In reading the Kate Tufts Discovery Award finalists and winner in close proximity to each other, I was able to see more clearly one of the most dominant trends in contemporary poetry: all of these books, to different extents and in different ways, are meditations on identity. While obvious markers of identity, such as race, gender, and sexuality, are explored in these collections, each also explores more subtle influences on selfhood: the influences of a caring mother or grandmother; the influences of absences鈥攁n absent sibling or parent, for instance; the influence of place and how it roots and un-roots us. These poets look at the way we are each an amalgamation of what we love and what loves us as well as what threatens us, what would make us invisible鈥攖hat is to say, what we defy and resist shapes us as much as anything else.
Thus, in many ways, these collections are also meditations on rendering visible the invisible parts of human experience. And, while each of these poets has a singular voice and vision, each of them renders grief, rage, and love visible through a mixture of deft lyricism, formal experimentation, and vulnerable narration.
听(Omnidawn, 2018), 2019 winner of the Kate Tufts Discovery Award.
Diana Khoi Nguyen鈥檚听Ghost Of听is a haunted and haunting elegy, as the title suggests. In it, Nguyen grieves for her dead brother whose absence is the most prominent element of the book, which features family photographs with his form cut-out; this cut-out form is filled sometimes with poems (or sometimes the poems form around him, his absence a disruption, a negative shadow they cast), with his name written over and over, or with emptiness, white space offering its paean in this catalog of grief. 鈥淭here is no ecologically safe way to mourn,鈥� Nguyen writes in the first poem, 鈥淎 Bird in Chile, and Elsewhere,鈥� and from that gutting line Nguyen takes us on a journey that is as intelligent as it is vulnerable, surprising as it is familiar鈥攖he way grief is.
, it is difficult to isolate the poems in听Ghost Of听for dissection; I read this book in a single setting and am unconvinced there鈥檚 any other way to go about it. As Nguyen writes in 鈥淭riptych鈥�, framing is 鈥渁n act of enclosing鈥� but 鈥渇raming will also remove you:鈥� to remove these poems from her framework is to rob them of their relational intensity. Furthermore, this collection is more than a container for grief鈥攔ather, it is framed by multiple grievances, not only the loss of a brother, but also the wounds that surround that loss, particularly those caused by the Vietnam War: 鈥渢here is, you see, no shortage of gain and loss. // Let鈥檚 admit without embellishment what we do with each other鈥� she writes in 鈥淕host Of.鈥� It is this simultaneous lack of ornament alongside painstaking attention to detail that makes听Ghost Of听a riveting read: each moment, each turn of the page (and often, turn of the book to take in the typographical moves she makes) is essential, elemental as rain.
听(Coffee House Press, 2018).
One of my fiction instructors, the marvelous听, suggested reading the first and last word of a novel together as a way to distill the essence of a book through its book-ends; I have found this practice equally illuminating when applied to poetry collections. Reed鈥檚听Indecency鈥檚 first and last words are 鈥渋 destroy鈥� and these words limn the central preoccupations of听Indecency: what does it mean to be a gay black man in world set against you, a world that would have you destroyed? Reed鈥檚 answer is to destroy the flawed expectations he鈥檚 working against: his poems are dazzling displays of formal play and incisive social commentary. In 鈥淭o Every Faggot Who Pulverized Me for Being a Faggot,鈥� love and anger share center stage as Reed鈥檚 speaker examines the intersection of race and sexuality:
Dear fellow
gay-ass nigga, who loves you these days?
I hope it鈥檚 Black people. I hope no one
stole the certainty of that away from you.
To believe that white men had my back
was a facile act: who else so long
prepared to help me hate me?
As these lines suggest, there is no uncomplicated solace in this book; every moment of vulnerability in it, of which there are many, tender as they are raw, must admit (and criticize) the circumstances that makes such vulnerability risky鈥攊ndecent, even. As Reed鈥檚 speaker suggests in 鈥淓xchange:鈥� 鈥渨hich position privileges parataxis? in what design do i hold power?鈥� In these poems, which vary in structure and form, shifting fluidly from narrative to lyrical modes and often inviting the reader to physically move the book around to experience them, Reed finds power in multiple designs, particularly in those he invents for himself.
