Today, we are introduced to the new Poet Laureate of Brooklyn (when was that election?) in a story titled (believe it or not) "A Poet Who Doesn't Do Lofty." (How did GAP admakers miss that one: shots of decadent over-dressed partiers, b&w stills of the American working class [perhaps from Williamsburg], a narrator [with Howling Wolf in the background], "In this age, who wants lofty?")Supposedly, not Tina Chang. (Yes, that's the poet laureate of Brooklyn. And it tells you about all you need to know about what's happened to early 21st-Century Brooklyn.)
But I was Manhattanese, friendly and proud!
I was call’d by my nighest name by clear loud voices of young men as they saw me approaching or passing,
Felt their arms on my neck as I stood, or the negligent leaning of their flesh against me as I sat,
Saw many I loved in the street, or ferry-boat, or public assembly, yet never told them a word,
Lived the same life with the rest, the same old laughing, gnawing, sleeping,
Play’d the part that still looks back on the actor or actress,
The same old role, the role that is what we make it, as great as we like,
Or as small as we like, or both great and small.
Closer yet I approach you;
What thought you have of me, I had as much of you—I laid in my stores in advance;
I consider’d long and seriously of you before you were born.
Who was to know what should come home to me?
Who knows but I am enjoying this?
Who knows but I am as good as looking at you now, for all you cannot see me?
Okay, Walt Whitman. Maybe not fair.
Neither is featuring this on the front page of the New York Times:
About "Roman," Tina Chang's new baby:
My child was once a thought and he had
no name, locked in the stall of my making.
The child was housed inside me for a long time,
held still in water, his limbs floating on a screen,
fingerprints intricate as aerial maps.
On suicide:
Red door open.
They come from the trees hanging,
they come cheering,
they come silent.
Swishing, swishing.
A small cord around my neck
makes a kind of song like a flute.
A flower planted inside my mouth.
Let's say it was a rose.
Let's say it was noon,
time to swallow a pill, let's say valium.
They come from the trees hanging,
they come cheering,
they come silent.
Swishing, swishing.
A small cord around my neck
makes a kind of song like a flute.
A flower planted inside my mouth.
Let's say it was a rose.
Let's say it was noon,
time to swallow a pill, let's say valium.
About. . . I have no idea:
There’s a baby in a basket. There’s a burning
basket lullabye. You know the words.
The words are mixed with the soil when
the soil is lifted with a shovel.
Place the soil on top of the wooden boxes
whose bodies dream oo’s and ah’s,
of fireworks branching out in the sky
on holiday, pots and pans clanging,
children playing by dawn, a dream
nailed down to a box.
basket lullabye. You know the words.
The words are mixed with the soil when
the soil is lifted with a shovel.
Place the soil on top of the wooden boxes
whose bodies dream oo’s and ah’s,
of fireworks branching out in the sky
on holiday, pots and pans clanging,
children playing by dawn, a dream
nailed down to a box.
How Tina Chang thinks: “We don’t only want to engage Park Slope and Williamsburg and Dumbo and places that might be considered — I want to phrase this carefully — places that might, um, already benefit from these rich communities of literature." (And this is when she's being careful.) "We also want to be able to penetrate neighborhoods such as Bensonhurst and Bed-Stuy." Well, Ms. Chang, you might have a tougher time "penetrating" certain Bed-Stuy neighborhoods or the Soprano Family than you had in the D-Day invasions of Greenpoint or Boerum Hill. Still, you do have the zoning boards on your side. . .
Yet, amidst the portobello-mushroom-and-leek quiche baked by her partner (a Haitian named Castro), her flowing black hair and a remarkable ability to pull off form-fitting black leather pants, reading T.S. Eliot's "The Waste Land" to Roman in utero, and her Afghani sister-in-law, the sister-in-law's brothers' wives from Columbia and Ecuador, and that Haitian partner, Ms. Chang does have a super-cute baby and very nice feet.
