Chen Chen’s second book, Your Emergency Contact Has Experienced an Emergency (BOA Editions), was a best book of 2022 according to the Boston Globe, Electric Lit, NPR, and others. It was also named a 2023 Notable Book by the American Library Association. His debut, When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities (BOA Editions), was long-listed for the National Book Award and won the Thom Gunn Award, among other honors. His work appears in many publications, including the New York Times and three editions of The Best American Poetry. He has received two Pushcart Prizes and fellowships from Kundiman, the National Endowment for the Arts, and United States Artists. The 2018-2022 Poet-in-Residence at Brandeis University and currently teaches for the low-residency MFA programs at New England College and Stonecoast.
Do happy poems exist? If they do, can they be as good as the poems that wreck us? Can a happy poem wreck us? And how can we avoid sentimentality or is that a risk we just need to take? In this generative session, we’ll look at Ross Gay’s essay, “Joy Is Such a Human Madness” (from his collection The Book of Delights) as a compass for our discussion and a starting point for writing about/from/through happiness, joy, and pleasure. Within the genre of happy poem, we’ll think about poems that celebrate love, sex, community, and connection of various kinds. We’ll examine some model poems by Ross Gay and by others, including Czesław Miłosz, Jane Hirshfield, Derrick Austin, Jane Wong, Robert Hass, and Yanyi. Come prepared to engage in jubilant experimentation.