Franny Choi
In 2015, an angry remark I made about racism in publishing ended up on a right-wing message board, and I was subsequently swarmed on Twitter for about three days. As an artist, I was fascinated by these tweets, which hit on the precise intersections of race, gender, and technology that I was thinking about at the time. As a human, I couldn’t look at them for very long without starting to feel terrible. So I decided to play a game: I would pick a handful of tweets, paste them into Google Translate, and process them back and forth into a bunch of languages until they became funny, or at least something other than simply hurtful. I ended up with lots of lines of garbled text and decided to try to use it to write a poem.
In a way, writing with found text is revising. Once I had the “stuff” of the poem, I started cutting it up and rearranging it, letting myself be led by sound and feeling in order to find the poem’s arc. In the process, I found a few questions: What were the rules of the game (namely, how much was I “allowed” to modify the text)? Did I want to make some sort of argument, or simply present my findings? Who was “I” in a poem like this? In each of my first few drafts, a speaker emerged at the end to take over the language and remix it to say something new. I kept feeling unsatisfied with this; I didn’t really believe in the poem’s triumphant ending (and was, at the time, starting to feel suspicious of triumphant endings in general). Over the next few drafts, I moved toward keeping the language mostly unmodified by a separately-voiced speaker, and just ended on a particularly strange and resonant bit of found text. It turned out the poem wasn’t really about me at all, and that realization was surprisingly freeing.
Other than that, my revisions focused primarily on making the poem more inviting and easier to read. The arc became more streamlined (kooky to dangerous), and the poem got shorter (less time in the bad place). At some point, I tried putting it into quatrains, and I liked the effect having such wild language contained in neat little boxes. Lastly, I gave it a new title in line with other poems in my book, and I think that helped establish a premise without forcing the speaker to show up and give a big speech.
The poem has been published in a few places (including in my collection, Soft Science, on Alice James Books), but something about this process makes it feel unfinished. I still have questions, especially about the political stakes of reproducing violent language, even in this jumbled form.
*
"The Cyborg Wants to Make Sure She Heard You Right" (poem) from Soft Science by Franny Choi, Alice James Books, 2019.
Photo credit Jasmine Durhal
< draft 1 >
@odinsalias: No, I have one side of the oil pan gookess.
@datibby: How crazy can not find her. Will be very pleased.
@XxXN0sg0berxxX: If you try, especially for a small group of white America I, and the other is "the power structure in Asia, should you want it." I do not think
@unbanpangs: lol parody, written, or oil, to rage
@TonySandos: In that sense, the armor "cracks”
@badmanhitler: Exclusive rights in Asia and attention LOL. You have to hook my country.
@ProgsToday: #Respiratory black women in Africa ==> Modern #Muslim slave poems condemned the move
@BigD4UT: It's not for the Liberals do not want their children after they have made their decisions, they make them?
@greenzero3: Cultural differences was a mistake. Family from some Asian process you are deported.
@HipsterToast: Mrs. great Anime pornography. the fruit of the field
@al_kahina: A person of God (fan) or flat face fetus can not be canceled by the commitment to eating comfort women.
@HelloRaspberry: May ur shit like people and Hello Kitty, I feel bad there arent u Whiteys where I was to go to China.
@BiteLeg: Race NE. Because it determines the order, depending on the skin color. I love to evil purposes for you.
@SpiritSplice: Culturally appropriate technology and culture are white, you can check writing privileges
@DelaneyCoffer: Mali's pretty stubborn. To date Klansman vagina
@ToucanSam87: I'm going to be all Asian woman is an object of sex I my eyes slope of women when abolition her throat bukkake down my cock, retains its symbol
@witch_sniffer: Trailer trash Jewish / Black like the offense. I hope someday you will.
@cuckservative: I do not want to see us get lazy fatties first and only fagots our existence.
@PaterFam27: Each male is not shown. Only white hetero. If people will not buy a song must be because of patriarchy.
@sonic 710: LOL!This bitch is a full stop. Answer, of course, that this gift. > Idiots like her sense of logic
@TheMadMoai: The only problem is getting uppity filthy immigrant girl. Do not like it? I go back to my mudhole.
@e_the_o: Whitey will no longer live in institutions for the attack. Good sister to the Saddle.
@e_the_o: This is nothing. It is true that the White anger and crematoria front cover hundreds of miles. Be careful about running off for us.
