It’s hard to say why we like something and it’s easy to say why we dislike something. It’s hard to explain the “why” of liking because it takes more focus to figure it out than the “why” of disliking does, but also because it can feel embarrassing to talk about admiring something. It’s a submissive position. With friends, I can easily say “I can’t stand so-and-so because he is always going on about drag being a superior art form,” but if I were to say “I really love so-and-so because she recognizes the social potential in other people and creates a space for them to talk” I would probably later feel weird about having stated this.
I really like Andrew Durbin’s poem “Lil Emoji” in the latest NSFW-themed issue of Evening Will Come. Durbin’s first full-length book recently came out from Nightboat Books and is also exciting to me, like pretty much everything Nightboat publishes.
At first glance I like the poem because its opening line, “Is stoner a sexuality,” is such a stoner thing to say, and then very quickly after it gives me the double-bounce of “Beyoncé’s / Beyoncé,” which is kind of a libidinous thrill, the bouncing and the boys jogging by. I always think these kind of rapid, middle-lane poems are sexy anyway, going straight down the center of the screen or page and getting larger as quickly as they get smaller. And then the question, wondering about her search terms for feminism, makes me laugh in that dry humor way, and points me toward this big “cultural conversation” online about feminism, which I follow but also feel sometimes tired of. I’m glad, then, that I’m thinking of it and laughing but not feeling like I’m laughing at anyone, or in a mean-spirited way.
I’m also glad that being post-linguistic is a pleasure that is in excess of speaking and thinking. Maybe all the reasons I like the poem are in this excess, too, and maybe that is why talking about why I like something is hard and feels wrong sometimes. I showed this poem to a friend who never reads poetry and she likes it a lot but doesn’t know why and doesn’t really want to talk about it, but thanks me for sharing it with her, as she does like it a lot.
It’s nice that at the last lines, after I get a little lost when things are “crystalized at / the ghost level / of Bitcoin,” it ends with the vomit in the cab. That’s what makes sense after so much quick movement down the center, all wobbly back and forth, and the trembles of lights and sexuality and the rise and fall of the bridge. You have too much in you and it needs to come out, you’re too stimulated. I’m not one of those readers that takes everything in carefully as I read. I like to go over things several times, until I finally remember that Kenzo is a designer. I like this because, by not trying to get it all, I feel more of that pleasure in excess of speaking and thinking. And in return Durbin calls it cute when I puke, which feels like a validation, both for experiencing things in excess and for reading the whole poem dissolutely. I also appreciate that the final image before this, “the sun fallen / in its blue / behind me,” is nice and weird and feels pretty easy, too, like I just get to get it.
I’m interested in reading and writing strategies that are about enjoyment like this. I think “Lil Emoji” is a cute title and it makes me like Andrew Durbin. I know from interviews and from his other work that Durbin is interested in much “bigger” ideas, which I am too. And I like to get all hyped up and talk about these ideas with friends who also like to talk about these ideas. I might even talk about some of those ideas in “Lil Emoji” with a friend at a bar tonight. But I sometimes forget this other thing, which I think of as the excess thing, or the thing that my friend who doesn’t read poetry likes when she reads “Lil Emoji.” I think I sometimes forget that little bits, lines like “you, uh. Uh,” are as much the reason that I keep reading as anything else.