听(Noemi Press, 2017)
鈥淎 daughter bound by / trouble听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听 is a wilder grief,鈥� Villarreal writes in 鈥淕ulf Pines, or Final Assimilation Room,鈥� offering a distillation of the roving journey听Beast Meridian听takes in its exploration of womanhood, particularly first generation Mexican-American womanhood, and how it intersects with concepts and experiences of wildness, trouble, and grief. The grief and trauma Villarreal鈥檚 speaker feels is both firsthand and inherited: 鈥淚 inherit a palace of locked doors,鈥� her speaker notes in 鈥淭ropical Depression,鈥� which ends with both grief and righteous indignation:
听听听听听听听听听听听 I make warriors of the ocean,
to obliterate borders, explode walls, overwhelm the fences听听听听听 uncross the river
听
For the great violences hidden inside women
For the women hidden inside great violences
As with Nguyen and Reed鈥檚 collections, Villarreal鈥檚听Beast Meridian听experiments with form, using foot-notes, field notes, white space, typographic experimentation, and like Nguyen, family photographs, to craft a book that is at once elegiac and vibrant. 鈥淭o get out of the forest,鈥� one of her characters realizes in the long narrative sequence, 鈥淭he Way Back,鈥� 鈥渟he must be the first to tell their story.鈥� In many ways听Beast Meridian听is this telling, as it is at once the story of an individual and a people, of living across, within, and without various borders of culture, geography, and self鈥攊t is both an un-writing and a re-writing: 鈥渁 concurrent unweaving as I weave, / the text an unraveling ghost-skirt / ever-repeating its leaving and leaving and leaving.鈥�
听(American Poetry Review, 2017)
Tyree Daye鈥檚 debut is soaked in mother-love and cloaked in ghost-sheen. Its reverence for family, for land, for the fraught ways we are defined by geography, blood, and where they intersect (both literally and figuratively) define this taut and beautiful collection.听
In 鈥淪outhern Silence鈥� Daye demonstrates his ability to move between social commentary and interior reflection. It begins, 鈥淚鈥檝e only trusted / four white people in my life鈥� and ends
听听听听听听听听听听听 I wish I only spoke
听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听 in song
听
made a home
听听听听听听听听听听听 from these trees
听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听 the way birds do
听
In this movement from racism to birds roosting in song, Daye shows us that geography is both curse and balm: place haunts and heals us at the same time.
The other haunting balm for Daye鈥檚 speaker is family鈥攚hile many of the poems praise and cherish the speaker鈥檚 mother, the collection also celebrates the presence of family ghosts, the sense that our loved ones, even in death, carry us as much we carry them: 鈥淲e live in the same house your mama died in, / we talk with her ghost as if she still had a tongue,鈥� Daye writes in 鈥淪tory.鈥� Daye鈥檚 poems remind us, in their weaving together of lyricism and narrative, of the way 鈥渉ome,鈥� whatever that might be for us, is defined by our connections鈥攖o land and to each other. Daye notes in 鈥淩ock-a-bye,鈥� 鈥淚f I made a map of me / my mother鈥檚 body would appear / her map makes mine,鈥� indicating that this palimpsest map of self and other is how we recover our sense of self and purpose from the oppressive forces which would deny and diminish us.听
听(Copper Canyon Press, 2017)
Zamora鈥檚听Unaccompanied,听much like Villarreal鈥檚听Beast Meridian, is a collection that explores the complexities of immigration and the way border-crossings divide and reunite families. However, Zamora鈥檚 approach is a bit more straightforward, relying more on realism than magical realistic tropes to share his and family鈥檚 story. Even so, the poems admit the difficulty of realism, of reconstructing memory. As in 鈥淟et Me Try Again,鈥� the speaker begins
I could bore you with the sunset, the way water tasted
听听听听听听听听听听听 after so many days without it,
听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听 the trees,
the breed of dogs, but I can鈥檛 say
听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听 there were forty people
when we found the ranch with the thin white man,
听听听听听听听听听听听 his dogs,
听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听 and his shotgun.
Here, Zamora demonstrates the slipperiness of memory, even of such an intense moment. In other poems, memory is colored by longing, by the borders that can never be crossed again. In 鈥淰ows,鈥� Zamora explores the repercussions of illegal immigration and the impossibility of visiting family back in El Salvador. When the speaker鈥檚 grandparents 鈥渁sk when I鈥檒l visit,鈥� the speaker answers, 鈥�soon, Abuelos, soon.听What I mean is /听I can never go back.鈥�
听The question Zamora鈥檚 book raises then, is how to make a home in a land that doesn鈥檛 want you? How to make a home when you can never go听home? As with most of life鈥檚 difficult questions, the answer is ineffable and indefinite; we are left with action and voice. For instance, the poet interrogates himself in the final multi-part poem, 鈥淛une 10, 1999,鈥� which marks his arrival into the United States and reunion with his parents after a long separation. The trauma of that journey continues to haunt him: 鈥渏avier can you think of that date / without almost pissing yourself in La Migra鈥檚 backseat,鈥� he questions himself, before turning to the present: 鈥渁nd what do I do / I sit here and type it鈥檚 Monday / it鈥檚 Tuesday it鈥檚 Friday / type听first day inside a plane I sat by the window,鈥� returning us to the poem鈥檚 first line. It is, thus, through this gesture, toward those moments that haunt and make us that the collection offers some, if not resolution, peace: we might not be able to go home again, but through our work, through living, we can gesture toward it.
听is the author of the poetry collection听Glass Harvest听(Autumn House Press). Her poems have won multiple awards, including a Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Prize, and her poems and prose have appeared in听The Gettysburg Review,听Nashville Review,听Smartish Pace,听Pleiades, and elsewhere. She teaches English at Middle Tennessee State University.