KARAN

I love these poems, Chen. When I first read “recipe found in a winter boot,” I was utterly delighted. It’s such a fun poem (like many others here)! I can always count on you for whimsy-filled insight. Your use of unconventional instructions (I love that voice!) and playful imagery invites readers to engage and find beauty . . . even miracles in the mundane. As in “Postsolsticemoodism”: “Isn’t it literature, the gatorade she left in the other room / the other day?” I particularly appreciate how you seamlessly blend humor with introspection. The other recipe poem here, “recipe for courage with a side of hot,” too is working with the same principles. The unconventional recipe format adds a playful tone to the serious themes of self-acceptance and resilience. What is the working principle behind these poems? Are you writing in some tradition? Are you consciously challenging the conventions of what’s happening in poetry today? 

CHEN

Karan! Thank you for reading and appreciating these poems. First and foremost, I’m trying to challenge myself, my own habitual thinking. Well, no, that’s not true. First and foremost, I’m trying to have fun as I’m writing, and fun is connected to surprise. Fun demands surprise. So, I’m often reflecting on what I’ve written previously and how to go about things differently. I’ve written poems with instructions before. But these recipe poems arose from a (very fun) collaboration I did with my dear friend Mag Gabbert. We gave each other titles we had to use, titles the other person wouldn’t normally use in order to push each other into greater surprise. But with these two recipe poems, I think I went my own way with the titling. I’m a bad collaborator, sometimes. The point is: poems I end up liking can come from shared projects and friends’ “assignments,” and that’s a beautiful phenomenon.

As for “Postsolsticemoodism,” I wrote that while attending the New England College MFA residency as faculty last summer in Henniker, New Hampshire. I was attending a colleague’s generative session — if I recall correctly, it was Paige Ackerson-Kiely’s session. I love going to other teachers’ talks and seminars. I love being a student again, taking notes and trying prompts. Though, colleagues can get nervous to have a fellow teacher there. Maybe I like seeing them a bit nervous. Kidding. But in any case, Paige didn’t seem nervous. The session took place outside on a beautiful warm day and involved a series of collaborative prompts and even some dancing, so this poem also came out of a collaboration or a collaborative atmosphere. Collaboration is fun! It pushes me to stay open to other ideas and intentions, including my own ever-shifting ones. It helps me break habits in language and thought. I’ll always remember Jennifer Chang saying to me during a conversation years ago, “I don’t want my poems to be habits.” 

Poems are the opposite of habits. They are explosions. Sometimes they are small explosions. But loud. Or huge, quiet explosions. I don’t know. I want to keep not knowing. Maybe that’s the tradition I’m writing out of: Not Knowing. Though I also believe I’m writing out of a queer, Asian American tradition that’s equal parts political and sensual. Also, funny. But maybe I’m just thinking of Justin Chin and how I wish he were still alive and we could chat. 

KARAN

I’m quite enchanted by how “Postsolsticemoodism” comes together at the end without at all trying to tie the varied stanzas in a neat little bowtie. I absolutely love the last line — “If we were to slither now, hither would we go?” — so playful yet invoking deep thought. There's again that palpable tension between the mundane and the profound, with the speaker finding depth in everyday observations. In “ode to completion & then some,” the speaker is watching himself masturbate in the full-length mirror: “this creature // so interested in his own nature. this researcher, studying / & collecting data on his pleasure. / i’m at play, i’m the project, i’m both animals.” Can you talk about the role of the observer in your poetry, and how this position influences the way you approach themes of belonging and alienation?

CHEN

In “Postsolsticemoodism,” I was interested in how questions (arising from everyday observations, yes) could be the engine of a poem. I’ve written poems that are all or mainly questions before, but this one felt different tonally. I think it’s more wistful and it’s sort of about how I’ve lost touch with the natural world, after being so close to it as a kid. I spend way too much time in front of screens — for work, for fun. I haven’t lost a sense of wild play, but I don’t play outside anymore. Or that happens rarely. I miss it. I think I need to stop writing about it and just go outside more. Climb a tree. Observe a leaf. (Of course, the pandemic made me more wary of going outside, though I’d become a very indoors person way before that.) 

