Allyson Paty, Jalousie

 

at the center of the bridge
high ridge and contour

of the land
past the banks

my father
without fail:

imagine sailing onto this

Lenape hills

1609, Henry Hudson
on the Halve Maen

vision opens
out, out

then Manhattan
the car subsumed

a knife of sky
no horizon (“In Medias Res”)

Winner of The Berkshire Prize for Poetry, as judged by Diana Khoi Nguyen, is New York poet Allyson Paty’s full-length debut, Jalousie (North Adams MA: Tupelo Press, 2025). Having been aware of the strength and clarity of her work for some time (having produced a chapbook by her through above/ground press, after all), I’m a bit startled to be reminded that this is Paty’s debut, a collection of moments that lean into and against each other, facing out in multiple directions. “One renders what is happening / moves to say what has been,” she writes, to close the opening poem, “Along the Grain,” “A tenderness to walk the fault lines / and slip oneself in [.]” Paty’s lyrics are dense, precise and thoughtful, offering short moments around the present moment that accumulate and meander with deep and tender purpose. As judge Diana Khoi Nguyen offers, as part of her citation:

The title of this stunning collection refers to a window treatment which has rows of angled slats, like blinds or shutters, and Allyson Paty’s disarming lyric exemplifies a deliciously sharp perspective which at times ranges from being seen literally through partially-opened slats, the world at a slant, to confronting the mediations of how we tender our communications, representations of self, labor, and love. These are poems reminiscent of the cutting lines of Elaine Kahn and Elisa Gabbert, but these poems are uniquely their own.

There’s an element of the English-language ghazal to Paty’s lyrics, offering a leap between lines, between thoughts, as poems form out of what the individual points and peripherally-connected moments shape into, once you step back a bit. There’s such care to her lines, and a kind of casual flow, deep-set and intertextual and precise, with ever an eye on destination, even as she focuses on each moment across each journey. “In a patchy field / a man kneels down // pours water / from one vessel to another,” she writes, to close the poem “Decade,” “Grasses trail their fingers / an alphabet works through you // You draw a straight line [.]” Her poems are smart, and observational, wise and tender. I’m struck, as well, by the mantra-moments of an extended sequence such as “Premise,” each poem, each page, each line, beginning with the same word, offering an accumulation of seventeen pages, seventeen points, across a wide expanse:

Having returned to my desk

Having typed wedding dance into the browser

Having encountered a field of photographs showing white people in formal
dress move over lustrous floors

Having realized my mistake

Having added bruegel

Diana Khoi Nguyen, Root Fractures

 

A girl dug a hole at the beach, sent her siblings to fetch water.

She found pleasure in it. All things fall down, or want to,
so she dug and dug, her trowel falling deeper, the earth growing darker.

She thought in concentric circles, the tides coming
and going, overlapping each other. When she poured water in,
the hole filled up, then emptied, its walls caved in. She began again.
If she could have, she would have dug a hole every day, one
beside the other, then another, and another. A hole is a hole,
but none of them are the same.

Along a shore, no one can know how many holes there are.

Along a shore, no one can know which holes are hers. (“A Story About Holes”)

Struck immediately by Pittsburgh-based poet Diana Khoi Nguyen’s stunning full-length debut, Ghost Of (Omnidawn, 2018) [see my review of such here], I was pleased to hear of her follow-up collection, Root Fractures (Scribner, 2024). Nguyen writes of connection and disconnection, breaks and attempts into healing. “my work inspires mother to write poems I will inherit from her,” she writes, to open one of the short lyric “Cape Disappointment” poems, a title that repeats throughout the collection, “tears on the page denature like egg whites [.]” Root Fractures is a collection that explores and expands upon slow and eventual loss, of fracturing itself, from her parents leaving Vietnam to the death of her brother, and how deeply that loss permeates every aspect of the remaining family structure. Through sharp lyrics, she examines the breaks, and their ongoing outcomes across years, across generations. These are poems with a gravitational pull, one that highlights loss and disappearance, and the grief that can’t help but rush to occupy those absences. The sequence “A Story About Holes,” one of the anchors of the collection, offers: “This is a story about two particles. They are travelling near / an event horizon. Life at the edge can be particular. One / of the pair falls in with a negative valence / which sucks out energy from the black hole. // The other particle, its counterpoint, escapes with positive energy. / No one knows how.” Nguyen offers an evocative expanse and stretch of detail, akin to a constellation, from how her parents first met to the shadow of war that forced them to leave, through to the multiple ways her brother worked to remove himself from the family landscape, until he finally did, becoming that absence that couldn’t help but outline for those who remained. In portraits, how he become shadow, a text that is perpetually erased and rewritten, held in place. “open the window to erase your ghost or maybe let one in,” another “Cape Disappointment” poem offers, furthering Nguyen’s occasional repeat set akin to short asides from the main narrative threads of the collection, “I unlatch like a cello case, air filling every dent in the velvet [.]”

 

 

12 or 20 (second series) questions with Diana Khoi Nguyen

Diana Khoi Nguyen’s debut collection, Ghost Of (Omnidawn, 2018), was selected by Terrance Hayes for the Omnidawn Open Contest. She is a poet and multimedia artist whose work has appeared in Poetry, American Poetry Review, Boston Review, and PEN America, among others. In addition to winning the 92Y "Discovery" / Boston Review Poetry Contest, she has received awards and scholarships from the Academy of American Poets, Bread Loaf Writers Conference, and Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center. Currently, she lives in Denver where she is pursuing a PhD in creative writing and teaches in the Daniels College of Business at the University of Denver. www.dianakhoinguyen.com

1 - How did your first book change your life? How does your most recent work compare to your previous? How does it feel different?

The way any first is life-changing: nothing is the same—doors have opened, visibility and attention as increased, and now I am charged with the responsibility of representation and shepherding Ghost Of in the world—sharing the work with fellow writers, friends, family, strangers. Most of the work in the book is unlike anything I have worked on previously primarily due to the visual-hybrid nature of the Ghost Of poems.

2 - How did you come to poetry first, as opposed to, say, fiction or non-fiction?

In third grade, we were charged with keeping a notebook, and encouraged to write poems about our observations of the world. I continued writing poems up until college, where I had hopes of taking fiction workshops and ultimately becoming a novelist. However, I couldn’t gain admission into any fiction workshop, so threw my hat into the ring for a poetry workshop (after remembering I’d won some poetry prizes in high school) and was accepted on my first try. And the rest, was history, as they say.

3 - How long does it take to start any particular writing project? Does your writing initially come quickly, or is it a slow process? Do first drafts appear looking close to their final shape, or does your work come out of copious notes?

I’m both an ox and a cat (slow and quick). It takes typically three months to incubate ideas via curated research and viewing of Criterion Collection films, modern art, etc. Then I write a poem a day for fifteen days, which I refer to as 15/15. I do this twice a year, with close artists and writer-friends: we exchange work each day during the 15/15 to hold each other accountable.

Sometimes first drafts resemble nothing like their final form—and sometimes quite close to it. It all depends on where the poem is and what it needs.

4 - Where does a poem usually begin for you? Are you an author of short pieces that end up combining into a larger project, or are you working on a "book" from the very beginning?

I find that intense focus and scrutiny—obsession, really—is more fruitful for my process, which is to say—to have a project from the beginning which propels / compels discrete poems/pieces into being.

Conversely, it sometimes takes writing some short pieces without a project in order to (dis/un)cover what my project is.

5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?

I do enjoy doing readings, but wouldn’t be able to do any social activity (such as giving a reading, teaching, attending a conference, etc.) while I’m writing in my biannual 15/15.

Social literary activity is necessary to literary citizenship—insofar as it can inspire new ideas, ways of thinking—and encourages cross-cultural exchange and dialogues.

6 - Do you have any theoretical concerns behind your writing? What kinds of questions are you trying to answer with your work? What do you even think the current questions are?

I am always trying to escape myself and anything which is familiar to me (forms, modes, paths).  This requires a lot of reading to become as versed in and familiar as possible with what’s been done and done so well historically, and today.

7 – What do you see the current role of the writer being in larger culture? Does s/he even have one? What do you think the role of the writer should be?

The role of the writer is to tell the truth, if it it’s a lie. To see and speak and not be silent.

8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?

n/a (I’ve not worked with an outside editor)

9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?

One, which I’ve mentioned, “Tell the truth, if it it’s a lie” (Lucie Brock-Broido) and to “end on an image and don’t explain it” (Stanley Kunitz).

10 - How easy has it been for you to move between genres (poetry to multimedia work)? What do you see as the appeal?

Very easy—I try not to limit my thinking, consideration, and composition to boundaries of genre—that is, when I sit down to create, my possible tools are numerous (words, space, image, etc.). The appeal is to use what I experience as a human—in my work as a creator of things. Why limit ourselves?

11 - What kind of writing routine do you tend to keep, or do you even have one? How does a typical day (for you) begin?

My biannual 15/15 marathons happen in the summer and winter (typically August and December).

During a typical 15/15 day, I begin the day with reading, exposing myself to art, watching a Criterion Collection film, then finally—after meals, naps, showers, and much procrastination, I sit down to write around midnight and work in the quiet late hours until a poem is as final as I can make it.

12 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?

I turn to essays from my first mentor, Cal Bedient, and inoculate myself with visual art and film (non-writing works).

13 - What fragrance reminds you of home?

The Vietnamese Buddhism incense we burn at the altar for those no longer with us.

14 - David W. McFadden once said that books come from books, but are there any other forms that influence your work, whether nature, music, science or visual art?

Yes! Definitely science and nature—animal behavior, sociology and anthropology, outer space. Also performance art, current exhibits at local and distant museums.

15 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?

There’s too many to name, but here’s a limited geological sample: Lucie Brock-Broido, Clarice Lispector, Yoko Tawada, C.D. Wright, Myung Mi Kim, Susan Howe, Cole Swensen, Mark Levine, Haruki Murakami, Harold Pinter.

16 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?

Make a documentary film. Create a performance piece / installation. See a production of a play I wrote.

