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Four Letter Words
Poetry. Asian American Studies. "The word 'in' appears in this book 186 times. Around this word, as if on its own defiant, self-defining margin, exists a kindred intention, indignation, innocence, intact, incomplete, inclusion, invite, incite. Truong Tran, a poet of probing inventiveness, plumbs the possibilities of confessional poetry as no one else can. In this book, he shows identity's 'cruel complexity melting on my tongue.' In his own, inimitable tongue he speaks his grief, outrage, and faithfulness. Troung takes the reader on a journey to the in response, in exile, in the word"--Elizabeth Robinson. Truong Tran is the author of WITHIN THE MARGIN, DUST & CONSCIENCE, and PLACING THE ACCENTS.
- GenresPoetry
116 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2008
About the author
Truong Tran
19 books20 followersTruong Tran is a poet and visual artist. His publications include The Book of Perceptions, Placing The Accents, dust and conscience (awarded the San Francisco Poetry Center Book Prize), within the margin, and Four Letter Words. Truong lives in San Francisco where he is currently teaching poetry at SFSU and Mills College.
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
May 28, 2008
four letter words, by Truong Tran
reviewed by L.J. Moore
115pp. Apogee Press (www.apogeepress.com). US$18.95. 0978766733 paper
The Poem as Porn
Truong Tran's new book of poetry, four letter words, is a fierce, outraged epic of betrayal. Its language is a choked lyric, its subject: the crime of political rape. The hero is the silent victim, who, like an incest sufferer, or as Tran names him, "the redheaded stepchild", finds himself stripped of his personhood and used as a pornographic synecdoche, by "an overt omission of the interior" (p10), valued for what he looks to be rather than who he actually is.
The villains in the book are of two types, the overt and the covert, and are named in the opening and closing poems, which are written as ciphers. The first cipher names a villain in the form of a bumbling "king"—he is a Machiavellian self-deceiver—the kind who pretends his porn is art. Perhaps he can't tell the difference. The closing cipher reveals the player Tran finds more poisonous—the villainess, the grande dame who, like Lady Macbeth, is politically driven and knows exactly what she is doing. The victim is her adopted child, who is sacrificed with the tacit approval of silent witnesses.
But four letter words is not primarily concerned with the crime, it is the epic of the aftermath. The villain and villainess take backstage to more compelling story of the hero, who is literally writing his way, not toward understanding (screw that—his villains don't deserve it and wouldn't understand it) , but toward a reclaimed self. Finding himself relegated to a pornographic existence, he does the opposite of what a someone without substance (as they have tried to make him into) would do: he complicates, he perseverates, he despairs, he rails and laments, he decries, he questions, he invents, he wishes this "never happened, I wish this never happened, I wish this never happened"(p67), and when that doesn't work, he despairs "imagine a library full of porn—so many shades of grey so overwhelmingly grey." (p66) He allows himself to entertain the idea that the valuable things we create—relationships, books, art, the idea of self—can be so easily destroyed, that this beautiful "table … I helped build it look at the corners tongue and groove not a single nail the construction alone will stand many lifetimes… would break under the weight of two porn guys going at it… I bet it would with enough pounding (p71). Once he gets started, Tran opens up full bore, daring to explore in a lyric release, the very human experience of being dehumanized.
Four letter words is divided into five books: that, lies, lost book, real, and this-- five approaches that explore the ways we handle appearances, and taken collectively, reveal that our mental distinctions we constantly make, and which form the difference between a specific person (this) and a stereotype (that), can be a function of something as simple (and devastating) as their mental proximity: (this) connoting something close-by, real, here, and belonging, while (that) is over there, at a distance, and other. Tran deliberately exchanges and confuses this with that, pointing out the malleable nature of the chasm "this, as a construct, was plagued with politics, dry rot and lies that this at best was a hopeful illusion that this in reality was just about that" (p48 italics are mine).
