Poetry Review: Drakkar Noir by Michael Chang and The Poetry of Thinking Out Loud

WritingFeatures

May 20

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The mind of a poet is usually a secret place. How a writer receives stimuli and turns it into art is typically a meticulous and personal process, informed by one’s own identity, experiences, and environment. In Michael Chang’s chapbook Drakkar Noir, Chang lets us into their interior world. The reader is brought into a collection where Zayn and Alice Notley are in dialogue, sex and art history are explored from one line to the next, and a sincere heart speaks in punchlines and fierce, albeit brilliant, shade.

From the very first page, Chang’s words present a challenge to the reader. Essentially, how can the language of our cultures, whether learned or inherited, become tools to better understand our purpose in this life? What language do we use to make sense of our relationship to others? How useful is language as a tool in a country whose values undermine our existence? Through formal experimentation, balancing a sense of order and play, these poems don’t settle for easy answers, will not end unsatisfied, until they “uncover some grand truth.” In this way, Chang is defiant, “picking things apart, searching for a solution”. Language is revered and scrutinized at the same time, both sacred and plaything.

In Drakkar Noir, words moves like the mind moves, fast and fluid. The poems have personality. The language is spontaneous, effortlessly switching codes and vernacular from one instance to the next. Several poems incorporate Chinese in either the title or body of the text. Thoughts flip on a dime, the tone shifts according to circumstance. The mind behind these poems are thirsty, in search of something without a name. Desire is seen from the inside out, brimming with color, from a clever and sharp tongue.

This mind processes anger and sadness with style, snaps back, is witty as hell in its delivery. These poems don’t hold their tongue, rather, everything is worth trying to express. Chang’s use of pop culture in their poems turns specific references and figures into effective loaded symbols able to withstand the depth of the collection. A kind of cultural equity happens when everything is weighed and considered equally. A poem leads with an epigraph from Cornel West, another poem starts with Drake. Everything is capable of holding space, has value, and is accounted for.

While the material of the poems are dense with meaning, Chang’s voice is cool, the poems thoughtfully crafted. Chang’s great sensitivity and empathy toward their subjects is evident, allowing them to be both biting and loving. Here is where Drakkar Noir shows the great versatility of language, how much fun it can be, its inherently flawed nature, and ultimately, its value as we make efforts to define ourselves and our story in this world.

MOOSE KNUCKLES

You have your speed-dial pussies, pregnant as possum
Split second, black palms, an instant

Aren’t you trying to support me, husband me up
So I can be a trophy

I am my own trophy
& didn’t yo mama say that need & want are different things?

Nikki says most rabbis Jewish
You claim to hate it here but I don’t like it anywhere

I call you Adam, take your light-skinned
white-passing bush leagues

your gratuitous apple-bobbing
insane clown posse

your pale here’s-a-suggestion narcissism
sweet meaning screwed up

breath spooky on my earlobes
tongue swimming between my cheeks

your howling cosmology
pug nose closer than it appears

Your second & third waves
My. Postman’s dick hanging out his shorts

Whiteboys in puffer coats, arm in arm
Blond, cream-smooth legs ready to break some hearts

Down to keep me out like the cold
Their eyes wander, accents blur, hard to place

I could use a little fortune in my cookie
[raucous laughter, aggressively virile]

When Raegan was President
P.Y.T. meant pretty young thing

Why doesn’t Tyehimba Jess write a book
called Infinite Jess?

Now, Chelsea Clinton squinting, this glow really slaps
The je ne sais quoi, these notes on fear

The one who made it out / / / the one who got away
(Same one?)

A big rabbit, actually a horse
How the hell did we learn to care for small animals?

Light me up monstrous & milky
Anything is possible here in the cosmos

The moon icing over
Your rimless dark, ever-present & empty

The trick to gardening is ample patience
& an elaborate staff

Drakkar Noir is now available to order through Bateau Press here.

Michael Chang (they/them) is a Lambda Literary fellow. Their poems have been nominated for Best New Poets, Best of the Net, & the Pushcart Prize. Their collection CHINATOWN ROMEO is forthcoming from Ursus Americanus Press.

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