17 - If you could pick any other occupation to attempt, what would it be? Or, alternately, what do you think you would have ended up doing had you not been a writer?

Oh, this is a hard one. I have always dreamed of being a textile print designer for Marimekko in Finland and/or a ballet dancer. Now, in the wake of Anthony Bourdain’s death, I realize that I’ve also wanted to follow in his journalism footsteps: meaningful inquiry into and dialogue with other cultures and places.

I don’t think I would have ever not been a writer.

18 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?
The same impulse which defines my personality, which makes my body and mind into the person I am each day. Which is to say, the inevitability of what is inside and around me.

19 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?
Poetry: Sun Yung Shin’s Unbearable Splendor
Film: Call Me By Your Name (2017)

20 - What are you currently working on?

Interviews with first and second generation members of the Vietnamese diaspora in the U.S., which are part of the research for my dissertation. Because this is a PhD in creative writing, the dissertation will be creative in nature, featuring poems, hybrid forms, plays, video and audio pieces, hopefully culminating in an installation-commemoration site that captures the refugee experience of so many Vietnamese after the Fall of Saigon.

12 or 20 (second series) questions;

Diana Khoi Nguyen, Ghost Of

2.

 

If one has no brother, then one used to have a brother.

 

There is, you see, no shortage of gain and loss.

 

Let’s admit without embellishment what we do with each other. When the daughter begins to walk, it is apparent that she ambles pigeon-toed. A doctor tells her alarmed parents that no surgery is needed, just some rollerskating. Each day after work, the father helps his daughter stay upright on her skates.

 

If you have a father, then you also have a son.

 

A child has difficulty weaning from nursing bottle to glass of milk. Concise in her expression of impatience, the mother pours a gallon of milk over the girl’s head.

 

A tiger came across a donkey and having never seen a donkey before, mistook it for a god.

 

After everyone has gone to bed, an eldest child hoists her younger brother over her shoulders, then a sheet over his shoulders, and they sway as one into the middle sister’s room.

 

Who is weak and who is weaker and what does relativity have to do with it? (“Ghost Of”)

 

Winner of the Omnidawn Open Prize, as selected by Terrance Hayes, is Denver poet and multimedia artist Diana Khoi Nguyen’s remarkable debut, Ghost Of (Richmond CA: Omnidawn, 2018), a book that, as the press release states, “elegizes a brother lost via suicide, is a mourning song for the idea of family, a family haunted by ghosts of war, trauma, and history.” The collection moves back and forth between some very sharp lyrics to poems carved out of lyric via erasure, attempting to fill the absences her brother left, as Nguyen discusses as part of a brief interview conducted by Gillian Olivia Blythe Hamel (included with the press release):

 

In order to talk about the visual-text cutout poems, I need to provide some background context. My brother took his own life in 2014, and two years prior, calmly sliced himself out of the family portraits hanging around the house; I say calmly because he slipped these portraits back into place—in the frames and on the walls—after excising himself. These altered family portraits continue to hang on the same walls today. Every time I visit my parents, I’m visually confronted with my brother’s physical and emotional excision from the family; though I’ll never forget it, I’m forced to confront his actions, our family history, my family’s loss, and my grief.

 

For a long time I didn’t know how to deal with his death and its aftermath—all that it called forth and removed. The cutout portraits on the wall grew in power and significance each time I beheld them, and at times, I felt crippled by their intensity. On the 2^nd anniversary of his death, I sat at my computer, staring at these portraits on my computer screen (I had scanned them for archival purposes), and began to write inside the white space of the portraits, to “fill in” the void that my brother had cut out. What began as a hopeful experiment in self-therapy quickly became a tidal wave that swept me up into the floodwaters of trauma, history (individual, familial, and cultural), and grief, among other things. I found myself reaching out, speaking to my brother (his ghost, his void, the memory of him, etc.) by writing in and around these cutouts, and I couldn’t stop. The deluge was all-consuming.

 

As part of this structure, the collection includes poem/sections titled “Triptych,” that include a photo her brother excised himself from, a lyric composed in the shape of that absence, and a photo-sized prose-lyric, composed to include that original brother-shaped silence. The effect is both powerful and subtle, pushing and exploring the effects that the absence, both as cut out of photos and through his death, couldn’t help but have. As the poem “Family Ties” writes: “The nights before the monks came / to usher my brother out of the realm of the living, / we gathered on the same bed, sifting through photos / and stories of him. / At the funeral, his hand was warm / where my mother would not let go [.]” Nguyen’s Ghost Of is an incredible exploratory series of lyrics, meditations and visuals on family, memory, loss and being, managing to be breathtaking, heartbreaking and even playful, attempting to write both the loss and the absence, physically carved out of an into the page. And the ghosts in this collection are plenty, as are the dislocations: from that of the author’s late brother, to the ghosts that come from her family’s emigration from Saigon to California. As contest judge Hayes writes as part of his introduction to the collection: “Poetry is found in the gaps, silences and ruptures of history. Sometimes it is as if these poems address the reflection of a ghost in the mirror. Other times the poems here look off to a father’s rooftop in Saigon. Or they look deeply into the interiors of family, a brother’s silhouette in the doorway.”