Gordon Johnston’ s Seven Islands of the Ocmulgee: River Stories (Mercer University Press, 2023) is as dark and deep as the river for which it is named. Set near middle Georgia’s Ocmulgee River, these seven short stories have differences that intrigue and similarities that connect. Tackling dark subjects such as murder, alcoholism, and molestation, Seven Islands of the Ocmulgee dives headfirst into the Southern Gothic genre. The river takes on a variety of forms, including an obstacle in the quest to retrieve a lost shopping cart, a place of reflection, and of course, a vehicle for baptism. The river simultaneously wields an upfront power and a background impression that never fades.

Johnston opens with “The Only Place to Start From,” the first island. Peavey is a manager at Publix who is tasked to retrieve a shopping cart stolen and seen in the river. He ventures to the river to try to get it, and in the process, meets a mysterious teenage boy, John Mark, who has used the cart to catch fish and used the teeth to “make [his] marks” (Johnston 9). The boy also insists Peavey is not “the helper” he is looking for. Despite himself, Peavey “couldn’t stand it. He wanted to be the helper” (Johnston 12). In a story with as many twists and turns as the river itself, Peavey learns more about the boy and they develop a kinship as a result of their shared loneliness. At the end of the story, Peavey sees a man he does not know with the cart, but he does not let it bother him. In this small way, Peavey becomes new. 

When Rea, protagonist of “Seven Islands,” meets a small, seemingly mute boy alone on a rock in the river while kayaking, it feels as though the river is offering her a gift. The story hints at her wanting to do something positive with her unhappy life, and she takes the opportunity when she meets the boy, whom she dubs “Buddy” when he refuses to tell her his name. When trying to get Buddy to safety, Rea tells him about the wildlife and history of the river the two journey down; Johnston expertly weaves the details of Rea’s past in here. Rea wants something different for this boy, but in the end, he leaves after catching her speaking to a police officer. Before she meets Buddy, Rea reflects on an otter she once saw at the river for a half second, before it disappeared, and concludes: “That was the river: giving with one hand as it took away with the other” (Johnston 64). The river presents an opportunity, but it slips away. In a strange irony, the story is a complex baptism, forcing Rea and the readers to sit with grief instead of triumph. 

In stories like “Skin Trade,” the direct might of the river takes a different shape. Instead of facing any roaring rapids or wild animals, the protagonist holds the river in the recesses of her mind. Merlinda is from Macon, GA, but leaves in the night to escape her stepfather and stepbrother’s sexual assault at seventeen. She then moves to Chicago and becomes an escort. All the while, the Ocmulgee only appears in Merlinda’s childhood memories. Balancing a dark past with a hope for the future, Johnston carefully threads details about Merlinda’s past and present to craft a narrative as multifaceted as the river on which it is set.

“Going to Water on Wise Creek” is a fitting conclusion to the collection. In this story, a nameless protagonist makes a sort of pilgrimage to the Ocmulgee. The river intimidates the man: “The best and worst moment in a wild place is the recognition of what one has to lose” (Johnston 169). His fear is so great that he considers going back; nonetheless, he sees this journey through. Perhaps by leaving the man without a name, Johnston implies our identities become so small next to the might of the river that our names lose meaning. Given the man’s apparent love, respect, and fear of the river, the protagonist could be Johnston himself.

Seven Islands of the Ocmulgee: River Stories is a collection of stories whose connections are as dynamic as their differences. Tobit works at the Publix Peavey manages. Odis is Rea’s father as well as Merlinda’s cousin. Stories of the Hitchiti and the Spanish who colonized them are also woven through the stories, giving them weight as well as realism. In some stories, the river runs overwhelmingly powerfully; in others, the river is little more than a memory. As a Georgian, it is not only pleasurable to see names of places I recognize—Macon, Amicalolah, even Edge of the World—but awe-inspiring to recall the complex spirituality of the Southern experience. The protagonist of “Going to Water on Wise Creek” seems to understand how little there can be to fully understand: “By the time his prow creases the silt at the bottom of the take-out ramp with a gritty kiss, there isn’t much he knows” (Johnston 170). For all its ambivalence, Johnston makes one thing clear: the Ocmulgee River is a force to be reckoned with, but never forgotten about. 

Seven Islands of the Ocmulgee: River Stories is available from Mercer University Press 

---

Whitney Cooper holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Eastern Kentucky University, where they served as editor-in-chief of Jelly Bucket, the graduate literary journal run by the university. They also work as a reader for Atlanta Review. A clerical error was made while earning their bachelor’s degree, and they have been passionate about poetry ever since. Their poetry appears in Glassworks Magazine, Stillpoint Literary Magazine, and others. They live in metro Atlanta with their wife, cat, and miniature schnauzer mix.