With “ode to completion & then some,” I was curious about the ways that masturbation, usually associated with shame or loneliness, could be experienced and depicted unabashedly. I wanted to write in a deeply loving way about self-pleasure. What if the poem, its language, its imagery, fully embraced this kind of pleasure? The full-length mirror became a key part of that embrace. The speaker watching himself as he masturbates — this increases his sense of enjoyment, his sense of naughtiness, which in this case is not something to hide but something to show off to himself. Look at what you can do, look at all the sticky joy you can create: that’s what the mirror allows the speaker to say to himself. It’s a form of knowledge, too, one that we’re often pressured into not accessing, not exploring, or pretending like we don’t have: the knowledge of what makes our own bodies feel good. I think it’s beautiful, it’s really hot, when we know how to turn ourselves on. 

KARAN

I also see a pattern of list-poems emerge here. I forget who says that all poems are essentially list poems. I feel that pull very strongly in my own practice. I see it happening in your poems in the best of ways. And though it’s most clear in “Postsolsticemoodism,” it’s also so present in the recipe poems, which are lists of instructions. What are your thoughts on litany? Do you have an inclination toward — or reservations about — the list-poem? What are some risks, what are the joys? As I ask this I’m also thinking that your first collection has the word list in its title!

CHEN

I love a list poem. During my MFA I started out trying really hard to write these tightly contained narrative poems or these spare lyric poems, as I loved reading that kind of poetry from poets like Lucille Clifton and Louise Glück. But after reading A.R. Ammons’s Garbage and rereading Allen Ginsberg’s Howl, I realized that I was suppressing an inclination within myself — to make lists and litanies and inventories and and and. (Or, & & &, as I am a massive fan of the ampersand.) I was denying myself my urge to and. To compile and expand. To recognize just how expansive and maximalist my aesthetic actually is. 

And there’s still plenty of narrative in my work. What the list allows me to do, though, is jump around and include strange turns, big ruptures in a story. I can punch a wormhole through linearity and arrive somewhere completely (associatively, elliptically) else. 

I think where a list poem can go awry is overinvesting in the super clever item or impressively weird leap. Like, oh, you didn’t think there were going to be raisins in this poem, huh? Well, have some raisins, you fool. I like poems that seem to think a reader is smart and can be challenged. I dislike poems that seem to think a reader is stupid and must be punished for not getting it — or for not feeling a thing. And this is after a twentieth read and an encyclopedia (Britannica or otherwise) and a graduate class discussion. Ultimately, I don’t care how smart a poet can sound. What is the intelligence offering beyond an ego boost? And I still want to be moved. I want an explosion in emotion as well as in language. 

KARAN

I’ve restrained myself from mentioning my favorite thing about these poems (and also more generally in poetry): humor! Having read and loved your essay “On Being a 'Serious' Poet,” I know you care a great deal about humor. High-five! I was just making a list and realized all my favorite poets/writers make me laugh. “Corresponding with the Heterosexuals” uses humor and satire to address themes of identity, communication, and misunderstanding. You’re confronting complexities of sexuality (and also race) via humor, which is very interesting to me. Near the end of that essay, you say: “Funny people are hotter than non-funny people and funny poets are the hottest people, period.” Would you speak a bit more about the role humor plays in your work now as you get more and more comfortable with that voice, particularly in poems that engage with social commentary, and how much do you care about balancing play and wit with critique?

CHEN

These days it’s harder for me to write a poem without using humor. I don’t mean to sound like I’m bragging. It’s just that poetry and humor go together very organically for me. This hasn’t always been the case, as I describe in that essay. It’s been a long journey to embracing humor in my writing, full of doubts and anxieties, lots of trial and error. But now it’s what I feel comfortable doing and I don’t want to get too comfortable. From time to time, I challenge myself to write without humor, as I don’t want to over-rely on it. And I’m constantly trying to find fresh approaches to it. 

At the moment, I’m particularly interested in this expectation from a straight audience for a gay man to be funny in a palatable and entertaining fashion. In “Corresponding with the Heterosexuals,” I wanted to critique this expectation, which to me is rooted in homophobia, however “positive” or “accepting” it seems on the surface. This poem attempts to respond in a comedic yet also critical way to how straight parental “concern” for what their child is reading in school (say, one of my profoundly gay poems) shows a certain limitation to straight progressiveness. At the same time, I do want a poem to entertain. I think sometimes poets forget to be entertaining — or to, as poets like to say, give pleasure. For some poets it’s not forgetting but a principled refusal and I respect that. Then again, the pleasures of a poem can be — should be? — complicated pleasures. What frustrates me is when a poem seems the result of the poet striving to an excruciating degree to be serious and ending up with dour dullness. 