The passion of the writing stands out in poem after poem, as he tries on all the possible ways to break down the story, to decode the crime, to find a path through the despair, using allegory, fable, abcedary, word square, passion play, graffiti, rant, blank verse, free verse, rhyme, spoken word, prose poem, horizontal and vertical constructions, transparent pages, ciphers, prayers, incantations… over and over driving the point home to look beyond the surface, to "think of it what you think of it a word to build upon a plot a place to call it what it is here and where you feed and face and find fade the word into subject fact into fiction "(56).
At the center of Tran's five books, is the lost book—a deliberate hinge-pin or keystone where the words themselves form the path by which the hero finds his way back by reversing the connotation of pornography as negative by finding that poetry is porn in that it represents without fully encompassing, but that it's function is the opposite in that it suggests a more expansive meaning in its representation, rather than a lack thereof, and that by gratifying the reader, as porn does, the poem is not diminished but itself, enriched:
this
poem as
porn as prayer
in writing
this poem
he incites
pornography
in seeing
this porn
he saw for
the first time
in saying
this prayer
he finds
salvation
in the word
from this
from that
(p80)
This poem, while not an overt turning point, is one of the moments when the momentum begins to shift. The tone becomes less desperate. The writing is flying out, and the sense of being stopped up and gagged has released—he has written himself to a new way of looking. As the poet puts it, "language is a tapestry to be unraveled that words are hidden found in the folds that the book is broken the meaning revealed" (90).
The sense of regret is never given over—the hero does not come home vindicated. The villains are neither confronted nor punished, and Tran still laments in the penultimate poem that he would take it all back every word, if this had never happened (p114), but the discovery of a new perspective is no small triumph, and the book itself is a huge one.
reviewed by L.J. Moore
115pp. Apogee Press (www.apogeepress.com). US$18.95. 0978766733 paper
The Poem as Porn
Truong Tran's new book of poetry, four letter words, is a fierce, outraged epic of betrayal. Its language is a choked lyric, its subject: the crime of political rape. The hero is the silent victim, who, like an incest sufferer, or as Tran names him, "the redheaded stepchild", finds himself stripped of his personhood and used as a pornographic synecdoche, by "an overt omission of the interior" (p10), valued for what he looks to be rather than who he actually is.
The villains in the book are of two types, the overt and the covert, and are named in the opening and closing poems, which are written as ciphers. The first cipher names a villain in the form of a bumbling "king"—he is a Machiavellian self-deceiver—the kind who pretends his porn is art. Perhaps he can't tell the difference. The closing cipher reveals the player Tran finds more poisonous—the villainess, the grande dame who, like Lady Macbeth, is politically driven and knows exactly what she is doing. The victim is her adopted child, who is sacrificed with the tacit approval of silent witnesses.
But four letter words is not primarily concerned with the crime, it is the epic of the aftermath. The villain and villainess take backstage to more compelling story of the hero, who is literally writing his way, not toward understanding (screw that—his villains don't deserve it and wouldn't understand it) , but toward a reclaimed self. Finding himself relegated to a pornographic existence, he does the opposite of what a someone without substance (as they have tried to make him into) would do: he complicates, he perseverates, he despairs, he rails and laments, he decries, he questions, he invents, he wishes this "never happened, I wish this never happened, I wish this never happened"(p67), and when that doesn't work, he despairs "imagine a library full of porn—so many shades of grey so overwhelmingly grey." (p66) He allows himself to entertain the idea that the valuable things we create—relationships, books, art, the idea of self—can be so easily destroyed, that this beautiful "table … I helped build it look at the corners tongue and groove not a single nail the construction alone will stand many lifetimes… would break under the weight of two porn guys going at it… I bet it would with enough pounding (p71). Once he gets started, Tran opens up full bore, daring to explore in a lyric release, the very human experience of being dehumanized.
Four letter words is divided into five books: that, lies, lost book, real, and this-- five approaches that explore the ways we handle appearances, and taken collectively, reveal that our mental distinctions we constantly make, and which form the difference between a specific person (this) and a stereotype (that), can be a function of something as simple (and devastating) as their mental proximity: (this) connoting something close-by, real, here, and belonging, while (that) is over there, at a distance, and other. Tran deliberately exchanges and confuses this with that, pointing out the malleable nature of the chasm "this, as a construct, was plagued with politics, dry rot and lies that this at best was a hopeful illusion that this in reality was just about that" (p48 italics are mine).
