John Yau, Tell It Slant

 

Chinatown Blues

Don’t keep saying poetrymakes nothing happen
I am not trying to beyour surrogate chaplain

I am going to grow up andbe a hatchet man
Doing the sharp and shinything—being the best I can

Don’t tell me the wood isfar too green or yellow
Or that Mr. Frost—protectorof fences—is a jolly good fellow

I am still going to growup and tell it slant
Don’t even try and tellme I can’t

Stop reminding me I have towatch what I say
Be polite or I will haveto pay and pay

I am still going to growand be a hatchet man
Doing the sharp and shinything—being the very best I can

I’menjoying American poet and editor John Yau’s latest collection, Tell It Slant (Oakland CA: Omnidawn, 2023), only the second I’ve encountered of hiswide array of myriad titles, following Genghis Chan on Drums (Omnidawn,2021) [see my review of such here]. There is such a smart and playful way thatYau twists and twirls expectation and perception, plucking Emily Dickinson’sinfamous line to turn, as the back cover offers, “a racist slur (slanted eyes)into the sign by which we recognize the trustworthy phenomenologist.” Recently Iwas discussing part of an essay by Canadian poet Don McKay that suggested thatstand-up comedy and lyric poetry (which only applies to a particular kind ofstand-up against a particular kind of lyric poem, naturally) are deeplyrelated: how the familiar is offered as set-up, with the alternate, unexpectedand fresh perspective at the end, which becomes the “a-ha” moment of the lyric,and where the joke originates (of course I can’t recall where this sits in McKay’sbooks). “One day I will wake up and my hair turned white / and I am no longerChinese,” Yau writes, to open the poem “Memories of Charles Street, Boston,” “Iwant to ask my mother about this change in my appearance / but she has beendead longer than I have been alive [.]”

JohnYau cearly delights in reworking perception against the familiar, even while examiningmore serious subject matter. Yau writes through Charles Baudelaire, Thomas DeQuincey, Philip K. Dick, old films, paintings and Wang Wei across an examinationof lyric form and prose structures that shift enormously, from clipped lyricnarratives and point-form stretches, carved diamond shapes, sonnet sequencesand extended essays, all with a level of serious play, invention and flourish. “Tomake every devourer wish life could be written in reverse,” he writes, to closethe first poem in the sequence “Li Shangyin Enters Manhattan,” “Do you knowwhose glossolalia you will be speaking in today [.]” In certain ways, Yau isthe master of the long thread—how to get there from here—holding an ideaslightly turned and seeing it through as far as might be possible. Hisperspectives are turned, ever so slight, but beyond what others might be ableto see, or connect, without the benefit of Yau’s unique sight. Or, as heoffers, as part of the opening of the second poem in the same sequence: “Thegreatest poet in Chinese history / Is a mulberry tree on which poems / Are sprinkledin ash, ink, or snow [.]”