{"id":4328,"date":"2011-10-05T08:00:12","date_gmt":"2011-10-05T12:00:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lanternreview.com\/blog\/?p=4328"},"modified":"2011-09-16T16:40:37","modified_gmt":"2011-09-16T20:40:37","slug":"review-two-works-by-ronaldo-v-wilson","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/2011\/10\/05\/review-two-works-by-ronaldo-v-wilson\/","title":{"rendered":"Review: Two Works by Ronaldo V. Wilson"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Ronaldo<\/a>
Two Works by Ronaldo V. Wilson<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

A Guest Post by Stephen Hong Sohn, Assistant Professor of English at Stanford University<\/strong><\/p>\n

Narrative of the Life of the Brown Boy and the White Man<\/a>by Ronaldo V. Wilson <\/em>| U of Pittsburgh Press 2008<\/em> | $14<\/em><\/p>\n

Poems of the Black Object<\/a>by Ronaldo V. Wilson <\/em>| FuturePoem Books 2009 <\/em>| $15<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Stephen<\/a>
Stephen Hong Sohn<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In this review, I discuss Ronaldo V. Wilson\u2019s Narrative of the Life of the Brown Boy and the White Man<\/em> (University of Pittsburgh Press 2008) and Poems of the Black Object<\/em> (FuturePoem Books 2009). Wilson\u2019s first full-length poetry collection might be more specifically described as prose poetry, as implied by its title. There are really no formal line breaks throughout the collection, so one is forced to consider what makes such a work poetry as opposed to prose. This genre-defying work\u2019s title also clearly derives inspiration from two canonical African American literary texts: Harriet Jacobs\u2019s Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl<\/em> and Frederick Douglass\u2019s Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave<\/em>. In Wilson\u2019s title, there isn\u2019t any mention of the word \u201cslave,\u201d but the impulse to explore the conditions of subjection and domination are still very much there. Wilson\u2019s work thus seems to enact a neo-slave \u201cpoetic\u201d as derived through the queer racial minority\u2019s subjectivity. The reference to the \u201cbrown boy\u201d and the \u201cwhite man\u201d in the title also helps situate what actually occurs in the prose poetry blocks throughout the collection. \u201cBrown boy\u201d suggests that the lyric \u201cI\u201d\u00a0is a mixed-race subject and likely an adult, but clearly one who does not have much access to economic resources. He is engaged in a homosexual relationship with \u201cWhite Man,\u201d someone likely older and\u00a0with clearly far more money than the \u201cBrown Boy.\u201d Racial difference, class difference, and age difference, among other such distinctions, generate the rubrics\u00a0of power and domination that mark\u00a0the tension between “white man” and the “brown boy.” \u00a0 Wilson\u2019s work is raw, dense, and does not shy away from difficult topics, as demonstrated by the following excerpt, which is fairly indicative of the stylistic impulses of\u00a0the collection:<\/p>\n

\u201cGo Shower. This command reveals [the brown boy\u2019s] relationship to the white man. He follows his lover\u2019s orders like a slave without anything but the promise of being fed and shown a movie\u201d (64).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Poems of the Black Object<\/em> continues the project that Wilson starts in Narrative of the Life of the Brown Boy and the White Man<\/em>. Again, the central issue at stake is a kind of enslavement, mediated\u00a0by the intersections of race, sexuality, and late capitalism. One stylistic approach that Wilson employs masterfully is the juxtaposition of \u201chigh\u201d and \u201clow\u201d cultures: references to Shakespeare appear\u00a0alongside references to Little House on the Prairie<\/em>. Wilson also continues to use the \u201cprose poetic\u201d aesthetic that appears in his first collection, but also branches out and explores a variety of different styles, some more avant-garde in approach and others with a more traditional lyric quality. Yet <\/del>the signature rawness of Wilson\u2019s\u00a0lyrics, which never shy away from the awkward or potentially vulnerable moments faced by the lyric speaker, remains constant throughout the text. In \u201cConstruction of a Black Poetic Self in Four Narratives,\u201d for instance, the lyric speaker explores the complications of a mixed-race heritage through the bodies of his parents:<\/p>\n

In a box, my father\u2019s torso is
\nin a white thermal rib top
\n(my
\nown face leaning in to find
\nmy face
\nin his black shiny skin)
\nbetween my mother,
\na then fattish Filipino girl,
\nwith a cinched waist is
\nthe speed
\nat which she trained
\nto run off
\nexcess flesh (58).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

What I find especially interesting here is Wilson\u2019s use of abrupt breaks. Does the shortness of these lines sonically and metrically augment the sense of rupture suggested here?\u00a0Wilson’s focus on skin is particularly instructive in teasing out his exploration of race, but the\u00a0racial identifications at work in this excerpt seem to operate asymmetrically. The lyric speaker finds the father\u2019s body more tangible, something that can be explored, but the mother\u2019s body is something in flight, running away.<\/p>\n

A poetic of mixed-race seems to emerge here alongside the asymmetrics of parental lineage.<\/p>\n

One of my favorite excerpts in this entire collection comes from \u201cThe Lesson\u201d:<\/p>\n

\u201cSide B: aesthetic theory\u2014Your skin is pink,
\nthen opaque, caramelized then burned
\nif you are one of the drumsticks
\nstuffed in a bowl, as in a holocaust.<\/p>\n

NY Times, East Timor. A blown-apart leg unskinned,
\na shoe\u2019s sole ripped back to bone, synonym
\nfor torso in a soccer shirt.<\/p>\n

This is ours. We are pickled,
\nyou with me this strange leg.
\nShould I turn the chicken over?<\/p>\n

See your life as screenic,
\nthink collage,
\nethnograph\u2014He is your brown body.
\nEve
\nthe bone and scrape out the marrow
\nfor marinade” (94).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

As always, Wilson is able to engage provocative juxtapositions\u2014in this case, generating a kind of poetics of the grotesque. The reference again to skin reminds us of the thread of race and racial formation that moves throughout the collection. What I appreciate most about this passage is the way in which global politics infests and infiltrates everyday activities such as cooking and consumption. The lyric speaker is aware of his unique privilege, one that does not let him prepare foods without thinking about how\u00a0the act engages him in a type of metaphorically-inflected cannibalism.<\/p>\n

I will definitely be teaching either or both of these collections in the future. I appreciate their inventive formal aesthetics and their dense, politically complex lyricism. And I always, always appreciate any collection that stretches the bounds of Asian American poetics.<\/p>\n

* * *<\/p>\n

Stephen Hong Sohn<\/a> is an Assistant Professor of English at Stanford University.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A Guest Post by Stephen Hong Sohn, Assistant Professor of English at Stanford University Narrative of the Life of the Brown Boy and the White Manby Ronaldo V. Wilson | U of Pittsburgh Press 2008 | $14 Poems of the Black Objectby Ronaldo V. Wilson | FuturePoem Books 2009 | $15 In this review, I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0},"categories":[3,20,4,217],"tags":[689,687,685,106],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4328"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4328"}],"version-history":[{"count":26,"href":"https:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4328\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4357,"href":"https:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4328\/revisions\/4357"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4328"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4328"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4328"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}