Ching-In Chen (Photo by Sarah Grant).
1 ) You asked me to write about queer as genre, poetry as genre – and all I can think of in terms of intersections is failure and scatter. What Kind; sort; style, asks the Oxford English Dictionary. I am obsessed with the zuihitsu poetic form, a hybrid Japanese form which utilizes subjective lists, journal entries, juxtaposition, fragmentation, etcetera, to create a sense of randomness which is not really random. Because it is messy, chaotic, contradictory, it is a form I frequently return to, especially when I do not always know what and how to say. It is a form which maps and contains my fear.
2 ) “My poetry is often guided by an impulse to fail. When this is the case, writing is an attempt to salvage something from the mess.” – Douglas Kearney.
3 ) I moved to Milwaukee from California and met five queer Asian people (not me, though I have been referred to myself multiple times – is this a mistake? Are others mistaking me for me? Do I look like myself?) This is totally subjective – I moved toMilwaukeefor poetry, not for queerness. Yet the search becomes what I frustrate, what pushes me to lineate, what creates the next line, what is filled up here.
4 ) What are the essential qualities that make up this loneliness?
5 ) Queer sorts:
One moved with me from California for school.
One I met in a cafe with leafy greens overhead. We met there because he drank tea, not coffee (my uncle – a handyman – in another life dreamt of opening a teashop). I think he had been persuaded to meet with me as a recruitment/retainment strategy. One of us had been tricked to be there? My mother was visiting, and we talked about whether he would be comfortable if she came along. She said, you go ahead, I don’t want to make him uncomfortable. It was a matter-of-fact conversation, and I cannot remember another one about this topic with my mother. Read more…