{"id":2731,"date":"2019-09-20T21:44:51","date_gmt":"2019-09-20T21:44:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/openhumanitiespress.org\/feedback\/?p=2731"},"modified":"2019-09-20T21:59:35","modified_gmt":"2019-09-20T21:59:35","slug":"home-and-homelessness-in-queer-poetry-politics-places-reading-lomas-sad-girl-poems","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/openhumanitiespress.org\/feedback\/literature\/home-and-homelessness-in-queer-poetry-politics-places-reading-lomas-sad-girl-poems\/","title":{"rendered":"Home and Homelessness in Queer Poetry, Politics, Places: Reading Loma\u2019s Sad Girl Poems"},"content":{"rendered":"

When the poet Christopher Soto, aka Loma, debuted their chapbook Sad Girl Poems<\/em> (Sibling Rivalry Press<\/a>, January 2016), they took it on what they called a \u201cTour to End Queer Youth Homelessness.\u201d The tour took a kind of hybrid form that is beginning to look familiar as QTPOC spoken-word poets and collaborators, with DarkMatter being one of the more well-known among them, become more mobile, at least within the university activist scene. (At least where I work, the last few semesters have brought as many QTPOC performance poetry nights to campus. It\u2019s worth noting that these events have drawn crowds that had little overlap with the people attending the more standard poetry reading events on campus, were at least double in size, and were comprised of at least 1\/3rd<\/sup> non-university affiliated people. This, I think, marks a kind of difference \u2013 in terms of substance and reception \u2013 worth thinking about.)<\/p>\n

Loma\u2019s tour in particular had the express goals of \u201craising consciousness\u201d about the relationship between queer youth homelessness and mass incarceration (both topics represented in the poetry); raising funds for homeless queer youth centers; and of course promoting the chapbook (thereby forestalling their own homelessness). In practice, this took the form of an introductory lecture, followed by a session of close-reading and audience discussion of poems like June Jordan\u2019s \u201cPoem Against Police Violence,\u201d and ending with a recitation of their own recent poetry. This itinerary speaks to how, for a poet like Loma, poetry and politics emerge from the same conditions and speak to the same ends, and thus warrant the same venue. For example, Loma won\u2019t deliver lines like, \u201cWaves taped to my face, I\u2019m crying \/ Then sucking dick for rent. When the \/ Police lights drift across me like rose petals\u201d (\u201cHome: A Villanelle\u201d), without having already taught you about the criminalization of sex work, thus encouraging a more politically informed reception. Loma is part of a new tradition of poets who are thinking about how the performative reading format can work to pull their political and poetic work into the same space.<\/p>\n

We encounter this in the preface to the chapbook, too, where Loma demands a kind of compensation or reparation from readers who are moved by their stories and the stories in other QTPOC poetry. They write, \u201cI don\u2019t care if my stories make you feel bad about queer youth homelessness. I don\u2019t care if you read my work & talk about it with your friends at brunch. \u2026 I want you to give your money to the Ali Forney Center<\/a> & financially support queer homeless youth. I want you to donate your money to Black & Pink<\/a> to support queer folks in prisons\u201d (8). Thus Loma extends the question of how certain kinds of poetic and political practice might merge from poet to reader.<\/p>\n

Consistent with this practice of insisting on the proximity of politics to poetry is Loma\u2019s demand that we think politically about how many of our modes of engagement with poetry are implicated in the mechanisms of capitalism and neoliberalism that they critique more generally. In a roundtable conversation about the relationship (or perhaps non-relationship) between poetry and political movements published on The Volta<\/em><\/a> in 2011, Juliana Spahr notices, \u201cWhen I ask what has isolated them [poetry and political movements], I think, of a series of privatizating (or should we say professionalizing?) gestures that define the genre in the U.S. The prize structure. The degree structure. The academic job structure. The grant structure. The literary criticism structure\u201d (7). From here, Loma (as poet-activist) has extended this thought to bring to attention the whiteness and nationalism of such structures; many poetry contests, grants, and first book prizes in the U.S. bar undocumented writers from applying. In 2015 they, along with two other poets, drafted a petition<\/a> calling for the elimination of proof of citizenship as a qualifying criterion in poetry contests. They write, \u201cIt should be the duty of poetry organizations to find ways to support poets, not to mimic the nation state.\u201d The campaign tries to bring consciousness to and alter (and in fact has successfully altered) some of professional poetry\u2019s more rectifiable prohibitions.<\/p>\n

