Michael Chang, Things a Bright Boy Can Do

 

HERE WE GO FOREVER

cody who goes both ways

they say familiarity accelerates impact

in secret huddles

tender kid w/ the kind tan

poached pears

vanilla ice cream

who was wearing the flip-flops?

i’m illiterate b/c i didn’t have a high-school boyfriend

she smiled when they asked but

it’s hard to get by w/ that kind of sincerity

in the wet warm place

hand-hold ur thing iz a sandwich

free rein in the blast hole

the mary jo bang

From Manhattan-based American poet and editor Michael Chang, following titles such as Heroes (Temz Review/845 Press, 2025), Toy Soldiers (Action, Spectacle, 2024), SWEET MOSS (Anstruther Press, 2024) [see my review of such here], SYNTHETIC JUNGLE (Northwestern University Press, 2023) and EMPLOYEES MUST WASH HANDS (GreenTower Press, 2024), is the full-length Things a Bright Boy Can Do (Toronto ON: Coach House Books, 2025). I’m all for cross-border conversation, obviously, but it is always a curiosity to see a Canadian small press produce a full-length by a non-Canadian poet (which means it wouldn’t be eligible for Canada Council funding, putting the financial onus on publishing such a title entirely on the press, something few publishers are able to take on). It doesn’t happen that often, and it suggests the press is seeking to expand its reach, both in terms of foreign sales and attempting to bring an author into the Canadian literary conversation (although that might be an overly generous speculation on my part), especially given this particular title appears to be a unique edition and not, say, a Canadian edition of a title simultaneously appearing with a publisher in the author’s home country (such as with Coach House publishing a collection of essays moons back by American poet C.D. Wright, or Anansi publishing a poetry title by British poet Simon Armitage). With chapbooks produced over the past two years through Temz Review/845 Press and Anstruther Press, as well as an author biography that cites publication in Canadian journals such as Capilano Review, Contemporary Verse 2, the Ex-Puritan, The Malahat Review and PRISM International, Canadian literature is certainly paying attention to Michael Chang, as much as Michael Chang seems to be attending Canadian publishers; perhaps a move north is being considered? [edit: I have since been informed that Michael Chang is actually Canadian]

Or perhaps I make too much of this; or perhaps, even further, borders mean not what they used to when it comes to how books are seen, distributed, articulated and sold (beyond the current tariff nonsense, of course). On the surface, the poems in Chang’s Things a Bright Boy Can Do are accumulative, whip-smart, hurt and funny, sassy and queer, comparable in many ways to the work of New England-based poet and editor Chen Chen [see my review of their 2023 collection, Your Emergency Contact Has Experienced an Emergency, here], speaking first-person lyric monologues around emergencies and histories, childhood recollection and literary interveavings, violence and linguistic measure, cultural references and expansive gestures. “i detect your silence,” Chang writes, as part of “ATONEMENT,” “you you practiced // personification of ALLURE // fresh face pummelled red & teal // according to that distant sheepdog narcissa [.]” There is the sass, the casual glance and gesture of the deeply felt, deeply considered; the highly-literature “flirty to righteousness, wrathful to lackadaisical,” providing an echo between the two, but in Chang, something different, as well: something looser, almost freer, allowing for the movement of the gesture to direct the narratives. “Matthew DICKMAN was so upset he could not stand,” the expansive and gestural “BABY DRIVE SOUTH” writes, “Michael DICKMAN was investigated by another agency due to / a conflict of interes // Paul MULDOON told you his horse was larger than yours // CACONRAD sent anthrax to Betsy DeVos &  was awarded / the Medal of Freedom [.]” At turns thoughtful, joyful, meditative and silly, Things a Bright Boy Can Do offers a perspective on how one might live best and simply be within the world, within the moment, whatever else might be happening or happened, or even yet to happen. Or, as the poem “KING OF THE WORLD” writes, just at the end: “on this day // we go back to our old routine [.]”