All the stuff in French came about because 1) it gives plaisir, 2) I studied the language for six years (though I can barely speak it now), and 3) I find it so funny that French is perceived (at least in the West) as simultaneously this very romantic, sexy language and this totally, cartoonishly “gay” language (as though gay can’t also be sexy (??) — and despite it being always already a hypersexualized category in straight imagination). I don’t know if someone else would find these contradictory perceptions of French and Frenchness as funny as I do, but I like putting things in poems that first and foremost tickle me, as I want to honor my own sense of humor, which is often in response to what I consider absurd assumptions in the straight world, the Anglophone/Eurocentric world, or some combination of these worlds that I daily have to navigate. 

KARAN

I forgot to mention how great you are with titles! I mean Postsolsticemoodism!!! What are your thoughts on titles? Do you think about titles a lot? What do you usually try to achieve with titles? Do you have a method? Honestly, I’m just trying to know your secret. I’m hoping you’ll give me a 500-word essay!

CHEN

Thank you. I don’t know if I can deliver a 500-word essay on the spot, but I’ll say that I do think about titles a lot. Sometimes I’ll just generate titles when I can’t write full drafts of anything. For a while I was more organized and saved all these titles in one place, in a note on Notes app (of course), and this included titles that my best friend Sam Herschel Wein and I came up with for potential collaborative poems. I’m always coming up with titles while talking with friends. It sounds cheesy, but it’s real: poetry happens all the time, everywhere, and you just have to know how to pay attention. Or you don’t have to know. You just have to try. Pay attention to weird things your friends say. I think if they’re really your friends, they will say weird things to you. That’s what intimacy means. And vulnerability. Pay attention to the weird things you say to your friends. Love your friends more deeply by saying weirder things to them — this could be the title of my next poem. 

I want a title to be more than just what a poem is called. I want it to be the true start of the poem or a poem in itself. Maybe that’s demanding too much from a title and there are many, many poems I love that have simple, straightforward titles that function mainly or even solely as something to put in a table of contents, just a way to index or reference the thing when discussing it, or just a name for finding it again. But “just a name” sounds wrong to me because how aren’t names the most beautiful and meaningful of words? Well, not all names, I guess. The point, though, is that I want to put a lot of thought into naming a poem. I want naming it to teach me something about the act, the power of naming. I want to fall in love with the name. I want a poem’s title to help me fall back in love with language, with poetry, with my friends, with myself, with mystery, with the sayable and the unsayable. That’s all. 

Not 500 words, but this is more than I thought I was going to say! 

KARAN

None of the poems here mention the mother, but you do often write about your mother, or your relationship with your mother. Here too I feel a kind of maternal sense, especially in “recipe found in a winter boot.” The instructions, despite their whimsy, suggest a care-oriented approach to self-improvement and self-love. Phrases like “apply ever more of your heart to your mouth,” or “accept help beyond yourself” allude to practices of self-care and emotional nurturing, reminiscent of maternal guidance or wisdom. I don’t want to read too much into it, of course, so feel free to let me know I’m totally off the mark. Still, is writing in some way a way for you to mother yourself, or to locate an ideal mother in some way?

CHEN

Well, I’m glad — relieved, honestly — to be writing less about my mother and our relationship. After two books obsessed with this subject! I mean, there are still some poems about this in the new collection I’m working on. But it’s not as central, this subject. So, it’s great that you’ve found a way to bring it back up! I’m just teasing. And I don’t know. I hadn’t thought about this new work as a way for me to mother myself, though that’s a beautiful way to put it and I appreciate your framing here.

I’m not sure if I would use the term “mother” though, as I’m not sure if I’m interested in a kind of recuperative approach to self-care. That is, mothering or parenting myself now as a way to repair a lack of care back then. A way to heal the inner child, etc. This feels like going back in a way that doesn’t make the most sense to me. Like a regression of sorts. But maybe going back doesn’t have to mean regressing. Maybe healing the inner child doesn’t have to mean feeling like a child, again. I’ll have to think about this further. 

But I guess I’m more interested in alternative ways to talk about care, ones that aren’t situated in (biological) family dynamics or use analogies to family. I like thinking about partnership and friendship, instead. I like practicing these modes of connection and support. Not that these modes are simply free of norms and issues of their own — or that they’re automatically outside of or beyond heteronormative family structures. But for me, given my particular history of trauma, it feels better (for now) not to call what I’m doing or writing a form of mothering or parenting myself. The ideal for me doesn’t seem to be another type of mother, but a self and a community committed to intentional care. 

