Franny Choi's Blog, page 2

New poems in Pinwheel and BOAAT

New poems!

First, a crown of sonnets about Chatroulette (remember Chatroulette??) in BOAAT alongside a whole cast of stunners, compiled by the wonder sam sax, who recently became the journal’s Poetry Editor (good for them, good for the world.)

And: four poems (“Acknowledgments,” “Selected Silences,” “Rhetoracle,” and “Physical Therapy”) in the latest issue of Pinwheel, alongside a lot of really exciting work that I’m still excitedly digging through.

“Selected Silences” will (according to this very exciting galley proof!) be in my chapbook, which is coming out on Sibling Rivalry Press this fall.

“Rhetoracle” is in the voice of Tay, a Twitter chatbot created by Microsoft, who became bizarrely racist in about 24 hours. CW for racist language in the epigraph of that poem.

Spring Tour Dates

Did you know that AWP is exhausting? Especially when you spend half of it being sick? Who knew? I guess, me, now.

Speaking of exhausting, just put up my spring tour schedule. Some of these are Project VOICE gigs, so best bets for open-to-the-public shows are the ones at Duke, U Chicago, and the Toronto Poetry Slam. Come say hi if you’re around!

Electegy

Damned if I do, damned,

damned. What pet name

to give the firing squad?

How to deescalate

a burning house? What’s

the proper way to bury

your sister – alive, in fistfuls,

or years before she asks

for lungs? And what

shovel, really? what boots?

what booming text, what pundit

wiktionary snuff cycle, what

hands, ever, have I owned?

I slice open my palms & find

more palms. Everything I touch

turns to a wet claw, as is

my right, as an American.

Right? Better a hole in the ground

than a whole village? As if

my feet are anywhere near

the road. What dream,

which woke. What chokehold

to smother this too-trebly

dronebeat? Which otherskull

to cleave open with my own

only teeth, stolen, like everything,

from the grave of a stranger

wearing my face? I will go,

I swear, I will go with the one

who sings it best, my favorite

song: you chose to be good.

you chose to be

good. you chose to

be good. you

chose to be

SO MANY UPDATE WOW

Lots of new content added, including this interview with Ploughshares, these poems on this queer poetry blog, and videos!

Not doing much touring for the fall while in school but the few shows nailed down so far are on the tour page, and the good news is that I bought a pack of those pens that are like four different colors so that you can take highly organized notes. Because I’m still / I’m still Franny from the block (or, as you might call it, academic bowl team).

 

Have They Run Out of White Poets Yet?

Have they run out of white poets yet?

If they haven’t, we’ve reason to fret.

Long ago, there was just Billy Shakes –

other white people’s stories he’d take.

But then Ezra looked toward the East

to spice up his post-War can of meat,

said he wanted to bridge East and West

(but it’s shoddy translation, at best).

And then Kenny Rexroth got prize winnings

for translations of Japanese women.

But surprise! It was all a big game

for ol’ Ken to get unearned acclaim.

Then Araki-so-called-Yasasuda

turned out to be Johnson, and you’da

thought that that’d be the end of the story,

but more white poets wanted more glory.

M.D.H. couldn’t get his poems placed,

so he took on Ms. Yi-Fen Chou’s face.

(Not to mention Vanessa and Kenneth –

among recent fuck-ups, they’re the zenith.)

Now along bumbles – what’s his name? Trillin?

Figured it’d been a while, so he’d fill in

for the other old crusty white croutons

who ran out of nice flowers to muse on.

To be fair, Calvin didn’t pretend

to be aught but himself: a sad send-

up of Dr. Seuss decked in his finest

anti-Asian regalia, minus

any interest in speaking to those

who don’t share his tax bracket or clothes.

We thought after Yi-Fen we’d be set

with this shit but I’m willing to bet

soon we’ll find one we still haven’t met.

Have they run out of white poets yet?

 

 

#notallwhitepoets

Source

The FBG Audiobook is dropping this week!

Keep you eyes peeled — this super exciting project is dropping this week! A great gift for that poetry-lovin’ friend who’s always on the road, or has a long commute, or likes to work out to sad poems about racism!

With music and sound design by Brigid Choi! Besides being my awesome sibling, Brigid is also an amazing video game music composer! You can check out more of Brigid’s stuff here!

“Field Trip to the Museum of Human History” on PBS News Hour

In case you missed it: he wonderful Corinne Segal interviewed me and spotlighted my poem, “Field Trip to the Museum of Humam History,” for PBS News Hour. What strange times.

Corinne has also been holding down that space for POC, QT*, and immigrant poets, so check out some of the other features, including my collective mates Fatimah Asghar and Danez Smith.

This poem is 100% for my Providence movement family, most of all for PrYSM. I understand that not everyone will agree with the vision of this poem. Many people have called me a “naive girl” for writing it. Abolition is a more complex and much more vast project than this one poem can capture. My hope is only to give people who are already fighting every day (in concrete and loving ways) for liberation from police violence a brief glimpse into another world. For more information about what abolition might look like, check out this quick read in The Nation or Ursula K. LeGuin’s novel The Dispossessed. 

3 Things!

Some cool stuff!

Social Media, Race, and Disney Princesses : Check out this episode of the Poetry Off the Shelf podcast that I did with the Poetry Foundation and the incredible, brilliant Saeed Jones. We read poems by Claudia Rankine and Elana Bell.
Vital Signs: Khary Jackson, author of Any Psalm You Want, wrote this great piece on my poem, “Open Letter from Jessica Alba to My Father,” for Muzzle’s “Vital Signs” series.
Divedapper Interview : Kaveh Akbar interviewed me for Divedapper, a website that profiles poets. We talked about everything from first books to yellowface to robots!

New curriculum up!

Have you ever noticed the tiny note in the back of Floating, Brilliant, Gone that says that you can find lesson plans and curricula at www.frannychoi.com/curriculum? Well, today, after a year and a half-long “coming soon” sign, that note is finally true!

A NEW SPECIES OF BEAUTIFUL: A Five-Workshop Curriculum on Identity & Self-Examination is now live!

Designed for students age 16-20, this free curriculum includes discussion questions and writing prompts for five poems from Floating, Brilliant, Gone: “The Hindsight Octopus,” “Chinky,” “The Mirror,” “To the Man Who Shouted ‘I Like Pork Fried Rice’ at Me on the Street,” and “Metamorphosis.”  The curriculum has a dual purpose: 1) to teach students to craft beautiful, meaningful poems; and 2) to lead students to engage critically with identity and power.

Feel free to modify, use, and share for educational purposes! More resources for educators are — seriously this time — coming soon!

regarding the yellowface poet

[ Poem in response to m.d.h., white poet who used a Chinese pseudonym to get published in Best American Poetry. ]

 

choi jeong min

for my parents, Choi Inyeong & Nam Songeun

in the first grade i asked my mother permission

to go by frances at school. at seven years old

i already knew the exhaustion of hearing my name

butchered by hammerhead tongues. already knew

to let my salty gook name drag behind me

in the sand, safely out of sight. in fourth grade

i wanted to be a writer & worried

about how to escape my surname – choi

is nothing if not korean, if not garlic breath,

if not seaweed & sesame & food stamps

during the lean years – could i go by f.j.c.? could i be

paper thin & raceless? dust jacket & coffee stain,

boneless rumor smoldering behind the curtain

& speaking through an ink-stained puppet?

my father ran through all his possible rechristenings –

ian, issac, ivan – and we laughed at each one,

knowing his accent would always give him away.

you can hear the pride in my mother’s voice

when she answers the phone this is grace, & it is

some kind of strange grace she’s spun herself,

some lightning made of chainmail. grace is not

her pseudonym, though everyone in my family is a poet.

these are the shields for the names we speak in the dark

to remember our darkness. savage death rites

we still practice in the new world. myths we whisper

to each other to keep warm. my korean name

is the star my mother cooks into the jjigae

to follow home when i am lost, which is always

in this gray country, this violent foster home

whose streets are paved with shame, this factory yard

riddled with bullies ready to steal your skin

& sell it back to your mother for profit,

land where they stuff our throats with soil

& accuse us of gluttony when we learn to swallow it.

i confess. i am greedy. i think i deserve to be seen

for what i am: a boundless, burning wick.

a stone house. i confess: if someone has looked

at my crooked spine and called it elmwood,

i’ve accepted. if someone has loved me more

for my gook name, for my saint name,

for my good vocabulary & bad joints,

i’ve welcomed them into this house.

i’ve cooked them each a meal with a star singing

at the bottom of the bowl, a secret ingredient

to follow home when we are lost:

sunflower oil, blood sausage, a name

given by your dead grandfather who eventually

forgot everything he’d touched. i promise:

i’ll never stop stealing back what’s mine.

i promise: i won’t forget again.