The Sundress Academy for the Arts is excited to present “Before and After: Taking the BIPOC Road to Literary Taxidermy,” a workshop led by Denise Ervin on Wednesday, July 10th, 2024, from 6-7:30 PM EST. This event will be held over Zoom. Participants can access the event at tiny.utk.edu/sundress (password: safta).

Many contemporary poets find inspiration in the words of others. Sometimes, that inspiration takes the form of an “after” poem, where the writer imitates the form, rhythm, cadence, anaphora, etc. of another poet to pay homage to the original idea. In this workshop, we will take this idea beyond the flattering imitation by generating new work that borrows old lines. Specifically, we will examine several sample poems by BIPOC writers and vote for a consensus of our favorite lines from each.

Workshop participants will then be charged with literary taxidermy, using two of the lines we’ve chosen as the first and last lines of a new poem and packing the middle with an original poem to bring it to life. Participants will have an opportunity to share their work with the group and will leave with multiple first drafts that they can continue to build on in future writing.

While there is no fee to participate in this workshop, those who are able and appreciative may make donations directly to Denise Ervin via Venmo: @deniserervin, PayPal: denise.ervin@hotmail.comm or CashApp: $deniserervin

Denise R. Ervin is a creative writer hewn from the streets, classrooms, and boardrooms of Detroit. She has spent two decades as a teaching artist, performing poetry around the country, and leading workshops for the likes of Midnight & Indigo and Room Project. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in AADUNA, Harbinger Asylum, Third Wednesday Magazine, and others. Most recently, she was selected as a Graduate Fellow by The Watering Hole and a semifinalist for America’s Next Great Author. She also serves at Literary Arts Director for SAFTA and manages a youth writing program in her hometown.

Joanne Durham’s On Shifting Shoals (Kelsay Books, 2023) is a snapshot of Durham’s world. Her poems illustrate enticing and perfectly composed scenes of nature and family. While nature and family do not exist perfectly in the real world, Durham’s expertly woven images reel the audience into a utopia full of quiet humor and glorified ordinariness. On Shifting Shoals leaves the reader with an irresistible desire to elope their own life in the hope of finding a paradise as brilliant as the one in Durham’s mind. Gross annoyances of reality interrupt sparingly, driving us back to reality when life starts to seem a little too perfect. The ocean backdrops every moment of conflict and harmony, leaving readers at Durham’s mercy as we enjoy the soft crashes of waves, floating peacefully with the dolphins and waiting for the inevitable moment Durham disturbs the peace.

Durham’s vivid details do not take away from the larger metaphors and themes found in the collection. In fact, Durham’s description of the ocean makes it difficult to shake the image of a self-transformation through cleansing. In “Equanimity,” Durham says:

Here, Durham uses the environment to tie in the speaker’s self-possession and metamorphosis. She reveals her own intimate relationship with the environment that surrounds her, reeling in readers, and adding depth to the narrative with occasional snippets of the chaos in the speaker’s inner world. The raw account of these experiences renders itself trustworthy making it easy for readers to let go of their inhibition and dive wholeheartedly into self-reflection. 

On Shifting Shoals is a meditation on the everyday marvels and miracles that surround us, and the thoughtlessness in which humans often conduct themselves in contemporary, capitalist society. Durham makes the old-fashioned habit of simply living and observing look healing. She renews the freshness to doing nothing, a pastime that almost always leads to doing something, whether it is watching orange butterflies and orange blossoms “match the way lovers match” (16), or “gawking at the crimson egg that hovers on horizon’s edge” (38), Durham’s beautiful descriptions of slow-living hold us in a trance.

Beauty comes in different forms and Durham’s lovely world is not without its quips and oddballs. In “Garbage,” Durham describes the response the speaker gives a neighbor whose loud complaints regarding someone digging through trash endangering his children have made it around the neighborhood: 

“Garbage” is the antidote we all need. It is the reality-checker, the truth thrown in our face so suddenly it breaks our focus on Durham’s world. At no point does Durham attempt to persuade the reader into believing that her world is a utopia, and yet we cannot help but think of it as one. It’s easy to fall into thinking that the charm of Durham’s world only exists in fantasies—whether this is a precondition of living in our capitalist society where there is no room for quiet observation, or some other reason, we cannot say. In one swift move, Durham drags us back down to earth. She reminds the reader that finding your own peace and beauty in life is your own duty—that there is still much to wonder about in the world, and it will be a lifelong struggle.

