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Bite Hard
poems/prose/performances, SF author's premier book
128 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1997
8 people are currently reading
485 people want to read
About the author
Justin Chin
11 books45 followersBorn in Malaysia, raised & educated in Singapore, shipped to the U.S. by way of Hawaii, and lived in San Francisco. Author of 3 books of poetry, all published by Manic D Press: Bite Hard (1997); Harmless Medicine (2001), a finalist in the Bay Area Book Reviewers Association Awards; and, Gutted (2006), which received the 2007 Thom Gunn Award for Poetry by the Publishing Triangle. Squeezed in between these were 2 non-fictions: Mongrel: Essays, Diatribes & Pranks (St. Martins, 1999), and the ur-memoir, Burden of Ashes (Alyson Publications, 2002).
In the nineties, also led a double life as performance artist: created and presented seven full-length solo works here, there and where ever. Packed up those cookies in 2002, (with occasional relapses) and the documents, scripts, and what-heck from that period was published in Attack of the Man-Eating Lotus Blossoms (Suspect Thoughts Press, 2005). Continues to produce text/visual Book-based performance work. Book 2 is an on-going project where discarded or abandoned books found on the streets & other public places are remade, remodeled, & reworked into artists books.
In the nineties, also led a double life as performance artist: created and presented seven full-length solo works here, there and where ever. Packed up those cookies in 2002, (with occasional relapses) and the documents, scripts, and what-heck from that period was published in Attack of the Man-Eating Lotus Blossoms (Suspect Thoughts Press, 2005). Continues to produce text/visual Book-based performance work. Book 2 is an on-going project where discarded or abandoned books found on the streets & other public places are remade, remodeled, & reworked into artists books.
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Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews
April 19, 2022
“ART IS A CRITIQUE”
When I started reading Bite Hard (1997) by Justin Chin, I became confused. This book is billed as Chin’s first poetry collection, but many of the pieces appear as prose on the page. Then, I read that besides being a poet, Chin was also a performance artist. That explains it, I thought. The pieces that weren’t obviously poems, such as “Chinese Restaurant,” were spoken word texts that Chin probably performed.
Chin has been quoted as saying, “Every work of art that works as art is a critique.” His “critiques” of growing up as Chinese in Malaysia and Singapore take no prisoners. Being gay and Asian in America, gay relationships, and AIDS are other themes of Chin’s hard-hitting poetry and prose.
“Bitter,” the first poem in Bite Hard, is rooted in Chin’s ethnic and cultural background. Chin writes,
this is the tao of the situation, bitterness,
balance achieved by the necessity
of lies, all these lingual guilts,
cruel, bitter, bite hard
As I read Chin, I couldn’t help but be reminded of Essex Hemphlll. Both writers are honest to a fault, sexually frank, and don’t give a damn if they offend. Like Hemphill, Chin is transgressive; for example, his poem “Lick My Butt.” Also, like Hemphill, Chin tears at the core of gay men’s relationships. In “The Only Living Man in the World,” Chin says,
we can burn
Into each other’s psyche like a brand
on the butt of a prized steer.
The last lines of this poem,
I will talk to barbed wire
and it will talk back to me
are puzzling. I’m not sure what Chin means here, but I will remember these lines for a long time.
Chin can be laugh-out-loud funny. In “Why He Had to Go,” Chin gives as one of the reasons, “Maybe it was because I wanted to fuck with those Mickey Mouse ears on.” “Buffed Fag” is a serious yet humorous critique of gay gym culture: “Let’s all be Buffed Fags and the whole damn scrawny world will belong to us.”
I noticed that several times in Bite Hard Chin uses nouns as verbs; for example, “Carnations will military you” (“The Secret Life of Flowers”) and “sweat, tears, semen, saliva / tattooed, tapewormed inside me” (“Crabs from a Gun”). He titles the last poem in Bite Hard “Refuging,” not “Refuge.” I found myself rereading many of Chin’s pieces, relishing the ways he puts words together. I really like these lines from “A History of Geography”: “I am in this world of pirates, prayers, ascensions, coups” and “poetics, politics, plays, perspiration and love.” For maximum impact, Chin’s work should be read aloud.
