Verisimilitude
Hung Q. Tu
publisher: Atelos, 2000
isbn: 1-89119-007-5
price: $12.95
"Like omelets / nations fold" writes Tu at the opening of the series "Short Subject," and in this spare and careful book not only nations but discourses of all sorts -- the personal, the ideological, the lyrical, the global, the funny and the earnest -- collapse into themselves revealing both their intercontextuality and competing degrees of relevance.
The opening sequence, "It's Just Your Basic CYA (The Streets of San Francisco)" demonstrates the virtues of Tu's style, including his precise readings of public symbols enmeshed in human interactions which he exaggerates to indict the hidden, inevitable cycles of corruption:
Mutual Taunt Theater
a squad car rolls by
the masses: "You got any donuts"
the cops: "You got any crack"
[23]
He has an assured sense of place in California contrasted with global corporatism ("over the table -- mergers / across the mesa -- maquilas" [25]), and has an always poignant, yet ironic, reading of history that one might associate with the poems of Brecht:
in 1855, Mt. Diablo served as the summit
from which northern California and Nevada
were surveyed by army engineers
150 years later, pickets reinforce their imagination
[23]
Each of the seven medium length sequences of this book display different facets of Tu's project, such as in "Verisimiltude," in which he matches the public spectacle of capital with the private, responsible, somewhat damaged perspective of a disaffected misfit:
with the installation of cameras
epistemology is really moot
the patron saint of
the illuminated porch
vintage Balzac of nineteen
'97 democratic straw men
cheerfully carded
to some end discards of town
in coda a flock
is nest-work of nesters
this push cart your kingdom
this counter your moat
the action-hero genre
and juice bar explosion
power is frost and tasty
no one forgot 19 whatever
but everyone tried
[41]
"Uneven Development, Uneven Poetics (Simon & Simon)" takes the local, class based concerns of "It's Just Your Basic" to an international scale, wrapping several complex strands of thought in democratic, haiku-like epiphanies:
China Embraces Liberalism!
consequences live in neighborhoods
but since this is literature
I'm interested in the term FOB
[50]
"Dated" links several smaller fragments together into a stream of subversive aura ("There's a little American / imperialist in every / Australian trying to / get out of its coral box" [67]), while "Short Subject"and the "Birth of Cool (Cash)" return to the fragment, and "Market Psychology" straddles both modes
o the rally cap
Noah's Ark school of diversity applied to Noah's Bagel
two women a focal point over coffee and danish
her decision making process applied to tattoos
la différance -- accountant's raison d'etre
world-view around the clock
the defense minister knighted for bravery in front of the podium
[105]
Tu seems to have mastered the very short political poem, somewhat following in the line of writers like Bruce Andrews and Jeff Derksen who have made their poems lyrical channels of crushed and compressed social codes.
But Tu, who is far less the firebrand than Andrews and less intellectual than Derksen, writes with a tone of disaffection and responsibility rather than assertive ideological manhandling, displaying an imagination that is thoroughly disgusted with it all but able, however bitterly, to be amused.
At a time when many younger writers are retreating to a humble, apolitical bohemianism, Tu's book -- unpretentious yet uncompromising in its effort to force the hand of indifference -- shows that you can have it both ways.
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