Review: Two Bay Area poets give voice to their personal pain and survival – SF Chronicle Datebook

Brian Tierney is the author of Rise and Float. Photo: Milkweed

The late Joan Didion once wrote, Memories are what you no longer want to remember. The implication is that revisiting the past means reopening the wounds. Poets, particularly those who write from personal pain or trauma, take a slightly different approach to troubled memory. They examine the ruins in order to reckon with what took place there. Such is the case with the two powerful debuts by Bay Area poets Brian Tierney and Paul Tran.

In Tierneys Rise and Float, the speaker states, to show you what I see/ is to show you how I feel. Whats presented is a series of disquieting recollections, usually involving family, that illustrate human vulnerability: having a body is a form/ of courting peril. The hazards loved ones had to contend with include mental illness, which led to institutionalization and suicide. The speaker, too, battles with mental health, leading to a bout with an eating disorder.

What allows these poems to grow beyond two-dimensional anecdotes about death and disease is Tierneys lyrical and arresting phrasing, which, given the gravity of subject matter, leaves the reader unsettled. The poem bulimia, for example, describes the act as follows: When I put one [finger] in my mouth, I nearly touched the bell/ of my voice. Ive done this for years, wanting/ to be a love song a little less each week.

There are times, however, when Tierneys penchant for impressionistic scenes doesnt benefit the poem, and the imagery, outstanding as it is, serves as a poor substitute for emotional resonance. The series of moments in Anthropocene, for example, is hit-or-miss. But for the most part, Tierneys poems reach their pitch, delivering stunning insights into the interiority of a person coping with depression and grief.

Two recurring words in the book are dream and imagine, which gesture toward the speakers desire to move past struggle and into a place of acceptance (its alright, love, that we dont love/ living), if not healing. Tierneys Rise and Float, about forging ahead despite the burdens that weigh the spirit down, is perhaps the most honest representation of trying to survive in the current state of the world.

Trans All the Flowers Kneeling is a remarkable book dealing with sexual assault and a survivors hard-won journey toward recovery: In violence I found a voice. One of the speakers lifelines is their mothers own story of resilience, she a Vietnamese refugee who defied the odds in order to reimagine her path.

The speaker wants to reach for that inner strength, but such a feat becomes complicated for a person negotiating their queer identity in the process, and the disturbing revelation that, as a child, they were molested by their father. The present turmoil, then, becomes a means to come to terms with the past, even as the psyche risks further injury: what humiliated me// as I relived my death in that room without sunrise/ wasnt my desire for light but my desire for more darkness.

Another important source of light for the speaker is Scheherazade (a tale the speakers mother told them as a child), whose storytelling prowess kept her alive, one night at a time. For the speaker, each poem is a step away from a metaphorical death, the realm of silence and shame: I, too, will be victorious/ like my mother. Like Scheherazade, Ill survive// in the end. Ill survive the end./ Even when I was helpless, I wasnt hopeless. As details of the speakers experiences surface they are distressing but now visible and real the reader too will come to believe that this young survivor will prevail, defined not by the wrongs done to them, but by the courage of their coming forward and giving language to the unbearable.

In one of the less-charged encounters in All the Flowers Kneeling, the speaker describes riding a car to an engagement. The curious driver begins to ask questions, the passenger, disarmed, answers them, sharing their personal story. By the end of the fare, the driver says, Yours isnt just a story about survival. Yours is a story about love. The poignant pronouncement summarizes the book perfectly, and it is quite moving to witness the speaker arrive at that truth through self-empowerment and self-love.

Rise and FloatBy Brian Tierney (Milkweed Editions; 80 pages; $16 paperback)

All the Flowers KneelingBy Paul Tran(Penguin Books; 112 pages; $18 paperback)

Paul Tran with sam sax: In person and virtual. 7 p.m. Feb. 8. Free. Masks and proof of vaccination required for in-person event; registration required for virtual event. Green Apple Books, 1231 Ninth Ave., S.F. http://www.greenapplebooks.comBrian Tierney book launch: In-person and virtual. 7 p.m. Feb. 11. Free. Masks and proof of vaccination required for in-person event; registration required for virtual event. Green Apple Books, 1231 Ninth Ave., S.F. http://www.greenapplebooks.com

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Review: Two Bay Area poets give voice to their personal pain and survival - SF Chronicle Datebook