“This Is Your Life” is a sad poem about Chin’s devoutly Christian mother:
Clinging to her bible and daily devotions, prayers
and church work, this is her life.
Ask her how she’s living it.
I assume that the title of this poem refers to the old television show.
Chin’s writings teem with references to celebrities, movie stars, singers, and TV shows. Porn stars Traci Lords and Jeff Stryker, even Siegfried and Roy’s white tigers, also rate mentions. In “Risings,” Chin does something clever. He writes,
The Earth Mother will not like that.
Her bosom fuller than Liz’s titillates
Fate
By “Liz,” Chin has to mean Elizabeth Taylor. “Earth Mother” brings to mind a line that Taylor says in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf: “I am the Earth Mother, and you are all flops.” I am familiar with most of the popular culture references that Chin makes. That’s scary. A case could be made that these pop culture references date Chin’s work, but at the same time they enrich his writing and ground it in the world that he so mercilessly critiques.
I especially like these lines from “Night”:
I dreamed of Dorothy Parker.
She came to me and said bitch, then
spiders gathered around me. Dorothy
Parker was wearing a dress with spider prints
on it. I thought it was curtain material.
Dorothy Parker and spiders. Yes!
“Positivity” relates the obsessive daily ritual that many gay men, myself included, performed during the early years of the AIDS epidemic:
Now, every red spot
and every swollen gland
worries me. I start feeling
my glands all day
thinking they are becoming bigger
every time I touch them.
“Refuging” is the perfect poem to conclude Bite Hard. Throughout the poem, Chin repeats this question, “Where is my refuge?” Chin lets us know that he is constantly reminded that he is a gay Asian American living in the middle of the AIDS crisis:
Where’s my refuge from the men
who say, “I don’t really like Asians
but they’re so much safer to fuck
these days”?
Tragically, Justin Chin died in 2015 at the age of forty-six from a stroke caused by complications related to AIDS. In “Refuging,” Chin leaves us these unforgettable lines:
The half life of this body
is short. Nothing
is immune, anymore.
When I started reading Bite Hard (1997) by Justin Chin, I became confused. This book is billed as Chin’s first poetry collection, but many of the pieces appear as prose on the page. Then, I read that besides being a poet, Chin was also a performance artist. That explains it, I thought. The pieces that weren’t obviously poems, such as “Chinese Restaurant,” were spoken word texts that Chin probably performed.
Chin has been quoted as saying, “Every work of art that works as art is a critique.” His “critiques” of growing up as Chinese in Malaysia and Singapore take no prisoners. Being gay and Asian in America, gay relationships, and AIDS are other themes of Chin’s hard-hitting poetry and prose.
“Bitter,” the first poem in Bite Hard, is rooted in Chin’s ethnic and cultural background. Chin writes,
this is the tao of the situation, bitterness,
balance achieved by the necessity
of lies, all these lingual guilts,
cruel, bitter, bite hard
As I read Chin, I couldn’t help but be reminded of Essex Hemphlll. Both writers are honest to a fault, sexually frank, and don’t give a damn if they offend. Like Hemphill, Chin is transgressive; for example, his poem “Lick My Butt.” Also, like Hemphill, Chin tears at the core of gay men’s relationships. In “The Only Living Man in the World,” Chin says,
we can burn
Into each other’s psyche like a brand
on the butt of a prized steer.
The last lines of this poem,
I will talk to barbed wire
and it will talk back to me
are puzzling. I’m not sure what Chin means here, but I will remember these lines for a long time.
Chin can be laugh-out-loud funny. In “Why He Had to Go,” Chin gives as one of the reasons, “Maybe it was because I wanted to fuck with those Mickey Mouse ears on.” “Buffed Fag” is a serious yet humorous critique of gay gym culture: “Let’s all be Buffed Fags and the whole damn scrawny world will belong to us.”
I noticed that several times in Bite Hard Chin uses nouns as verbs; for example, “Carnations will military you” (“The Secret Life of Flowers”) and “sweat, tears, semen, saliva / tattooed, tapewormed inside me” (“Crabs from a Gun”). He titles the last poem in Bite Hard “Refuging,” not “Refuge.” I found myself rereading many of Chin’s pieces, relishing the ways he puts words together. I really like these lines from “A History of Geography”: “I am in this world of pirates, prayers, ascensions, coups” and “poetics, politics, plays, perspiration and love.” For maximum impact, Chin’s work should be read aloud.