On Shifting Shoals is an unexpected mirror forcing us to look at ourselves and the world behind us. Our soul-sucking routines that demand us to continue pushing forward are a far cry from Durham’s celebrations of life with all its terrifying complexities and dark confusions. The normality of Durham’s joy is striking and fresh. Her poetic voice is witty, bold, and clever. We are thrown into the deep end and made to swim through intimate relationships with subjects the speaker already knows well. Durham commands our attention, teasing and alluring, at times directly speaking to the reader as though we are an old friend. “I knew you’d understand!” says Durham (30). It’s more difficult to pretend we don’t understand than it is to simply get it. Durham writes so confidently and convincingly, we wonder if we have ever lived outside her world.

On Shifting Shoals is available for purchase at Kelsay Books

---

Hedaya Hasan is a Palestinian writer and designer based in Chicago.

Building off a conversation that began in Knoxville, TN, Executive Director Erin Elizabeth Smith spoke with Diego Báez on his incisive new collection Yaguareté White, where he explores duality, language, America’s complicated relationship with Paraguay, and how writing changes the writer.

Erin Elizabeth Smith: What was the nexus for this collection? Was this always the book you intended to write, or did it change in the writing?

Diego Báez: Surely, the book evolved in the writing, even if I was always going to write about ethnicity and language, race and inheritance. But more than anything, the book changed me in the making. I don’t just mean the process of drafting and submitting, editing, and peer review. I mean even after publication, it’s been wild and frightening and exhilarating to share the book with the world. I guess I didn’t foresee just how meaningfully impactful that would be. I’m so grateful for every opportunity, especially to reconnect with you and Sundress after staying at the co-op so many years ago. It’s wild to think that it would be both another and only six years until I had a title of my own to celebrate. And yet, here we are!

ES: The book grapples with America’s relationship to Paraguay, whether through politics in America’s propping up dictators during Operation Condor or in pop culture, including Charlie and the Chocolate Factory or Miami Vice. Can you speak a little about what you want non-Paraguayans to learn about Paraguay through these poems?  

DB: It would be a mistake to think my poems can teach anyone anything about Paraguay per se: I’m not a documentarian, and so much of what I know about Paraguay appears in my poems colored by my own subjective experiences, or filtered through knowledge my father has shared with me, or indexed by an always-biased web browser.

That said, if there’s one thing I hope readers take away, it’s that Paraguayan American poetry neither begins nor ends with me. Take, for example, Hugo Rodríguez-Alcalá, who taught at UC Riverside and published poetry in Spanish throughout the ’70s, ’80s, and ’90s. See also Clara Elena García, whose Seven Legendary Monsters will be published by Revolutionaries in 2025. It’s important to pin Yaguareté White in its place among a constellation of other Paraguayan American writers, which includes folks like Romy Natalia Goldberg, Cat Galeano, and Lorena O’Neil.

ES: In “English Eventually,” the poem begins “An editor asks for more Guarani in the manuscript.” Can you talk a little about using the “people’s tongue” within the work?​​

DB: I have a complicated relationship with Guaraní, a language my father spoke in the home, primarily on the phone, our household landline often occupied weekend nights with his emphatic, extremely loud conversations with family in Paraguay. I don’t speak Guaraní, but it occupies a very special place in my heart and mind, and I’m trying to learn more. Some of the poems in Yaguareté White are my attempts to do exactly that. 

“English, Eventually” is one of these, albeit one born of what I considered a questionable request to incorporate more Guaraní. On one hand, it’s fucked up to ask a writer to perform greater authenticity, more indigeneity, especially when it’s not really mine to exploit in the first place. Like, part of the point of the book is that my own—and, by extension, the speakers’—lack of proficiency makes them—me—complicit in our ignorance. Neither I nor my speakers are spokespeople for the Paraguayan American experience. On another hand, I’m grateful for the challenge, since it yielded new information I don’t think I’d have otherwise found: the word for “Guaraní” in Guaraní: avañe’ẽ. 

ES: At the end of “Capybara Ouroboros,” the poem states “If this must be a metaphor / for anything, it’s this: / the dead end of history // is neither serpent nor rodent, / not meat or fish, man or monument / but each masquerading as the other.” Many of the poems in the collection deal with duality. Can you talk a little about how this idea functions for you within these poems?

DB: Lately, I’ve been most interested in how “bi” seems to function as a prefix of exclusivity: so many biracial and bicultural students, writers, and readers I’ve met refer to themselves as “half-white” or “half-Mexican” or “half-Polish.” And I mean, it makes sense that many of us receive our cultural, linguistic, and ethnic heritage from delineated parentages. But like, bilingual folks don’t speak half in one language and half in another? They speak both languages. Those of us with a multiplicity of cultural backgrounds live through multiple cultures. It’s important to me to emphasize this duality, this plurality. 

