What do you think?
Rate this book
I Am Not Young And I Will Die With This Car In My Garage
In his debut full-length collection, Blake Z. Rong attempts to answer the following questions:
What do doomed cosmonauts think about as they plummet to Earth?
Has a bird ever pooped on your pizza?
Did Van Gogh ever get laid?
I Am Not Young And I Will Die With This Car In My Garage is a chronicle of failures. These grandiose failures take place across time and space and distance, from Singapore to Tokyo to Disneyland, and onward to the end of the world. Through these 37 poems Rong alights on our deepest longings, the darkest results of loneliness, and our inability to hold on to the people we love most.
--
The speakers in Blake Z. Rong's gorgeous debut, I Am Not Young and Will Die with This Car in My Garage, inhabit a world emptied of people but haunted by distorted memories of human contact. As Rong writes, "The city becomes human in its unraveling." This is a poetry of place; the poems span the globe-Singapore, Miami, New York and Dalian-but each place just reminds the reader of what's missing. Can poetry fill the loss? Read and find out.
-Joanna Fuhrman, author of To A New Era and other books
Blake Z. Rong's debut is a feat-and without a doubt a must-read. Rong's honesty, tenderness, humor, awe and wonder at the world, and attention to detail come through in a way where the speaker is us-or a friend we've known for a long time. For instance, the lines, "Down on the street all you gorgeous bodies/vibrate against each other like/supercharged miracles" are unforgettable and gorgeous. So much of the book is full of lines that are beautiful but also starkly honest, such as "There are no off-world colonies." The book ultimately leaves me having just enough but always wanting more of these words, this insight.
-Joanna C. Valente, author of A LOVE STORY and other books
"There are particular American cruelties / hard-wired into our veins. Watch me, / just watch me / catch this rubber bullet between my teeth." Blake Z. Rong's debut collection of poems is a visceral, lyrical, and unflinching look at where we are as a country, who we are when we dare to love, and what happens when we fall short. Rong's collection is a timely, imaginative story of coming of age in the 21st century as young Americans find themselves torn apart by economic strife, imperialism, racism, social isolation, gun violence, and cultural dislocation. And yet, in that dangerous world, the speakers of these poems defy stigma, forge human connections, and love across cultures and histories despite taboos. These speakers are unafraid to embrace their beautiful and contradictory selves, and in doing so, they create a vision for the future that's startling, original, and sublimely human in its intent. A must-read debut.
-Rita Banerjee, author of Echo in Four Beats and CREDO: An Anthology of Manifestos and Sourcebook for Creative Writing
What do doomed cosmonauts think about as they plummet to Earth?
Has a bird ever pooped on your pizza?
Did Van Gogh ever get laid?
I Am Not Young And I Will Die With This Car In My Garage is a chronicle of failures. These grandiose failures take place across time and space and distance, from Singapore to Tokyo to Disneyland, and onward to the end of the world. Through these 37 poems Rong alights on our deepest longings, the darkest results of loneliness, and our inability to hold on to the people we love most.
--
The speakers in Blake Z. Rong's gorgeous debut, I Am Not Young and Will Die with This Car in My Garage, inhabit a world emptied of people but haunted by distorted memories of human contact. As Rong writes, "The city becomes human in its unraveling." This is a poetry of place; the poems span the globe-Singapore, Miami, New York and Dalian-but each place just reminds the reader of what's missing. Can poetry fill the loss? Read and find out.
-Joanna Fuhrman, author of To A New Era and other books
Blake Z. Rong's debut is a feat-and without a doubt a must-read. Rong's honesty, tenderness, humor, awe and wonder at the world, and attention to detail come through in a way where the speaker is us-or a friend we've known for a long time. For instance, the lines, "Down on the street all you gorgeous bodies/vibrate against each other like/supercharged miracles" are unforgettable and gorgeous. So much of the book is full of lines that are beautiful but also starkly honest, such as "There are no off-world colonies." The book ultimately leaves me having just enough but always wanting more of these words, this insight.
-Joanna C. Valente, author of A LOVE STORY and other books
"There are particular American cruelties / hard-wired into our veins. Watch me, / just watch me / catch this rubber bullet between my teeth." Blake Z. Rong's debut collection of poems is a visceral, lyrical, and unflinching look at where we are as a country, who we are when we dare to love, and what happens when we fall short. Rong's collection is a timely, imaginative story of coming of age in the 21st century as young Americans find themselves torn apart by economic strife, imperialism, racism, social isolation, gun violence, and cultural dislocation. And yet, in that dangerous world, the speakers of these poems defy stigma, forge human connections, and love across cultures and histories despite taboos. These speakers are unafraid to embrace their beautiful and contradictory selves, and in doing so, they create a vision for the future that's startling, original, and sublimely human in its intent. A must-read debut.
-Rita Banerjee, author of Echo in Four Beats and CREDO: An Anthology of Manifestos and Sourcebook for Creative Writing
- GenresPoetry
94 pages, Paperback
Published August 28, 2021
1 person is currently reading
26 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 of 1 review
November 24, 2021
my favorite poem was "khruschev trying to enter disneyland." there were a few of these poems about (for some reason, mostly soviet, i didn't know what to make of these soviet references) real life historical figures and situations but i thought this was most successful. about the silly helplessless of a powerful person
as i was writing this i also thought about the one prose poem "gracie square hospital..." which is a tao lin-y, flat description of being psychiatrically hospitalized. i liked that one too
and i liked "hangover poem, newport rhode island," which was very sweet and also about helplessness
overall i wasn't amazed by the poems. while the ones that stood out were about very specific situations, a lot of them felt like collections of images that didn't come together to reveal anything new or interesting or poignant other than an overall mood. the second person didn't help. as i read i was (and am) applying for mfas and thinking about whether i want to study poetry or fiction... honestly i want to study fiction but poetry is cool for how it feels less study-able and just like matters less haha. like i can write a poem and have it mean a lot to me and have it read as insignificant to someone else and that's fine
i was amazed by the afterword's acknowledgement that the title came from a craigslist post about someone trying to get rid of their flashy midlife crisis car. ppl say you shouldn't explain poems but i like reading ppl explain their poems to me. it's like taylor swift's songs alongside taylor swift's life. the experience of one is enriched by the other
on the poet's website it seems like he's a car journalist which is fun and specific. i would love to read a book of car poems, or car craigslist post poems. my friend met him at a party and that's why i got this book
as i was writing this i also thought about the one prose poem "gracie square hospital..." which is a tao lin-y, flat description of being psychiatrically hospitalized. i liked that one too
and i liked "hangover poem, newport rhode island," which was very sweet and also about helplessness
overall i wasn't amazed by the poems. while the ones that stood out were about very specific situations, a lot of them felt like collections of images that didn't come together to reveal anything new or interesting or poignant other than an overall mood. the second person didn't help. as i read i was (and am) applying for mfas and thinking about whether i want to study poetry or fiction... honestly i want to study fiction but poetry is cool for how it feels less study-able and just like matters less haha. like i can write a poem and have it mean a lot to me and have it read as insignificant to someone else and that's fine
i was amazed by the afterword's acknowledgement that the title came from a craigslist post about someone trying to get rid of their flashy midlife crisis car. ppl say you shouldn't explain poems but i like reading ppl explain their poems to me. it's like taylor swift's songs alongside taylor swift's life. the experience of one is enriched by the other
on the poet's website it seems like he's a car journalist which is fun and specific. i would love to read a book of car poems, or car craigslist post poems. my friend met him at a party and that's why i got this book
Displaying 1 of 1 review