, or monthlies in the case of a certain longest running magazine that is concerningly often guided by such dull hands that make me think redemptive/wonderous/lightly horrified poetry will never get unclogged. (((Not to mention Fence just asked, “What’s wrong with American poetry now?” (Am I the problem? (It’s me?)) To be clear, I love pretty much all collections: a collection sustains interest in/of/from a single author, as this review is doing, batshit method as it is, and makes for beautiful revel. (Collections read (and, as is syllogistically evident, loved) (these last weeks): Carolyn Forche, The Country Between Us; Chelsey Minnis, Baby I Don’t Care; Gunnar Björling, You Go The Words; Vanessa Angélica Villarreal, Beast Meridian))))
If you’re wondering, oh shit, here it comes, he’s going to say that the this-is-shit-moment occurs with my poems, too, he’s been building me up just to tear me down — don’t worry — I’m not that big of a shit. Indeed, this is a very fine moment to remind everyone that Wanda Coleman once shit on Maya Angelou’s work, and got a lot of shit for it, was absolutely ostracized for speaking her mind whilst making a point, that is, for giving a shit.
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Read all 50 in Cleveland Review of Books, Vol. 02 (Spring 2024).