Paradoxically, the poems in Yaguareté White tend toward the other extreme: resisting definitions of any kind (as in the lines you cite above). I’m reminded of a line in “Invention as Discovery,” an essay by Cuban American poet Andres Rojas that appears in Latinx Poetics: Essays on the Art of Poetry (ed. Ruben Quesada), in which Rojas considers this dueling duality: “I wanted to belong somewhere, even if that somewhere was two places at once, but I suspected that I did not belong anywhere.” That really resonates with me, as I suspect it will for anyone whose heritages seem to be at odds.

ES: The book uses several forms of found poems—blog entries, Google Home jokes. Can you talk a little about how these pieces became part of this collection?

DB: The earliest versions of the “postcard” poems were simply ripped from the ’net. Well-meaning white people like to post about their experiences in Paraguay—their semesters abroad, volunteer trips, and mission visits—but the way so many of them talk about the country infuriates me. My revenge was to take their words and repurpose them into poetry. But the actual creative act of repurposing required gentle admonition by several patient friends who suggested that I editorialize the original entries—cut, add, combine, rearrange–and the results are unquestionably the better for it. 

In an ironic twist, my dad told me recently that he’s been recruited by a faith-based organization to conduct a “mission trip” (his words!) to Paraguay to spread the good word of sobriety. I’m incredibly proud of his journey and this opportunity, but I can’t help cringing at the phrasing. There’s something hilarious and perfectly fitting about this particular return. I’m sure it’ll make its way into my next book in some fashion.

ES: The final poem in the collection ends in an almost prayer-like fashion speaking to the narrator’s own child. How does the idea of lineage and inheritance function for you as both a poet and parent?

DB: So much of Yaguareté White exists because my child came into the world and changed mine forever. Her arrival opened an entire dimension of the work—in writing, in life—that I didn’t have access to beforehand. No longer do questions of inheritance and heritage operate with me—or a lyrical speaker—as the endpoint, final word, or terminal punctuation. I’ve really had to wrestle with issues of legacy and futurity in ways I never had.

As a result, it was important to me to include her name in the book, as well as the names of other folks who I want to survive: uncles from my mom’s side of the family, the names of my dad’s host family here in the states from when he first arrived as a teenager. In these small gestures, these individuals will live forever, even if I wasn’t always able to show up for them in life.

Other names, I’m not ready to share: my abuelo and abuela aren’t named in the book. Theirs are maybe too close, too sacred, to be spoken. They both passed long before the book found its final form, but they live on in memory, which is a blessing. 

Yaguerté White is available from The University of Arizona Press

---

Diego Báez is a writer, educator, and abolitionist. He is the author of Yaguareté White (University of Arizona Press, 2024), a finalist for The Georgia Poetry Prize, and a semi-finalist for the Berkshire Prize for Poetry. His writing has appeared online and in print. He lives in Chicago and teaches at the City Colleges.

Erin Elizabeth Smith (she/her) is the Executive Director of Sundress Publications and the Sundress Academy for the Arts and a 2023 Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellow. She is the author of three full-length collections of poetry, most recently DOWN (SFASU 2020) and the founder of the Best of the Net Anthology. Her work has appeared in The Kenyon Review, Guernica, Ecotone, Crab Orchard, and Mid-American.Smith is a Distinguished Lecturer in the English Department at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville.

Lisa Braxton’s Dancing Between the Raindrops (Sea Crow Press, 2024) is a masterful and touching memoir in essays, full of grief and healing. Right from the start, Braxton situates readers into her heart, teaching us to care deeply for her mother, a woman who loved to write, though “never saw her words printed in a bound publication placed on the shelf of a bookstore…but she became something much more extraordinary” (Braxton 14). We learn about her father, who ran a clothing store for 40 years and, “at age 83, [has] lost most of his hearing” (Braxton 15). I immediately became invested in Braxton’s family and found myself eager to immerse myself further in her memories.

The idea of home is at the core of this book, including descriptions of physical houses and spaces as well as how people provide comfort and safety. One particularly touching moment is when Braxton decided to play gospel music for her mother, who was near the end of her life. Braxton writes: “Mom began to cry, something I didn’t expect. Then her crying became sobs. I didn’t know what to do. I thought about turning the music off, but decided to let it play, thinking that maybe she needed to express her emotions. I couldn’t help but wonder if she was sobbing because she was aware that she was dying in the same bedroom that she and Dad first occupied in 1961, that she never got the dream house that she wanted.” (28)

Here, a daughter wants so strongly to provide solace for her mother, to love her even if it looks a different way than she originally envisioned. Because so often, the way someone needs to receive love doesn’t exactly align with how one naturally give love. Still, the compassion and bond is there.