The passion of the writing stands out in poem after poem, as he tries on all the possible ways to break down the story, to decode the crime, to find a path through the despair, using allegory, fable, abcedary, word square, passion play, graffiti, rant, blank verse, free verse, rhyme, spoken word, prose poem, horizontal and vertical constructions, transparent pages, ciphers, prayers, incantations… over and over driving the point home to look beyond the surface, to "think of it what you think of it a word to build upon a plot a place to call it what it is here and where you feed and face and find fade the word into subject fact into fiction "(56).
At the center of Tran's five books, is the lost book—a deliberate hinge-pin or keystone where the words themselves form the path by which the hero finds his way back by reversing the connotation of pornography as negative by finding that poetry is porn in that it represents without fully encompassing, but that it's function is the opposite in that it suggests a more expansive meaning in its representation, rather than a lack thereof, and that by gratifying the reader, as porn does, the poem is not diminished but itself, enriched:
this
poem as
porn as prayer
in writing
this poem
he incites
pornography
in seeing
this porn
he saw for
the first time
in saying
this prayer
he finds
salvation
in the word
from this
from that
(p80)
This poem, while not an overt turning point, is one of the moments when the momentum begins to shift. The tone becomes less desperate. The writing is flying out, and the sense of being stopped up and gagged has released—he has written himself to a new way of looking. As the poet puts it, "language is a tapestry to be unraveled that words are hidden found in the folds that the book is broken the meaning revealed" (90).
The sense of regret is never given over—the hero does not come home vindicated. The villains are neither confronted nor punished, and Tran still laments in the penultimate poem that he would take it all back every word, if this had never happened (p114), but the discovery of a new perspective is no small triumph, and the book itself is a huge one.
June 29, 2019
Tran eliminates the modern trappings of sentence altogether in favor of the thru-line, a postpunctuational sleight of hand that yields many happily-accidental enjambments, that redefines the line as a stanza as a series of words inexorable inseparable (en)tangled mangled dangling dangerous and daft. Tran wears many hats as a poet, scholar, educator, advocate, visual artist and children’s book author, but as his gleaming, nearly seamless stream implies, these are all merely facets of the same variegated crown, his scepter here the crude and bloody four letter word. Word itself is one of those; all words are bad, therefore, and poems curses. Book four letters has, as well as song, and Tran (four [4 letters] letters) recognizes rhyming all around, in this world unstoppable string of endless line (4!). One of the few lineated poems (meaning lineated by overtly manipulated margins) comes at the beginning of book 2 (“the book of lies”) starts as cheep joke, touches the profoundest truth of poesy before alighting on a wire, a stark cliché:
this is a chicken in a line in a
poem a poem that’s the story
this is the story of a chicken in
a line a line that’s a wire this is
the story of a bird on a wire
(32).
It is impossible to do Tran’s poems justice in quotation. His pieces are dependent upon the page, that perfect font that forms the words that to the eye may form a square; his books are artifacts, as visual as they are verbal, of unified presentation and poesy.
this is a chicken in a line in a
poem a poem that’s the story
this is the story of a chicken in
a line a line that’s a wire this is
the story of a bird on a wire
(32).
It is impossible to do Tran’s poems justice in quotation. His pieces are dependent upon the page, that perfect font that forms the words that to the eye may form a square; his books are artifacts, as visual as they are verbal, of unified presentation and poesy.
May 31, 2008
Yowza! Poetry with a vengeance...makes people who don't "like" poetry cry and that's a good thing. Fabulous backstory to this book tho' not a prerequisite for beatific results. Recommended dosage: twice a week or whenever mediocrity overwhelms. Up dosage to daily as November elections approach.
August 26, 2008
Did this win an award? Very human gut wrenching sequences mixed with porn searches mixed with a very beautifully constructed aesthetic - a sort of architectural grammatics...
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews