Juvenilia (Yale Series of Younger Poets) [Paperback]

Ken Chen (Author), Louise Gluck (Foreword)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 20, 2010 | Series: Yale Series of Younger Poets (Book 104)

Ken Chen is the 2009 winner of the annual Yale Younger Poets competition. These poems of maturation chronicle the poet’s relationship with his immigrant family and his unknowing attempt to recapture the unity of youth through comically doomed love affairs that evaporate before they start. Hungrily eclectic, the wry and emotionally piercing poems in this collection steal the forms of the shooting script, blues song, novel, memoir, essay, logical disputation, aphorism—even classical Chinese poetry in translation. But as contest judge Louise Glück notes in her foreword, “The miracle of this book is the degree to which Ken Chen manages to be both exhilaratingly modern (anti-catharsis, anti-epiphany) while at the same time never losing his attachment to voice, and the implicit claims of voice: these are poems of intense feeling. . . . Like only the best poets, Ken Chen makes with his voice a new category.”

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The latest Yale Younger Poet writes about his Chinese-American heritage; he draws on classic Chinese poets, such as Wang Wei and Li Yu. Yet his verse and prose stand at the farthest possible remove from the memoirlike poems, and the poems of first-person identity, that have characterized so much recent verse about U.S. immigrant life. Instead, Chen is experimental in the best and broadest sense of the term: each new page brings an experiment in self-presentation, in sentence, syntax, or (long) line. Prose poems digress into semantic analysis (Love Is Like Tautology in the Same Way Like Is Like Tautology); open-field verse resembles now an alienated, impersonal short story, now a page from an anguished diary: He studies the ceiling for hours before he sleeps—for the ceiling is ours./ He wore the bedroom ceiling as his eyelid. Self-consciousness (about travel, about voice) does not take him away from his sense of himself: rather, it becomes him, as when he begins: The first sentence of this poem is not about you./ In this respect, it is unlike the last sentence and my heart. Chen's parents appear as characters in the anti-novel, anti-memoir, first-person sequence. The New York-based Chen—who runs the Asian American Writers' Workshop—deserves attention for his daring invention, for the heretofore unknown hybrids throughout his work. (Apr.)
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Review

"Juvenilia is a wonderful debut, simultaneously devastating and beautiful."

--Rigoberto Gonzalez, The Poetry Foundation

"Chen is 'experimental' in the best and broadest sense of the term: each new page brings an experiment in self-presentation... [Chen] deserves attention for his daring invention, for [his] heretofore unknown hybrids." --Publishers Weekly

In his award-winning debut, Ken Chen draws on techniques from filmmaking... irresistible, strange and swift in its movements... funny and deadpan... Juvenilia is an inventive exploration of identity in transition.
--Karen Rigby, Raintaxi

"I cannot think of another young poet who writes so palpably, ingenuously about love."

--Ron Slate, author of The Incentive of the Maggot, The Quarterly Conversation

Fresh and intelligent... assemblage of disjointed narratives, syllogisms, aphorisms... Somber yet playful, self-disparaging yet hopeful... Poetry becomes a way through both loss and revival.
--Abigail Licad, Hyphen Magazine

"These are the poems of intense feeling; they have isolated and dramatized the profound dilemma of the adult’s relation to childhood in poems of riveting intelligence and sharp wit and austere beauty. Like only the best poets, Ken Chen makes with his voice a new category."—Louise Gluck, from the Foreword

(Louise Gluck ) --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 104 pages
• Publisher: Yale University Press (April 20, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0300160089
• ISBN-13: 978-0300160086
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.9 x 0.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #437,512 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Erudite, complex and often experimental, September 28, 2011

By 

Ravi C. (San Francisco, CA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Juvenilia (Yale Series of Younger Poets) (Paperback)

This is the 2009 winner of the prestigious Yale Younger Poets Award. Chen is currently the director of the Asian American Writers Workshop, based in New York City, but trained in Law and Business. This volume was very intriguing and soulful/mournful - I really enjoyed it!

There is a very nice essay by Louise Gluck in the beginning which helped me understand some of the theoretical underpinnings of this book. However, that's not necessary to enjoy the work. I am still savoring many of the lines, such as "love wants to be unmastered." This is not political poetry - rather it's more erudite, sometimes abstract, and verging towards philosophical. I enjoyed this; however, where it fell short for me was that I don't think it made me really think and reflect more about life, as the very best poetry often does. I do expect even greater work from Chen in the future, though. This is, after all, "Juvenilia" by his own description! A remarkable juvenilia, though!

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