The memoir genre is explorative in nature, prompting author (and readers) to ask questions. Braxton admits to what she didn’t know at a young age; in many cases, this involves learning about what it means to African-American in this country. For example, towards the end of the memoir, Braxton writes: “Mom knew what I needed. As a child, I had many questions she couldn’t answer in a way I would understand” (113). In others moments, the learning process involves figuring out how to be a good daughter, citizen, sister, etc., and navigating illness and aging. And so perhaps even more bravely, Braxton also admits to what still doesn’t know as an adult. In a chapter in verse, which also happens to share its title with the book, she says,

These lines evoke grief visually through Braxton’s candidness. They also demonstrate her command of poetry; as a poet myself, I was delighted to see chapters of verse within the memoir.

Braxton continues her masterful instrumentation of image and emotion in the following chapter, “Dad’s Playlist.” Here, the format of a track list engage readers in short but powerful memories. She writes, “I watch you blow dust off the record player needle on the Hi-Fi stereo system and lower the arm onto the album as it spins around” (Braxton 39) and swinging hands with her father in his assisted living home to the beat of Sam Cooke’s “Twistin’ the Night Away” (Braxton 40). These vivid scenes, while short, paint so much understanding about the love and care Braxton had for her parents.

I admire Braxton’s openness on the page, as well as her confidence to play with genre and style. In addition to the playlist and poetry, other forms that make their way into Dancing Between Raindrops include: newscast script, job listing, photographs, resume, evaluation form, and recipe. One of my favorites, a crossword puzzle complete with answer key, brilliantly inserts definitions into a narrative. For example, when Braxton and her sister are trying to convince their aging father to retire and rest, he adamantly pushes back, saying, “‘I have a plan. There’s a space on East Main Street where I can open another store… ‘“’I can have all the merchandise sent over there. I can set up in a matter of days, get some flyers printed’” (83). Just below, Braxton redirects attention to the game: “(12 across: An idea or thought that continually preoccupies or intrudes on a person’s mind)” (83). As a reader, I found this format playful and emotionally charged—the meaning behind every detail is elevated by each clue, rather than interrupted.

I connect to Braxton’s memoir in so many ways—I am a cancer survivor, I have grappled with the slow grief of family members struggling with their health and memory, eventually passing. Despite any differences between Braxton and myself, her compelling and honest storytelling draws me close. When I reflect upon what this memoir means for Braxton herself, I recall words from her mother, emailed to Braxton: “I know, my dear. I’m well aware. I’m thinking about you too. All the time. Love you!” (135). In these words, I hear Braxton’s care, thoughtfulness, understanding, and admiration towards her family, her parents’ legacy, and the memories she’ll always hold dear.

Dancing Between the Raindrops is available at Sea Crow Press

---

Livia Meneghin (she/her) is the author of the chapbook Honey in My Hair and the Sundress Publications Reads Editor. She earned a Writers’ Room of Boston Poetry Fellowship, Breakwater Review‘s 2022 Peseroff Prize, and Second Place in The Room Magazine‘s 2023 Poetry Contest. She earned her MFA from Emerson College, where she now teaches writing and literature. She is a cancer survivor.

Reading and I have a complicated situationship that takes place somewhere between “stray cat in my complex” to “car I can’t shovel out of the snow so I sit inside it and beg for cleansing warmth.” “Browsing books we wouldn’t buy” while browsing Walmart as a child, and “finding books for free in bins and estate sales” as an adult. I think many of us tend to flip through anything for a low price, and I hunger for those easy-priced words.

If there’s one gift I love receiving from the world, it is knowledge. In my collection, you’ll find a ton of somewhat-ominous-to-read books ranging from Work in the 21st Century, an Introduction to Industrial and Organizational Psychology to a wider collection of College Writers’ publications. You know about those creative writing/english literature textbooks? Well, it turns out they have tons of short stories. Hundreds of them. This is what I’ve found to be the best way to collect short stories, more so than printing them out and binding them together (this takes up a crazy amount of space). No, I cannot always recommend it. Maybe.

If you’re as obsessed with finding new material as I am, I can’t recommend Bitter Medicine by Mia Tsai enough for a warm, immersive magic fantasy. Cookbooks such as Cook This Book: Techniques That Teach and Recipes To Repeat by Molly Baz, or The Everlasting Meal Cookbook: Leftovers A-Z by Tamar Adler. Red Doc> by Anne Carson for sure. Anything by Octavia Butler gets me excited, and I’ve been crazy about wanting to collect electrifying graphic novels such as The Adventure Zone series by Clint, Justin, Griffin, and Travis Mcelroy. Quite honestly, I wish more story-styled podcasts would get turned into books to devour. Maybe then I will learn another absorption method of sweet, sweet knowledge and fun.