< draft 2 >
@FANNYCHOIR
Racist tweets sent to the author, as interpreted by Google Translate
lol parody, written, or oil, to rage.
To date Klansman vagina. Mali’s pretty stubborn.
Good sister to the Saddle. I love to evil purposes for you.
I have one side of the oil pan, gookess.
May ur shit like people and Hello Kitty.
I feel bad there arent u Whiteys where I was
to go to China. A person of God (fan) or flat face fetus
can not be canceled by the commitment to eating comfort women.
How crazy can not find her. Will be very pleased.
If people will not buy a song must be because of patriarchy.
Mrs. Great Anime Pornography. The fruit of the field.
I'm going to be all Asian woman is an object of sex.
I my eyes, slope of women when abolition her throat
bukkake down my cock, retains its symbol.
In that sense, the armor "cracks.” LOL! This bitch
is a full stop. The only problem is getting uppity
filthy immigrant girl. Do not like it? I go back to my mudhole.
I do not want to see us get lazy fatties first and only faggots
our existence. Whitey will no longer live in institutions for the attack.
Family from some Asian process you are deported.
It is true that the White anger and crematoria front
cover hundreds of miles. Be careful about running off for us.
Each male is not shown. Only white hetero.
This is nothing. Cultural differences was a mistake.
Culturally appropriate technology and culture are white,
you can check writing privileges. Arent u Whiteys. Pleased.
Written, or oil, to rage. The fruit of the field.
Be careful. crazy can not find her. Can not be canceled
by eating comfort woman. I’m going to be all Asian woman.
I, my eyes, slope of woman. Of God (fan).
Filthy immigrant girl getting uppity. LOL!
Whitey will no longer live in institutions. Full stop.
Canceled. The armor cracks. Retains its symbol.
I, and the other. Mrs. oil pan. Good sister to the Saddle.
Stubborn fruit of the field. Do not like it? oil, to rage?
Be careful. This is nothing.
< final version >
the cyborg wants to make sure she heard you right
Composed of tweets directed at the author, processed through Google Translate into multiple languages, then back into English
Mrs. Great Anime Pornography, the fruit of the field.
To date Klansman vagina. Good sister to the Saddle.
May ur shit like people and Hello Kitty.
I have one side of the oil pan, gookess.
If people will not buy a song, must be because of patriarchy.
I feel bad there arent u Whiteys where I was to go to China.
A person of God (fan) or flat face fetus can not be canceled
by the commitment to eating comfort women.
I'm going to be all Asian woman is an object of sex.
I my eyes, slope of women when abolition her throat
bukkake down my cock, retains its symbol. LOL!
This bitch is a full stop. In that sense,
the armor "cracks.” The only problem is getting
uppity, filthy immigrant girl. Do not like it?
I go back to my mudhole. Lazy fatties first
and only faggots existence. Whitey
will no longer live in institutions for the attack.
Family from some Asian process you are deported.
It is true that the White anger and crematoria front cover
hundreds of miles. Be careful about running off for us.
Each male is not shown. Only white hetero.
This is nothing. Cultural differences
was a mistake. How crazy can not find her. Will be very pleased.
lol parody, written, or oil, to rage.
Derrick Austin
I love revision. A terrible perfectionist, I’ve never been good at getting the mess on the page. The first few drafts stress me out, perhaps, more than they ought to. But once I have a solid draft, then I start revising, my process of clarifying and deepening. I’m asking questions of myself and the poem. How can the poem’s form aid in the expression of its content? Is the language doing too much or not enough? Am I being rigorous and precise in my use of language? Is the poem fresh and surprising? Does the poem give pleasure?
“Villiers” began after I read an article about a Scottish museum discovering that a portrait of George Villiers, 1st Duke of Buckingham, favorite and likely lover of King James I, was actually a lost work by Rubens. The portrait was less interesting to me than the figure so I began a persona poem. I don’t tend to write self-aggrandizing figures, so, as a challenge, I gave it a try. I wanted to write someone self-absorbed in an indulgent world, a world that exists due to cruelties, large and small—a lifestyle as luxurious as it is banal. The earliest drafts were caught up in the lushness of it all. It was less a psychic portrait of a vain duke and more a catalogue of pretty things. Even the rhyming couplets, which were a useful scaffold as I drafted and whose sonic textures still exist, though muted, in the current version, made the poem go on too long.