That said, I’m open to changing my mind later! I really do think it’s a beautiful way to talk about nurturance. And I’m reminded of a poem by Jenny George — this is one of my favorite, favorite poems. It has the gorgeous title, “I Love You” and it’s about her experiences taking care of her partner as she was dying. Here are the last lines:

From the very first, we love like this: our heads turning
toward whatever mothers us, our mouths urgent

for the taste of our name.

KARAN

Your poems, particularly in “ode to completion & then some,” delve into the complexities of queer identity and desire with a candidness that’s both refreshing and utterly raw. This poem is exceptionally vulnerable as well, and in some way, proud of its vulnerability too. In your interview with the poet Charif Shanahan, while speaking about poetry and therapy, they mention: “Emotional transparency is an aesthetic quality, not a personal compulsion.” I find this to be a crucially important statement and kind of revolutionary in its articulation. Is vulnerability, or raw honesty, especially when it comes to your sexuality, as much an aesthetic choice for you as it is a political choice?

CHEN

I don’t know if I’d characterize the writing in that poem as raw; to me it’s highly wrought and choreographed, but I think because the subjects are masturbation and sexuality, the language comes off as more spontaneous or unmediated (uninhibited?). Maybe it’s the sexual frankness and the erotic charge that makes the poem read as raw. The writing process didn’t feel that way — it was full of flailing and revising — and probably I’m still too close to the poem to accurately describe its effects from more of a reader’s perspective. 

In any case, I love what Charif said in that interview. It was such a treat, getting to talk with him in a very slow, reflective way, over email. And I fully agree with this particular statement of his that you’re highlighting. Rawness or vulnerability on the page is a choice. Maybe the poem doesn’t feel raw to me because all I can see still are the intentional choices I made on the page. It may read as me laying everything out, complete openness. But I’m very selective about what goes into a poem. And I’m deliberate about what and how I publish (which is not to say that I have a perfect track record of not embarrassing myself with what’s out there). There’s a lot of work that will never get published because it’s bad writing or because the subject is too personal or both. In some cases, I might find a better way to write about a subject and I’ve become more comfortable sharing it, so then it makes its way into the world in a new poem, and it might seem like I’ve been totally open about this thing all along and the poem is this “spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings” à la Wordsworth, when it’s more like a convoluted trek across a mountain of second guesses. 

Then again, that’s not always how it happens. Some poems come super quickly with little or even no revision needed. But those poems, for me, tend to be on the rarer side. And upon reflection, there was usually a whole internal journey that occurred prior to composition. That is, I thought about some stuff a lot (while walking, drinking tea, tidying my office, reorganizing my closet, people-watching at the miraculously efficient Tampa airport, or yes, masturbating), and then one day that stuff found its proper (which may read as a wild!) form in a poem. 

And I’ll just add that I don’t think writing about sexuality is necessarily a rawer or more vulnerable subject compared to say, writing about family, or emails, or the planet. With any subject I’m trying to get to a deeper and more honest place. This doesn’t mean I always succeed or that I get to the deepest or most honest place! But that’s one big reason I keep writing: to try again. 

KARAN

“ode to completion & then some” is also one poem here that is closest to Justin Chin (thanks for introducing his work to me, I’m now a fan!) whom you regard as one of your strongest influences. “the whole room’s fragranced by butt / & balls, & i’m watching it all in the full-length mirror.” The visceral and candid exploration of the body in this poem stands out as both a site of autonomy and a space of conflict (or which once was a space of conflict). I’ve mentioned this earlier when we interviewed Kaylee Young-Eun Jeong, that we were recently taught in a class by Sophia Terazawa that poetry can often be categorized in these 4 parts: poetry of the mind, body, heart and soul. Even though it might seem to some readers that you’re writing from the body, I feel that you’re writing from all the four places, as all great poets do. In this particular poem, however, the body is clearly at the center. I’m wondering what you hope to uncover or challenge, especially as a queer Asian poet, about physicality through your poetry? 

CHEN

What a beautiful question. I love this idea of “poetry of the mind, body, heart and soul.” I’d add that there’s a poetry of the belly that I’m very interested in. And a poetry of the armpit. And a poetry of the cock. Can I say “cock” in this interview? I say it a whole bunch in that poem. Sometimes it feels funny to write like some tidied-up “professional” when it comes to talking about the poems — while in the poems I get to be messy and vulgar. Professionalism is weird! And I suppose that every additional type of poetry I’ve mentioned is under the umbrella category of poetry of the body, but it feels important to get more specific. There are times I get annoyed by poems where “the body” shows up a lot but the poems still lack physicality. “The body” has become so abstract. I want the body to be more embodied in poetry. I want to know where the hairs are and if they’re curly. I want smells. Odors. I want crevices.

