I have a confession to make: I don’t really get poetry. Sometimes I read a poem, and I like it, and I couldn’t tell you what I liked about it. I couldn’t tell you one thing about its form or influences or any other thing like that. It’s a big gap in my homeschool education.
Because I don’t know enough about poetry to know what I like, I basically only read one poetry book a year, and that’s because Book Bingo inevitably has some poetry-related prompt.
This year’s poetry book is Your Emergency Contact Has Experienced an Emergency by Chen Chen. Side note: This might be the longest title of any book I’ve ever read. Weirdly, June ended up being a month of long titles (see also: The World and All That it Holds).
When I started reading this book, I wasn’t sure I liked it. Chen’s poems feel very experimental and I didn’t understand a lot of the forms or styles he was using. But over time, it really grew on me, especially as he returned to certain themes, so it felt almost like there was a narrative, as I saw relationships in his poems grow and change.
This isn’t easy reading. Chen is Asian-American and queer, and the time period these poems were written in includes Trump’s presidency, COVID-19, the Pulse nightclub shooting… There’s a lot of reflections on racism, homophobia, isolation, death, and the general crappiness of the state of the world. But there are moments of lightness too, including cute references to his dog.
Some of these poems include Chinese characters; occasionally I’d recognize some from the one semester of Mandarin I took many years ago. Most I did not recognize. Sometimes I was able to infer their meaning. Mostly I was not! It forced me to slow down and read these poems more carefully and wonder what I was missing by being monolingual. Readers who understand Mandarin will probably get even more out of this collection than I did.
Many of these poems were published elsewhere. Chen seems to be a prolific poet who is well-regarded by people who know more about poetry than I do! So, if you are looking to read more poetry, especially contemporary American poetry, I think this book is worth picking up. And if you know more about poetry than I do, maybe you can come back to this blog and share some insights with me!
CWs and TWs: In addition to everything I mentioned above, there’s mentions of child abuse, death of a parent, some sexual content (including a sexually suggestive cover image!), and some language. I’d say this is a pretty adult poetry collection, but older teens with an appreciation of poetry may enjoy it.
Format and Source: I purchased a paperback copy of Your Emergency Contact Has Experienced an Emergency from Nook & Cranny Books.
Book Bingo Prompts
Nook & Cranny (Card 1): Feeling Poetic. I bought this book specifically for this prompt! And reading it really did make me feel poetic. I almost wrote a poem about my dog. I’m pretty sure I haven’t written any poetry since I was a teenager and I should probably keep it that way, but it’s fun to think in poetic phrases.
SAL/SPL Adult Summer Reading: LGBTQIA+ Poetry/Essays. When you play enough book bingo, you start to get an idea for what sort of prompts might show up. There must have been something in the air, because not only did I hold off on reading this book until SAL/SPL bingo started, but my spouse also bought an LGBTQIA+ poetry book during Seattle Indie Bookstore Day because they had a feeling they’d need it for book bingo!
Book Bingo Progress
Nook & Cranny (Card 1): 15 out of 25 prompts complete. 1 bingo.
Nook & Cranny (Card 2): 12 out of 25 prompts complete. 0 bingos.
SAL/SPL Adult Summer Reading: 5 out of 23 prompts, 0 bingos.
Donation for Palestine: I bought this book in December 2023 so it counts for my challenge! For this book I chose to donate to help Mohammad Hammad and his family. I’m now at 6 out of 12 books for my physical TBR challenge. You can read this post to learn more about my reading/donation challenge, and see which families I’ve donated to.