---

Ahead of the release of his debut full-length poetry collection Good Son, Kyle Liang spoke with Sundress intern Saturn Browne on translation, memory, and family.

Saturn Browne: What was your primary thought process as you put Good Son together? Is there a larger narrative which you hoped to achieve?

Kyle Liang: I just wanted for both the reader and speaker(s) of these poems to experience a feeling of arrival at the end of the collection. So I turned to my poems and asked them what they were trying to say, what they were collectively chanting, and began working on how to arrange the poems and create sections that would sharpen their voice(s) such that there wouldn’t be too much noise or a sense of overcrowding. What resulted was a kind of chronologic series of poems—almost autobiographical, which, to me, feels similar to full-length collections that are titled something like “Selected Poems, 1969 – 1974.” This isn’t to say that my collection will be as generational as others works with these titles, but I think it’s honest and unromantic, and that’s what I appreciate about those types of collections.

Saturn Browne: How do the different languages of Chinese pinyin and English play into each other (e.g. “Self Portrait as a Fish” and “No | Bùyào”)?

Kyle Liang: At work and at home I’m used to hearing and speaking a number of different languages, whether it’s English, what’s left of my Mandarin after learning English at age four and using it as my primary language from that point forward, bits and pieces of Spanish, or even medical language. In this book, I was particularly interested in exploring what gets lost in translation. “Self Portrait as a Fish” is very anecdotal and offers a brief, but explicit, history of how things might get lost in translation, whereas “No | Bùyào” presents a visual experience of how things get lost in translation. We already know that much is lost in the process of translating from one language to another despite our best efforts, but I’m more curious about the intention laced into the translation process by the translator. How there might be hidden intentions. Limitations. How the translator might be driven by unconscious bias or emotion or fear or vulnerability or love or an attempt to protect their listener. How a Mandarin interpreter in the hospital once told me that she learned to avoid the phrase “hospice” with Chinese patients because she finds that they react with an irrecoverable sense of hopelessness, whereas I see it as a path to comfort and opportunity for dignity in certain patients. But perhaps this example is not specific to just Chinese people. Anyway, Mandarin sounds like home to me because it’s the language that I grew up hearing, and I think that pinyin allows non-Chinese readers to experience hearing the words that I sometimes have no translation for.

Saturn Browne: What led you to the decision to include epigraphs of Danez Smith, Audre Lorde, and other poets? How were the epigraphs picked and how do you believe they contextualize the sections?

Kyle Liang: I developed a course at Quinnipiac University called Health, Aging, and Intersectionality and am always searching for new resources and materials to support my students and my teaching. One day, Morgan and I were returning books at the library during Pride Month when I saw Audre Lorde’s The Cancer Journals featured on one of their shelves near the circulation desk. I borrowed the copy on the shelf, not knowing that I was ill-prepared for the richness of Lorde’s words. Reading it for the first time was kind of like hearing a new song on the radio while you’re driving and then suddenly noticing tears streaming down your cheeks. It really affected me as a poet, POC, healthcare provider, patient (as we all, in different ways and at different times, are patients), lover, son. Each page of this short book was striking and spoke to my work as a practitioner, teacher, and poet. With that being said, I felt it also aligned with Good Son.

Futhermore, in using a quote from her book, I wanted to celebrate and honor the work Lorde did during this frightening, vulnerable passage of her life. Writers and artists create profound work when they confront death, but I fear that the public’s aversion to real, legitimate, unapologetic and unromanticized death and dying outside of a fictional world, serial killer podcast, or murder mystery-style narrative, makes these works susceptible to being lost and overlooked. This isn’t to say that any of Lorde’s work is or will ever be lost or overlooked—although more people would certainly benefit from reading it; I just fear that we disproportionately value the words of folks when they are flourishing (e.g. interviews and book deals with celebrities and entrepreneurs at the peak of their careers), whereas the words of folks who are dying or near death risk being akin to silence. I’m interested in reading the latter. I want to know what they have to say and what they can teach me.

Saturn Browne: What was some of the reasoning behind different structures of pieces—for example, moving enjambments vs. footnotes vs. prose-blocks?