Justin Chin keeps teaching me so much about how to write of and from the hairy bits, the sweat, the cock, the toes, the space between each toe. I say this as though he’s teaching me directly, but it’s all through his gorgeously-alive, physically-alive poems. I think everyone on the planet should read his poem, “Lick My Butt.” It’s one of those poems for me. I feel lucky just to have met that poem. Talk about a poetry of the body. A poetry of the butt, in this case. And the poem also showcases a poetry of the heart, including the broken heart, and a poetry of the broke person, a poetry of the working person, a poetry of the still-working-through-internalized-shit person, a poetry of the kind of explosive, endless laughter that makes your belly ache. 

As a poet, I’m continuing to work in the hopes that I’ll write a poem as good as “Lick My Butt.” I am indebted to Chin’s craft, his boldness and his tenderness and his clear love for language, even in the midst of experiencing trauma and harm, some of which comes from the misuse of language. As a queer Asian poet, I feel less alone, having Chin’s work as a literary companion. I hope my work can be a companion for those who need it. And I mean “less alone” not so much in the sense that I see myself in his work (though there is some of that) — our experiences and histories are quite different. No, I mean that his idiosyncratic ways of being queer and Asian and a million other things embolden me to cherish as well as deepen my idiosyncratic ways of being queer and Asian and a million other things.

On another note, Chin’s work has inspired a challenging prompt I’m excited to try: write about bad or mediocre gay sex. Chin does this brilliantly in many poems. I think my lyric mode or mood tends to be more celebratory and affirming than his, though we overlap in a kind of ecstatic poetics. I mean, “ode to completion & then some” describes a fantastic, exhilarating session of masturbation. The poem insists on utter satisfaction, satiation, but a part of me now wants to write its opposite: a mediocre effort at self-pleasuring. A lackluster performance with/on myself. I guess masturbation, for me, is also gay sex. Is it gay sex when a straight guy masturbates? Inquiring minds and cocks would like to know. 

KARAN

The dynamic range of voice and form across these poems — from the contemplative to the assertive — suggests a deliberate experimentation with poetic structure. How do you see the form and voice of a poem interacting with its content, and what challenges or discoveries does this bring to your creative process? You mentioned in your email how important it is for you to maintain the formatting of these poems, and you also mentioned Richard Siken’s Crush — would you speak a bit about what the caesura does for you? And what are your thoughts on the capital-V Voice — do you think about the voice? Do you place a lot of virtue in finding a poetic voice? How did you find your voice? (Most likely they’re two separate questions — one about form, the other about voice — so please feel free to answer separately.) 

CHEN

“Voice” has come to mean so many different things in writing that I’m not sure how useful a term it is anymore. That said, I don’t mind as much as some writers the idea of finding one’s voice. To me it’s just a shorthand for talking about the rather complicated process of refining the work so that it’s distinctive. Maybe finding your most idiosyncratic and impactful language is better. Or maybe it’s finding how your subject matter and your language need to talk to each other. The implication, though, that once you find your voice/language/subject you just keep writing that way forever, rings false. 

You also have to grow your voice. The process of refining does not stop. Growing your voice means trying to do different things from one poem to the next, from one book to the next. And it means continuing to read, continuing to take in a variety of art forms, continuing to absorb and transform influences, continuing to talk with friends, continuing to walk your dog or figure out what exactly your cat is doing now or, you know? It means continuing to live. And paying attention to how you live, including all the changes in life, some of which you choose and some of which are inevitable. Growing your voice might also mean losing a voice you once had. It can take a lot of perseverance and a lot of patience.

For me — and to answer your other set of questions — I’ve wanted to write like Siken since I was in high school and first read Crush. I imitated that book so much. So badly. But it gave me great pleasure to imitate a work I fell in love with so utterly. I still can’t write like Siken and that’s okay. But I think I’ve found some of my own ways to use long lines and unexpected indentations/spacings and this sort of ragged look across the entire expanse of the page. I’ve been using long lines since my first book, but my relationship to them has changed somewhat. I’m enjoying this new mix of long and short lines. And all this space. Before, I think I was very committed to density and these big blocks of text. Even with shorter stanzas, like with couplets and tercets, I wanted them to feel big and blocky and full, very full. Now I’m interested in opening things up more — aerating, which is a term and a gesture I got from Louise Glück when she talked about using short surrealist prose poems to aerate a collection (Faithful & Virtuous Night) full of long monologues spoken by this male painter character at the book’s core. The more I think about it, the more astonished I am by the level of invention that poets demonstrate — and yet fiction writers get so much more credit for making stuff up! 

