EDITORIAL

Paul Tran: Power In Poetry

TW: familial violence, sexual violence

“You can do something that incites something in another...you can use language to make someone feel something–someone react, see you in a certain way...That’s power.” ~Paul Tran

Paul Tran, a queer Asian poet, visited Bryn Mawr on November 21, 2022, to give a poetry reading. About eighty students and teachers from Bryn Mawr and Gilman attended the reading organized by Ms. Diana Park and supported by the English Department and Ms. Diane Nichols. Afterward, Tran generously signed books and chatted with attendees. Tran's book All the Flowers Are Kneeling was nominated as one of the best books of 2022 by the New Yorker. Through a lyrical intertwining of their story of being a domestic rape survivor, a descendant of Vietnamese refugees, and older stories from the Bible and myths, they claim their identity as an artist.

Tran began the reading by sharing their personal experience about how their poems emerged about nine years ago when they were raped, which reminded them of their experience of being molested as a child by their father and the generations of violence passed through their family, learned from endured years of silence throughout wars. However, Tran notes how the words “rape” or “trauma” do not appear in their book All the Flowers Are Kneeling. Instead, their book is about love, survival, and “the love required for our survival” (Tran). They aimed to create a love letter for survivors, women in their family and alike, queer and transgender individuals who “every day have to invent new ways to survive, exist, dream, dare, and be brave in this world” (Tran).

Tran noted how poetry was a way to speak their truth and share their story with others, but only those who have endured the same experiences as the author can truly know what the art is about. Lyric indirection is a poetic technique used to confess the truth without letting someone unwelcome know. And as Tran explains, this literary skill is incorporated in their poems when “under the sword of another person.” One example is their poem Scientific Method. Scientific Method was inspired by a science experiment that studied young monkeys and their attachment to their mothers. At first glance, the reader may assume that the poem is just about one of these monkeys. However, this poem actually narrates Tran’s memories and emotions of their father taking them away from their mother. Without revealing every little detail about their life, Tran still portrays this idea of someone missing their mother. The author was taken away from their mother, like a monkey in a science experiment, and they are left missing their mother, wishing their mother stepped up to save them. Nevertheless, through this image, the poem still revolves around the idea of love and how the poet learned what it is even if they didn’t have love themselves. Through poetry, they can still talk about their experiences without giving all of their information away and without the fear that someone uninvited will find these words; the truth is revealed and hidden simultaneously.

In the end, Tran left their audience with an impulse to write, a desire to do what they did, and a drive to spill everything from our personal history to our current thoughts onto a blank page. Throughout their poetry reading, Tran shared the beginnings that shaped their identity and, later, their present and future experiences. As Tran explained, “It’s not enough to write or make art that doesn’t showcase everything about us.” They shared how this current world makes it easy to present one part of us to people. In places such as school and home, “we have become experts at only showing people parts of us to grant us security, protection, or love” (Tran). But

the poet calls artists to be as intersectional as they can.

But, in a world that makes us feel powerless, Tran calls all artists to continue to create and write, specifically poetry, an art form that acts as both a sword and a shield. They shared how you never know if someone may empathize with and love your work; you never know what sorts of words and language will incite a reaction in another. “And how many of us would like to have that kind of power in a world that makes us feel powerless?”