Lyric Essentials: Remi Recchia Reads Timothy Liu

Welcome back to Lyric Essentials, where we invite authors to share the work of their favorite poets. This month, Remi Recchia joins us to discuss the work of Timothy Liu and the ways in which poetry is just another word for love. As always, we hope you enjoy as much as we did.

Ryleigh Wann: When was the first time you read Timothy Liu’s work? Why did it stand out to you
then?

Remi Recchia: I first encountered Timothy Liu’s work in 2017. It was the second year of my MFA program at Bowling Green State University (BGSU), and in an effort to expose myself to more poets, I subscribed to the Poetry Foundation’s Poem of the Day newsletter. Liu’s poem “Winter”—most likely appropriately sent in one of the long, cold months in Northwest Ohio—mesmerized me. I couldn’t stop reading it. I think what really struck me was that it was a love poem; young poets tend to be cautioned against love poems due to the risk of cliché. I printed out the page and taped it to my office wall. Then, in a weird moment of serendipity, Liu was invited as a visiting author for BGSU’s Prout Reading Series. I remember him being a very interesting person. His reading began with him shirtless, holding a spear, with his chest covered in body paint. I don’t remember the rationale behind this act. Maybe it was just a poet being a poet. During the book-signing, I blurted out that I had a printout of his poem on my wall, which he humored in good taste.

RW: How has Liu’s writing inspired your own?

RR: I read Liu’s work at a time when I was falling madly in love with my now-wife, in the sticky grasp of alcoholism, during the early stages of my hormonal and gender transition. All of these things made me feel things very deeply; I was an intense person and also a little sad. Liu appears to me to be a poet who also feels things very deeply but, unlike the stereotypical masculine artist façade of blasé and cynicism, his work seems to embrace his emotional humanness, his messiness, his longing. I mean, look at these lines: “You touch my knee, and I hear / the brass weights of a grandfather clock / steadily falling in that cottage where / we met, the season’s first snow fresh / on the ground as hands ran up and down / a polished cherry cabinet built / to last” (“Two Men on a Swing Watching Their Shadows Lengthen,” Say Goodnight). Really look at them. In my mess and growth and desperation, how could I resist this language? So, to answer the question: I suppose Liu’s work has inspired my own in that it gave me permission to lean in. To write love poems. To love.

Remi Recchia reads “The Lovers” by Timothy Liu

RW: Why did you choose to read these poems specifically?

RR: As I’ve indicated earlier, the poem “Winter” is especially significant to me since it was my introduction to Liu’s work, and I’ve carried that meaningfulness with me since then. I chose the others because I feel that they complement each other. They’re thematically linked in that they’re all love poems, of course, the tone in each is different, creating a surprising juxtaposition of poetics. I find “All Trains Going Local” particularly intriguing. The lines, “you who are so used to // anything scribbled on a prescription blank” haunt me. Given my history with addiction, it’s not surprising that they stand out to me. But to any reader, addict or not, it should be noteworthy that those lines directly precede the turn of the poem: “Just want the pain to go away, you say, / surprised to find yourself // reaching for someone else’s hand.” Maybe what I’m saying is that the entire poem is full of twists and turns and revelations. That’s what all poems should do.

Remi Recchia reads “Winter” by Timothy Liu

RW: What have you been up to lately (life, work, anything!)? Got any news to share?

RR: Quite a bit, actually! My second poetry chapbook, From Gold, Ghosts: Alchemy Erasures, was released on November 1. I’ve also just published my first children’s book, Little Lenny Gets His Horns, a collaboration with the up-and-coming artist Victoria Garcia-Boswell. (Please check her out if you haven’t already.) I’m trying to publish my most recent full-length poetry manuscript, Addiction Apocalypse. In terms of other life news, I’m entering the discernment process for Holy Orders with the Episcopal Church.

Timothy Liu (Liu Ti Mo) was born in 1965 in San Jose, California to immigrant parents from Mainland China. He is the author of twelve books of poems, including Of Thee I Sing, selected by Publishers Weekly as a 2004 Book-of-the-Year; Say Goodnight, a 1998 PEN Open Book Margins Award; and Vox Angelica, which won the 1992 Poetry Society of America’s Norma Farber First Book Award. He has also edited Word of Mouth: An Anthology of Gay American Poetry. Translated into a dozen languages, Liu’s poems have appeared in such places as Best American Poetry, Bomb, Kenyon Review, The Nation, Paris Review, Ploughshares, Poetry, The Pushcart Prize, Virginia Quarterly Review and The Yale Review.

Purchase Down Low and Lowdown: Timothy Liu’s Bedside Bottom-Feeder

Remi Recchia, PhD, is a trans poet and essayist from Kalamazoo, Michigan. He is a book editor and also works as a technical editor. A five-time Pushcart Prize nominee, Remi’s work has appeared in World Literature Today, Best New Poets 2021, and Juked, among others. Books and chapbooks include Quicksand/Stargazing (Cooper Dillon Books, 2021); Sober (Red Bird Chapbooks, 2022); From Gold, Ghosts: Alchemy Erasures (Gasher Press, 2023); and Transmasculine Poetics: Filling the Gap in Literature & the Silences Around Us (Sundress Publications, forthcoming). Remi has been a Tin House Scholar and Thomas Lux Scholar. He holds an MFA in poetry from Bowling Green State University.

Purchase From Gold, Ghosts: Alchemy Erasures

Ryleigh Wann (she/her) hails from Michigan and currently lives in Brooklyn, NY. She earned an MFA from UNC Wilmington where she taught poetry and served as the comics editor for Ecotone. Her writing can be found in The McNeese Review, Longleaf Review, The Shore, and elsewhere. You can visit her website at ryleighwann.com