Anyway, I don’t think I have much else to say about this Siken-inspired form for now, as I’m still really in the middle of working on the poems that take this form. Caesura, yes. Interrupting my own train of thought to let other thought-passengers on? I think so. Pretending again like I’m a visual artist? You bet. It’s an intuitive move, this experimentation. Growing your voice involves this kind of experimenting, this kind of play — without fully understanding what it is you’re doing. I trust in this play — the messy making of shapes and sounds — more than I trust in the voice that’s already found. 

KARAN

In a way all these poems navigate the search for self in the modern world, but “Quintessence: the Soul (If It Exists)” even claims so. The narrative in this one touches on the search for essence and authenticity amid chaos and noise. Search and transformation — be it physical, emotional, or conceptual — seems important to you. Do you find poetry to be a medium uniquely suited to capturing the fluidity of identity and experience? 

CHEN

I don’t know if poetry is uniquely suited for this, though maybe it’s any lyric and nonlinear form of writing that is. Virginia Woolf’s work comes to mind, in particular The Waves. I love how polyvocal that book is, and how attentive to various times of day, to changes in the light. So, maybe there needs to be a layering and a simultaneity, a capacity to, as Whitman declared, “contain multitudes.” After thinking about this more, I believe all of that can be done in narrative prose, as well. Poetry is just my favorite way to do it. I mean, I’ve felt this fluidity in Jhumpa Lahiri’s fiction, and some of her storytelling is quite linear. There’s nothing inherently wrong with the linear. I think saying “nonlinear” sometimes is a shorthand for saying non-narrative or narrative complexity. But a story can proceed from point A to B in a fairly straightforward manner while offering a rich array of thinking on how identity is fluid and experience evolves. 

As for “Quintessence: the Soul (If It Exists),” I remember becoming obsessed with words that start with the prefix a-. This prefix has a huge variety of meanings, from “in” (as in “abed”) to “in the state of” (as in “adrift”) to “not” (as in “atypical”) and so on. I drafted the poem by following my obsession with this prefix in an intuitive, sound-based way. Then during revision, I gradually came to the realization that I was drawn to this prefix because it’s a single letter that can mean all these different things. It’s not like un-, which for the most part only means “not” (as in “unhappy”) or the opposite action (as in “unpack”). The prefix a- can signal something positive or negative, something positioned one way or another, something concluded or in process. This multiplicity is so generative for poetry, and it arises from one prefix that is one letter. That such abundance — an entire cosmos of possible meaning and music — can be generated from something so small brings me to my knees in awe. And that’s what feels like the soul to me: how there is always, even in one small thing, this potential for Everything.

Whether the soul exists in the way it’s described or codified by religious traditions, I have no idea. But I like how dedicating a deeply close, worshipful attention to language can be an inexhaustible source of wonder. 

KARAN

We recently made a point of asking seasoned poets for advice for young writers. Of course you’re not “old” in the scheme of things, but you’ve had books published that are so well-acclaimed, and you’re also a teacher and an editor. What is something you’d like to say to young writers, as way of advice or caveats?

CHEN

Please have a lot of long conversations with a lot of different people about the things you’re most afraid of or the things you most love or the last absolutely most delicious thing you ate. And ask each person to tell you what their responses are. And listen. Really listen. I used to think being a poet meant withdrawing from the world entirely and maybe there are periods in which that’s necessary, but right now I believe it’s more important to converse and share. You may not get to see the person right in front of you ever again. It’s happened to me a couple times now. I thought, oh I’ll see that person again. And then years went by, and they died. That’s what happens. That is what’ll keep happening, sadly. So, talk about everything or as much of everything as you can manage — now. And take lots of photos. And eat well. And use your best ideas for poems, use your best lines, don’t save them up for later. You don’t need to be precious about all that. Your existence on this earth is already the most utterly precious thing. I don’t know how to say that better, though I guess I keep trying to. There have been moments I deeply regret because I kept myself so surface level, so “professional” and shallow, instead of trying to connect with someone for real. Toni Morrison said success is “when you have fewer and fewer regrets.” I have yet to regret turning down a professional opportunity. But god, missing a chance to get to know someone in an honest way. I don’t want to miss that. I don’t want you to miss it.