Kyle Liang: Like every poet, I try to push the boundaries of language and form. But most importantly, I try my best to listen to my poems and let them tell me what structure they need to support their words, worlds, and ideas. When I fail to house my lines with the right form then I feel like I didn’t parent my poem to find its own voice—a voice that can be in conversation with readers for years to come without me having to speak for them. In some cases, the poem needed to be pushed to move in order to be heard, and in other cases, I didn’t want to over parent, so the poems were given permission to run the width of the page.

Saturn Browne: How do you believe the act of translation barricade or advance the poems?

Kyle Liang: Great question. I think the act of translation itself—poetry aside—can be a barricade or an advancement. It limits and it enables. Sometimes it can be used for protection and sometimes as a weapon. Something I was never told as a child but believe to be true is that all we can do is our best. Hence, the idea behind Good Son.

In an outcome-oriented environment, good isn’t good enough. There’s a conflict buried in “good”—a hidden, internal conflict, an inherent struggle, a sense of effort-based action. As for my poems that deal with translation, all I can say is that the poems are doing their best to mirror conflict, and in doing so, present their own conflicts.

Saturn Browne: Where did you draw inspiration? Who did you read and reference the most as you put the collection together?

Kyle Liang: Mother. Father. Nái nái. Yé yé (RIP). Pó pó. Gōng gong (RIP). Gē ge. My wife, Morgan. My coworkers. My elementary school best friend, Ahmond. My best friend, Kashif. Chiang Kai-shek. Old family photos. Manhattan Chinatown. The City of Norwich. Dachen Islands. The Taiwan Strait. New York Public Library. Taiwan Straits Standoff: 70 Years of PRC-Taiwan Cross-Strait Tensions. Earthling Ed’s Instagram reels. Anatomy lab. My kitchen. Silence. My students at Brooklyn Poets. José Olivares. Daniel Borzutsky. Li-Young Lee. Jason Koo. K-Ming Chang. Leila Chatti. Ada Limón. Solmaz Sharif. Danez Smith. Victoria Chang. Jennifer Huang. Laura Kolbe. Joshua Bennett. Aracelis Girmay. Ocean Vuong. Ed Hirsch. Atul Gawande. UpToDate.com. Audre Lorde. CDC.gov. Health.gov. The New York Times.

Saturn Browne: Can you speak about the collection’s relationship with family and the language used to articulate it?

Kyle Liang: When my father was in high school, he lived in Taiwan while his parents and younger siblings were in the United States. They left without him because all Taiwanese men were required to serve in the military after reaching a certain age, and my father had already reached that age by the time they decided to leave. He spent roughly a decade in Taiwan without them, starting in his early teen years. He tells me that the break between school semesters were the loneliest because he had no family or classmates to keep him company, and the weeks that the country celebrated Lunar New Year were some of the most difficult because he didn’t know how to cook and every business would close for the holiday so he would grow hungry. He still doesn’t like to eat noodles because he ate them frequently as a kid. 

When I was in high school, my mother worked the second shift at Foxwoods Resort Casino, and my father worked the graveyard shift at Mohegan Sun, so they rarely saw each other, and I would only see them for maybe a few hours throughout the week when they weren’t working or sleeping. My older brother, who helped raise me when I was a child, was in college at the time. None of us really spoke much at home so the time we were in the house together was almost always spent in silence. Sometimes the silence was filled with the quiet sound of a pot boiling yu choy or my mother descaling fish or the more violent sound of a cleaver cutting through pork bones on a thick, wood cutting board.

This is all to say that my relationship—and therefore the collection’s relationship—with family could be described by its silences. I think I inherited the silences that defined my father’s upbringing, and this book, as a result, has as well. Outsiders might describe my relationship with my parents as an absence, but I think that describing our relationship as an absence does a disservice to many immigrant and working-class families, especially those who have been affected by war and/or displacement at some point in their family history. This book is an attempt to write into the silence. Define it. Articulate it. In whatever language lives in it and serves it. To find the words and language I didn’t have when I was younger.

Something that my father doesn’t really talk about is that he and his parents also do not speak the same primary language because his parents were born and raised on a small island off the coast of Taizhou, called the Dachen Islands, before they were evacuated and relocated to Taiwan as part of an effort called Operation King Kong; therefore their primary language remained a dialect of Chinese native to Dachen people, whereas my father spoke Mandarin as someone who was born and raised in Taiwan, so I’m sure there were many silences in his relationship with his parents as well.