Revision is a process of getting out of my own way. I attempt to figure out which elements serve the poem and which stroke my ego. The lines or gestures I usually cut are almost always too clever or caught up in their lusciousness, sonically, imagistically, or rhetorically. I’m not opposed to lushness or cleverness. Part of revision’s joy is recognizing the successful parts of the poem, where my passion, curiosity, and obsessions live; it’s because I love a lush image or complex formal structure that it’s easy for me to get carried away and hardest for me to view those moments in my drafts with the necessary scrutiny. I don’t get it right every time, but I try. Revision teaches me to recognize when to eschew beauty and when to be beholden to it.
< draft >
< REVISION >
villiers
What’s patience to the affection of a king?
I always hated that verse about the meek.
One gesture splintered into—kisses, antique
glass—a cosmos of goodness. The house
where we played man and wife was ornamental.
We drank chocolate, sometimes port.
I ignored my wedding vows and you the state.
What’s more erotic than the dream of control?
Honeysuckles you swallowed, I swallowed.
Sunset was pollen blown off your shoulder.
Translators made new music from Hebrew.
During your reign, witches burned.
—In your bedroom, which echoed our more
extravagant positions, did you read my love letter?
F. Douglas Brown
I am the co-founder and co-curator of un::fade::able, a quarterly reading series honoring the legacy of Sandra Bland. Every reading, poets speak the hard truths for and with the slain Black lives in an effort to fight erasure and uplift the spirits of the community. In 2017, I wrote and performed “Re-Portrait :: Selfie,” in collaboration with violinist Yvette Cornelia Holzwarth for this series.
Revision is always a collaborative effort. What Yvette and I put together happened quickly because the intentions surrounding the series had done the work for us. We both understood how grief worked lyrically and musically. We both knew we wanted to honor Bland.
Before any films, or court decisions, or settlements, the best narrative that existed was Sandra Bland’s own voice, her livelihood, her humanity. What existed were a string of selfies, videos, words of encouragement from a young woman who had hope for the world that was trying to destroy her. Sandra Bland’s selfie game rejoiced in the delights of any given day. Her selfie game—fly and fashionable, in opposition to what the media had been portraying or failed to depict. We wanted to “re-portrait” her in her own light, the light a Black woman radiates.
I had a working draft and Yvette started tinkering on the music based on the draft’s initial pace and tone. The stakes of collaborating with Sandra Bland, and of creating a portrait of her lead us to ask: what did her family know of her? How did she know herself? What is a better record of her personality? Why was an alternate narrative negating her existence? These questions changed the focus and direction of the poem and musical arrangement.
I cut lines to make it as “snap-shot,” as “selfie” as possible. Yvette layered the tracks, to build Bland’s complexity despite the quickness of each lyrical section. A last edit was to give each section an entrance to show a change in pace as a new conversation with Bland. In this way, the poem attempts to speak to both the spectre and living Sandra Bland.
< draft >
< final verSION >
Re-Portrait :: Selfie
for Sandra Bland
Jan-Henry Gray
This began through a prompt in a workshop led by W. Todd Kaneko at the Kundiman writers retreat where we looked at how poems (like Ada Limón’s “What I Didn’t Know Before”) can make metaphor happen by placing two things together.
It was June, 2019, the summer my heart was breaking in one direction and filling in another. The up-and-down year had left me exhausted, raw. So, I relied on what was easy and tried only to say what was necessary—a kind of flattened urgency. After staring at the page for some time that morning, I remember the poem came spilling out. Exhaustion can lead to clarity.
The poem begins like notes for a recipe. I’ve cooked in restaurants for years and I still cook nearly every day. I’ve attempted (and mostly failed) at writing recipe-poems in the past. Cooking comes easy but writing is hard.
In the first draft, the word “clove” appeared three times on the same line midway through the poem, a signal that the poem wanted to clear the way for something else. I kept the echo going with the next images with “garlic” ... “garlic heart” and later with “It needs/ tending. Tendon. Time." Isn't echoing a kind of love? Call and response? Sympathetic vibration?
All of this echoing surrounds the plain declarative sentence: “The language/ of the heart is stupid.” It’s a crude line; inelegant and obvious. If nothing else, it's a great excuse to say the word stupid in a poem. But, it’s what the poem was circling toward all along. And, it recalls the first line at the top of the previous page I wrote that morning: “the heart is just a muscle in want of any rhythm.”
