While I deploy elements of autobiography in the work, none of the speakers presented there is actually me. I worry less about telling a story or making a point and more about getting words and tonalities into my poems that don’t usually appear in poetry or don’t usually appear together in the same poem. In terms of tactic, I’m most interested in linguistic juxtaposition. The struggles of immigrants to the U.S., conflicts of class consciousness and racial difference here, and the complications of American politics and foreign policy alongside more abstract metaphysical and existential concerns are never far from the minds of my speakers even as they experience loss, longing, and hopefulness in the small spaces of their own lives. I can best describe my poems as an attempt to localize global concerns.
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