While we’re on the topic, it would be arrogant of me to pretend I didn’t have help writing into these silences. Interestingly enough, growing up in the United States with rather quiet parents who didn’t understand the intricacies of American childhood or speak the same primary language as me, made me a vessel for guidance and mentorship by teachers, who were often white men. I distinctly remember my middle school science teacher, Jason Deeble, insisting I borrow his copy of the graphic novel American-Born Chinese by Gene Luen Yang, but not understanding why he thought I should read it. I owe much of this book to my high school English teacher, Bruce Bierman, who fiercely and almost violently steered me into that silence. Working with him as an impressionable teenager was an awakening. My former undergraduate professor and now good friend, Keith Kerr, played a large part in this process as well—I didn’t consider myself a writer until he began calling me one. Big shout out to these white men in my life.

Saturn Browne: Which poems proved to be the most difficult to write? Why?

Kyle Liang: “No | Bùyào” was certainly a challenge. When it was accepted for publication in Tinderbox Poetry Journal, one of their readers at the time, Koh Xin Tian, spent a lot of time helping make sure the pinyin read naturally. Prior to writing that poem, I had never written in pinyin. 

“A Lesson on Immunology” was an extremely difficult poem to write. I wrote it in March 2020—a time when I was afraid to leave my apartment or ride public transportation (keep in mind I live in New York City) for fear of being attacked. It was during a time when I scared that my family members, many of whom are immigrants, would be targeted for hate crimes. I was also in weird position because no one in America seemed to care about protecting themselves or each other from COVID early in the pandemic and scoffed at the thought of wearing masks or social distancing, meanwhile I was working in the hospital, taking care of the very people who challenged the severity of the disease as well as the people of color who were disproportionately affected by it. That was a soul-crushing period of my life. I have many memories of hyperventilating in the hospital bathroom.

Saturn Browne: Did Good Son change and morph through other perspectives (for example, sharing the poems, beta readers, editing), and, if so, how did it change? 

Kyle Liang: The majority of the poems in this book were unpublished and unread by anyone before it was selected for publication, so I knew that the poems and the manuscript would probably undergo significant changes. We removed a few poems, added a couple in. I actually asked a very good friend of mine who is not a poet to read the manuscript after it was accepted because I knew that two of the poems spoke closely to our friendship, and I didn’t want to include anything that could potentially hurt him. I ended up removing one of those poems after he read the manuscript, which is a decision I have no regrets about, but undoubtedly changed the book. I was happy to do it because a big reason why I write is to create something that can help people, not hurt them, so the last thing I wanted to do was publish work that would cause needless harm. One thing that did surprise me about the process of having readers and editors was that I found out which themes I really cared about preserving and which themes I didn’t even notice were there. That was cool.

Saturn Browne: What are some of the biggest tips you have for future writers when it comes to crafting a collection?

Kyle Liang: Feel good about every piece you include. A strong manuscript should feel like stone masonry, and you are the stone mason. By the end of the process, your manuscript should feel solid, able to withstand wind and storms and time because every poem has a very specific place and reason for being there. Like carefully orienting various curiously-shaped rocks around each other, the poems should fit together in a way that highlight their unique features. Some poems are bigger than others, but every single one is necessary to support each other. If it feels like you’re forcing one in—no matter where you put it, then maybe it just doesn’t belong in this manuscript. Save it for another project.

Saturn Browne: What is next for you and your writing/teaching?

Kyle Liang: As a sort of continuation of the last section of Good Son, I wrote a chapbook-length collection of romantic love poems that began the year Morgan and I got engaged. I’ve already started submitting the manuscript to contests and presses, and while it hasn’t been accepted anywhere yet, I’ve had some reassuring responses. I also plan to continue teaching students to write at the intersection of poetry and medicine, illness and intersectionality, identity and romantic love, and I hope to lead by example, which means I have more work to do. But I’m excited. I have a lot of other hopes and ideas for writing projects floating in my head but these are the ones that feel the most promising and comforting right now.

Good Son is available to order now

---

Kyle Liang is the son of Taiwanese and Malaysian immigrants. He’s author of the chapbook How to Build a House (winner of the 2017 Swan Scythe Press Chapbook Contest), and his work has appeared in Best of the Net, Asian American Writers’ Workshop’s The Margins, Glass: A Journal of Poetry, wildness, Diode, and elsewhere.He is an adjunct professor at Quinnipiac University, a teacher for Brooklyn Poets, and a physician assistant in internal medicine at New York-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell. Kyle lives in New York City with his wife Morgan.

Saturn Browne (she/they) is a Chinese-Vietnamese immigrant and the Connecticut Youth Poet Laureate, East Coast Asian American Student Union (ECAASU) Artist in Residence, and the author of BLOODPATHS. Her work has been recognized by Gone Lawn, GASHER, Beaver Mag, Pulitzer Center, Foyle Young Poets, and others. She is an incoming undergraduate student at Yale University.