It also reminds me of something Sandra Oh’s character says in the very underrated Last Night (1999), a film that's about—and whose release date coincided with—pre-Y2K anxiety. In it, Oh’s character is on her way home when she meets someone and realizes that they're likely going to be spending their last few minutes on earth together. Opening the special bottle of wine intended for her husband, she tells the stranger: “Tell me something to make me love you.” It’s a line full of desperation, of course, but it’s also wildly romantic. In that moment, she wants to believe that it’s possible to fall in love with someone in an instant.
During revision, I rearranged the lines into couplets and stretched them to make even, to-the-middle-of-the-page length lines. It felt right, if not obvious to do this. Love poem=couplets. Ditto the title. Meat=an unfussy four-letter word.
I wanted to end with meat and the language of cooking. “So much happens to flesh" begins the move toward the poem's exit. Perhaps, there is more to say. I don’t know. Perhaps the poem, too, is inarticulate.
*
“Meat” first appeared in Jet Fuel Review
< draft >
the heart
the heart is just / a muscle
in want / of any rhythm
yours and yours
small on small
[...]
hard to know
inarticulate heart
stupid, brainless, separate
[...]
is/was the wall
the guillotine
I want to be halved
a whole
Careful not to torch the skewer
Soak it overnight in water. To
guarantee the lean meat tender
soak in a marinade
redolent of vinegar. Too much acid
will gray the outer flesh and
rip through the meat’s fat. To
avoid such sinew, temper the
acid with something
sweet (say honey), something
grounding (soy, garlic) and
smoke, tomato, pepper. Black pepper is a bridge,
a catalyst between
two flavors. To marry cherry
juice to cinnamon, boil both with
whole cloves. Clove of pepper. Clove
of garlic. Garlic heart. The language
of the heart is inarticulate, stupid,
brainless. It needs: tending. An overnight
stay in a cool box sealed.
It needs rest before and
after its brief time exposed
to so much fire.
< REVISION >
meat
doubly inspired by W. Todd Kaneko and Ada Limón
To avoid torching the skewers, soak overnight
in water. To guarantee the lean meat tender,
steep in a marinade of vinegar. Too much
acid will gray the outer flesh. Temper it
with something sweet: say honey, something
grounding: say soy. Add smoke, tomato, or
black pepper. Pepper is a bridge between two
flavors. To marry cherry juice to cinnamon, boil
both with whole cloves. Clove of pepper. Clove
of garlic. Elephant garlic heart. The language
of the heart is stupid. Inarticulate. It needs
tending. Tendon. Time. A night in, sealed.
Before slicing, let rest. So much happens
to flesh—its brief time exposed to so much fire.
Phillip B. Williams
The original poem started off as a sonnet in a sonnet sequence that in its entirety was revised and revised in such a way that it no longer included this poem that, for the sake of this project, I am calling “Excerpt.” The challenge with excerpt is that it talked too much without actually saying anything. It felt more like a puzzle than a poem, and it bored me so I knew it would bore a reader. I wanted to fight the core interest in the poem and that for me was the somnambulists. Why are they here? What do they want? How can I focus on them? I was also taken aback by the pelican. It was creepy and unpredictable, so I wanted to see if there cold be a connection made, if one was already present and I just needed to carve it out of the mess of a poem I had at the time. I went about revising this poem by means of cutting. I cut everything I could and with what was left I filled in the blanks, letting image and not rhetoric take the lead.
*
Originally published in The Paris-American
< draft >
Excerpt
Under skin, over thought, in the travelling hand
called night, a harvest moon salivates over grand
sessions of somnambulists. The sleeping strollers
go to an ocean’s waves’ crests then into the wet folds
until folded in. Was the dreaming that vexed
the body forward without burning rationale. Test
dreams the way you’d test blind love, flummoxed
by similarities between those under one spell
and those under a naked stranger’s body. Was
a sense it used to make, exist while being destroyed
by the very thing that made existence pleasurable. A town
ambles off a pier, drops like water from a pelican’s beak.
The plash they make is the sound of their waking, not
knowing if their mouths are salted with dreams or blood.
< final version >
cascade
For all the fatherless children, the lake’s bottom.
For all the children butchered by abandonment
make them somnambulists in heatless nights.
Give a sleepwalking boy a lyre of smoke and a score
he can’t read. Rest, I tell my legs as they march
to the tune of a night terror toward the black
wet’s call. I’ll go in as flesh and come out
as water falling from the bowl of a pelican’s beak.