So far I\u2019ve mentioned a couple of ways we might consider Loma as a performing poet\/activist \u2013 first, through the poet\u2019s tour, with its pedagogical and politically-motivating aims; and second, as a tactical reformist working in material ways to make the career of poetry in the U.S. a little less white. Now I\u2019d like to dip into the actual Sad Girl <\/em>poems, which in part theorize the performance of affect across subject positions.<\/p>\n

To do that I have to give a little context; the title of the chapbook\u2014Sad Girl Poems<\/em>\u2014refers to an idea often credited to artist Audrey Wollen and circulated mostly through fashion and style magazines (Dazed<\/em>, Nylon<\/em>, Oyster, Vice<\/em>\u2019s i-D, <\/em>and Artillery<\/em>) in late 2015-early 2016: Sad Girl Theory. In Wollen\u2019s words, \u201c<\/strong>Sad Girl Theory proposes that the sadness of girls should be recognized as an act of resistance. \u2026 Girls\u2019 sadness is not passive, self-involved or shallow; it is a gesture of liberation, it is articulate and informed, it is a way of reclaiming agency over our bodies, identities, and lives\u201d (Dazed<\/em><\/a>). She proposes that we recast various \u201csad acts\u201d throughout history and art history (with suicide and self-harm standing in as prime examples) as not personal failures or instances of weakness but instead quiet, and, in her words, \u201cless masculine\u201d forms of political resistance.<\/p>\n

The breadth and ambiguity of this notion of \u201cempowered sadness\u201d has of course proven both a source of intrigue and of criticism; while the gesture has appealed to some on aesthetic or descriptive, if not prescriptive, levels, it\u2019s been criticized by many for its smoothing over of crucial historical and diagnostic distinctions. In the chapbook\u2019s preface, Loma mounts a critique on similar grounds. They begin, \u201cI always wanted to be a sad white girl. I wanted to be sad like Lana Del Ray. I wanted a sadness so universal, it\u2019d move everyone to tears.\u201d In contrast, Loma explains, POC sadness is always contextualized: \u201cMy sadness is about domestic violence, homelessness, gender dysphoria, intergenerational trauma\u2026. My sadness is something to observe, consume, sympathize with BUT NOT EMPATHIZE WITH (not mobilize for). Most people do not know how to interact with my sadness. My sadness is so multifaceted, it speaks twenty languages\u201d (7). In other words, it is too fractured by its particulars to be pliable or attractive enough for Wollen\u2019s universalizing and revisionary aims.<\/p>\n

Indeed, the prehistory of the \u201csad girl\u201d internet phenomenon tells a similar story about the whiteness behind the longed-for \u201csummertime sadness\u201d Loma opens with. The aesthetic from which the theory derives originates<\/a> in Tijuana chola culture \u2013 specifically the feminist girl gang \u201cSad Girls y qu\u00e9,\u201d who take their name from a character in the 1994 Mexican and Chicana girl gang movie Mi Vida Loca<\/em>. Their anti-machismo feminist aesthetic \u2013 which features the aggressive and unapologetic use of a typically demeaned feminine style (pastels and glitter, \u201cgirl\u201d instead of woman) \u2013 circulates into the U.S. white mainstream mainly through the music videos and persona of white pop icon Lana del Ray before it becomes articulated by Wollen as a \u201ctheory\u201d that seeks to reinterpret a more unspecified feminine suffering under patriarchy.<\/p>\n

But Loma\u2019s response is that Wollen\u2019s theorizing gesture disqualifies people like them from participating in it. The act of putting one\u2019s sadness on display can only be understood as political, in Wollen\u2019s sense, when its demands are not particular and when the person has the freedom to decide whether such a display occurs publicly. They write, \u201cThe poor are never allowed to hurt in private; we must perform and display our sadness in order to survive. We must let our sadness be seen by broader community so that we can get help. We must beg for jobs and food-stamps and scholarships\u201d (LARB<\/em><\/a>). One of the most visceral displays of sadness in the chapbook occurs in the poem \u201cHome [Chaos Theory]\u201d when the narrator relates an encounter between the police and a homeless woman: \u201c& the tourists watched \/ [As the police walked towards her] \/ [As the police went to grab her] \/ [As she continued yelling]. \/ \u2018I HAVE AIDS, I HAVE NO MONEY, I HAVE NOTHING LEFT. WHAT DO YOU WANT FROM ME?! I\u2019M GOING TO DIE HERE. JUST LEAVE ME ALONE & LET ME DIE!!!!\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

This moment, and this poem, center the necessary conditions prior to the decision to perform, politically or aesthetically, one\u2019s sadness\u00a0\u2013 a decision available, to borrow Jasbir Puar\u2019s words, \u201conly to those who inhabit the fantasy of, and can mark and traverse across, bounded notions of public and private\u201d (Terrorist Assemblages <\/em>125). In Loma\u2019s poetry, this turns up in the language of home and homelessness. The chapbook, as many reviewers have pointed out, is brimming with sadness \u2013 it tells, over and over again, of the suicide death of Rory, a first queer love; of domestic violence at the hands of a queerphobic father; of constant disappointment in language\u2019s inability to conjure one\u2019s objects of loss (\u201cThis is such a useless fucking poem,\u201d they write). There is no sitting with this sadness, though, because the narrator is constantly being dislodged from the homes that might give it ground. Thus, though we see the narrator\u2019s exile from their family home, this is not so much an originary event as it is emblematic of their condition of insecurity. Even as they dream, \u201cI hope heaven got a gay ghetto,\u201d a \u201cstraight dude,\u201d \u201cworking to get into that Reglr Hevan,\u201d appears at their door \u201caside the police.\u201d \u201cYou know he\u2019ll be breaking up the potluck.\u201d<\/p>\n

This culminates in the book\u2019s last poem that performs, finally, a privacy bound in verse. Having previously asked, \u201cWhen will we stop defining people \/ in terms of property ownership?,\u201d they arrive, in the end, to make a property of themself: \u201cYou say \/ the eyes are the windows to the soul. \/ Well, I\u2019m drawing the curtains \/ & asking you to leave. [I don\u2019t want any visitors]. \u2026 My porch lights are turned off. My doorbell won\u2019t be answered. \u2026 Please, let me die alone\u201d (Hatred of Happiness\u201d). Spectatorship cannot proceed, at least not without self-reflection. I read this as Loma\u2019s proposal for an alternative kind of sad girl politics that is premised upon material conditions but isn\u2019t obligated to transparency for its hopefulness. In tandem with the work of the poet\u2019s tour and the preface, it can function as a call to action. Their poetry and practice encourage us not to take for granted the material conditions of our theoretical gestures, our writing, our reading.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Noelle Dubay <\/strong>is a doctoral candidate in the English Department at Johns Hopkins University.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When the poet Christopher Soto, aka Loma, debuted their chapbook Sad Girl Poems (Sibling Rivalry Press, January 2016), they took it on what they called a \u201cTour to End Queer Youth Homelessness.\u201d […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":68,"featured_media":2732,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[47,12,19,50,17,14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2731","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-books","category-literature","category-performance","category-politics","category-sexualities","category-theory"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/openhumanitiespress.org\/feedback\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2731","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/openhumanitiespress.org\/feedback\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/openhumanitiespress.org\/feedback\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openhumanitiespress.org\/feedback\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/68"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openhumanitiespress.org\/feedback\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2731"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/openhumanitiespress.org\/feedback\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2731\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2734,"href":"https:\/\/openhumanitiespress.org\/feedback\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2731\/revisions\/2734"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openhumanitiespress.org\/feedback\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2732"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/openhumanitiespress.org\/feedback\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2731"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openhumanitiespress.org\/feedback\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2731"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openhumanitiespress.org\/feedback\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2731"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}