“This Is Your Life” is a sad poem about Chin’s devoutly Christian mother:
Clinging to her bible and daily devotions, prayers
and church work, this is her life.
Ask her how she’s living it.
I assume that the title of this poem refers to the old television show.
Chin’s writings teem with references to celebrities, movie stars, singers, and TV shows. Porn stars Traci Lords and Jeff Stryker, even Siegfried and Roy’s white tigers, also rate mentions. In “Risings,” Chin does something clever. He writes,
The Earth Mother will not like that.
Her bosom fuller than Liz’s titillates
Fate
By “Liz,” Chin has to mean Elizabeth Taylor. “Earth Mother” brings to mind a line that Taylor says in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf: “I am the Earth Mother, and you are all flops.” I am familiar with most of the popular culture references that Chin makes. That’s scary. A case could be made that these pop culture references date Chin’s work, but at the same time they enrich his writing and ground it in the world that he so mercilessly critiques.
I especially like these lines from “Night”:
I dreamed of Dorothy Parker.
She came to me and said bitch, then
spiders gathered around me. Dorothy
Parker was wearing a dress with spider prints
on it. I thought it was curtain material.
Dorothy Parker and spiders. Yes!
“Positivity” relates the obsessive daily ritual that many gay men, myself included, performed during the early years of the AIDS epidemic:
Now, every red spot
and every swollen gland
worries me. I start feeling
my glands all day
thinking they are becoming bigger
every time I touch them.
“Refuging” is the perfect poem to conclude Bite Hard. Throughout the poem, Chin repeats this question, “Where is my refuge?” Chin lets us know that he is constantly reminded that he is a gay Asian American living in the middle of the AIDS crisis:
Where’s my refuge from the men
who say, “I don’t really like Asians
but they’re so much safer to fuck
these days”?
Tragically, Justin Chin died in 2015 at the age of forty-six from a stroke caused by complications related to AIDS. In “Refuging,” Chin leaves us these unforgettable lines:
The half life of this body
is short. Nothing
is immune, anymore.
August 6, 2012
I first heard "Refuging" as a reading before Chin had ever published. I was stunned by the power of this writing. Among my favorite light-hearted reads are "What really goes on in the kitchen of a Chinese restaurant" and "ex-boyfriends named Michael."
July 2, 2020
Justin Chin is the perfect combination of vulnerable grit, shade, intimacy, and desire. I wish I had read him when I was younger, maybe 18 or 19, as an undergrad, old enough to know the pain behind love and to better help make sense of my poetic longings. Chin's speakers chase highs, relish in pleasure, and mourn some of the lowest lows. The downer poems are particularly hard to grasp, given the writer's fate, but that's all the more reason to celebrate his work, and read it out loud. In this case, as loud as possible. And maybe also bite hard, Hard enough to leave a mark.
I see so many queer youths devouring this texts. Not just the ability to see themselves in the text, but also to view firsthand accounts of some of the darkest elements, to see bits of a world that they hopefully don't ever have to live through. Chin articulates struggles of with lovers, homophobia, disease, drug abuse, problematic sex, and more in a way that is not preachy, but rather holds its hand out, guiding the reader through areas lacking light.
I see so many queer youths devouring this texts. Not just the ability to see themselves in the text, but also to view firsthand accounts of some of the darkest elements, to see bits of a world that they hopefully don't ever have to live through. Chin articulates struggles of with lovers, homophobia, disease, drug abuse, problematic sex, and more in a way that is not preachy, but rather holds its hand out, guiding the reader through areas lacking light.
December 31, 2020
I don't read many poetry collections. But, a while back I had a poetry-ordering Thriftbooks binge for some stand-up/slam poetry collections.
This one deals with some heavy topics including racial identity, home, heritage, orientation, and the raw, dirty parts of being human. It is also pretty raunchy in many pieces, so this is not for the faint of heart!
Chin doesn't shy away at all from frank language and descriptions. I appreciated that stark honesty, especially in the performance poetry genre that needs hard words and consonant-heavy lines and delivery. I think I'd like finding some Youtubes of his performances, or audio versions, just to hear how he intended some of these works to sound.
Some are more prose-y and don't work quite as impactfully on the page. And some are a bit derivative of each other. Regardless, as someone who doesn't read much poetry these days, I was entertained and reflective while reading many of these over the past year. (This was another book I read in parts over time.)
This one deals with some heavy topics including racial identity, home, heritage, orientation, and the raw, dirty parts of being human. It is also pretty raunchy in many pieces, so this is not for the faint of heart!
Chin doesn't shy away at all from frank language and descriptions. I appreciated that stark honesty, especially in the performance poetry genre that needs hard words and consonant-heavy lines and delivery. I think I'd like finding some Youtubes of his performances, or audio versions, just to hear how he intended some of these works to sound.
Some are more prose-y and don't work quite as impactfully on the page. And some are a bit derivative of each other. Regardless, as someone who doesn't read much poetry these days, I was entertained and reflective while reading many of these over the past year. (This was another book I read in parts over time.)
May 2, 2023
A History of Geography
"They want to distill me,
take the queer sky out of my body.
Let it sit, simmer until my fire burns up in itself.
& when I am dark/ when I have no more life/ when I am no
more so abomination/ when I am no more shame/ when I am face
again/ when the collective being of me worships god, family,
education and the collective administrative silver spoon,
then I will be back in the fold.
The prodigal child, back from exile."
Crabs From A Gun
"I will remember it is easy
this span of life
that we wrap ourselves in
chaotically neat,
it is the art of falling apart
that I know of.
I will collect the pieces of my body,
lay them down and let
them be."
Justin Chin's poems are gritty, caustic, and funnier when muttered aloud. There's cynical joy in reverse-gazing, toying with, then twisting a scalpel in someone else's fetishizing eye. Read him - he fucking dares you to.
"They want to distill me,
take the queer sky out of my body.
Let it sit, simmer until my fire burns up in itself.
& when I am dark/ when I have no more life/ when I am no
more so abomination/ when I am no more shame/ when I am face
again/ when the collective being of me worships god, family,
education and the collective administrative silver spoon,
then I will be back in the fold.
The prodigal child, back from exile."
Crabs From A Gun
"I will remember it is easy
this span of life
that we wrap ourselves in
chaotically neat,
it is the art of falling apart
that I know of.
I will collect the pieces of my body,
lay them down and let
them be."
Justin Chin's poems are gritty, caustic, and funnier when muttered aloud. There's cynical joy in reverse-gazing, toying with, then twisting a scalpel in someone else's fetishizing eye. Read him - he fucking dares you to.
November 20, 2023
There is not an ounce of shyness in Chin’s writing about gay desire or the imposed placed of anyone non-white in white-worshipping culture. His writing is raw, disturbing, provocative and definitely not for everyone. Yet he gives voice, loudly and unflinchingly, to the perspectives that are very easy to ignore in the gay community in particular and in the mainstream culture in general.
June 5, 2020
Some of these poems were just amazing and others fell somewhat flat for me. I really liked the travel aspect to some of the poems.
August 2, 2023
Anger and feeling that I see within his body and mine And i try to hold his life as my own
Read
August 20, 2023"Lick My Butt" remains untoppable. Also loved some of what I 'd call the flash pieces in here! Voice so strong. Voice for days.
August 30, 2023
I am but a hollowed out f*ggot left emotionally bare by this. To think it isn’t required reading? I can speak no further queer thoughts. He has said them all.
Read
April 16, 2024Struggled so much with the first poem that I sat on this for months.
Revisited it last week, and ended up making it all the way through.
Graphic and beautiful. Really enjoyed this.
Revisited it last week, and ended up making it all the way through.
Graphic and beautiful. Really enjoyed this.
March 31, 2016
Fun, freewheeling and experimental, these poems are some of my favorite from this author. Though he takes us to occasionally horrifying places, (like the poem "The Bridegroom," featuring the former prisoner who was not raped in prison because the other inmates thought he was "diseased" due to his gayness) Chin's writing is always satisfying. You can always count on this poet to hit the center of your emotional target.
January 22, 2008
I like a lot of these poems but not all of them.
April 11, 2017
Great cover, but an iffy collection.
December 29, 2008
I learned that it's okay to write like I think.
Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews