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Viral
�One boy leaps from a bridge into a river, and the ripples from his fall ring out to encompass a nation. All that remains unspoken in the reportage—the sorrow and compassion and anger—is given eloquent voice as Suzanne Parker documents another tragedy that challenges our political experiment. Grief-stricken and abiding, Viral addresses our ongoing struggle for democracy.” —Michael Waters
Written in response to the suicide of Tyler Clementi (the Rutgers student whose privacy was brutally invaded by his roommate), Viral explores the complex issues of sexuality, shame, and masculinity. Grief and loss guide us as Suzanne Parker investigates the issues of privacy, voyeurism, and human contact, seeking to understand what it means to live in a world where technology can quickly turn a dark computer screen into an open window.
Only Kissing
The webcam showed only the two men kissing
In the eyes now
a wilderness—
when the birds open
their beaks
not in song,
but a breath
escapes from the rigor
of killing and feeding
and climbing to find,
again, the swaying
of the grass, the nudging
a body makes as it moves,
no matter how
quietly, through
the world,
setting its neighbors
in motion—
How do you sleep
when the siren
is your own exhaled cry:
"Oh Christ."
Suzanne Parker's poems have appeared in Barrow Street, Cimarron Review, Rattapallax, and numerous other journals. She is a winner of the Alice M. Sellars Award from the Academy of American Poets, was a poetry fellow at the Prague Summer Seminars, and has received fellowships and scholarships from Sarah Lawrence College Summer Writers Seminar and Prairie Schooner. Suzanne directs the creative writing program at Brookdale Community College and is an editor for MEAD: A Magazine of Literature and Libations.
Written in response to the suicide of Tyler Clementi (the Rutgers student whose privacy was brutally invaded by his roommate), Viral explores the complex issues of sexuality, shame, and masculinity. Grief and loss guide us as Suzanne Parker investigates the issues of privacy, voyeurism, and human contact, seeking to understand what it means to live in a world where technology can quickly turn a dark computer screen into an open window.
Only Kissing
The webcam showed only the two men kissing
In the eyes now
a wilderness—
when the birds open
their beaks
not in song,
but a breath
escapes from the rigor
of killing and feeding
and climbing to find,
again, the swaying
of the grass, the nudging
a body makes as it moves,
no matter how
quietly, through
the world,
setting its neighbors
in motion—
How do you sleep
when the siren
is your own exhaled cry:
"Oh Christ."
Suzanne Parker's poems have appeared in Barrow Street, Cimarron Review, Rattapallax, and numerous other journals. She is a winner of the Alice M. Sellars Award from the Academy of American Poets, was a poetry fellow at the Prague Summer Seminars, and has received fellowships and scholarships from Sarah Lawrence College Summer Writers Seminar and Prairie Schooner. Suzanne directs the creative writing program at Brookdale Community College and is an editor for MEAD: A Magazine of Literature and Libations.
80 pages, Paperback
First published September 10, 2013
47 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
January 6, 2022
Tender elegies for the death of Tyler Clementi. This collection considers the perspectives of the people connected to this tragedy—including those who had a part in it.
August 12, 2016
Suzanne Parker's Viral elegizes Tyler Clementi, indeed, the volume is dedicated to him. It makes us consider how the young man got to the point where suicide was his only path. It makes us think about how his parents will have to deal with the loss of their son. It even attempts to somehow understand the cruelty of those who victimized him.
As a series, as a book-length treatment on a theme, it's extremely successful. I'm guessing most readers will read it front to back in a short time, and then reread and revisit the entire volume. While specific poems do stay with me, I am also left with an over-riding sense of injustice that our society still cannot provide more safety and care for a young person such as Clementi. Despite gains, we cannot underestimate the deep hostility and prejudice out there being directed at young gay people.
Parker does not preach. Rather, she helps us to empathize with Clementi and the others portrayed.
Stylistic variations of many kinds help her to create distinctive voices. In "Viral," the title poem, Parker lists brief messages (texts or online comments) in which people respond to the invasive video, complete with "OMG" and "LOL." The comments--petty, hateful, ridiculous--are arranged like a wall of words, the wall that must have surrounded or enveloped Clementi when he later became aware of them. (More of this review at Poems for the Writing blog)
As a series, as a book-length treatment on a theme, it's extremely successful. I'm guessing most readers will read it front to back in a short time, and then reread and revisit the entire volume. While specific poems do stay with me, I am also left with an over-riding sense of injustice that our society still cannot provide more safety and care for a young person such as Clementi. Despite gains, we cannot underestimate the deep hostility and prejudice out there being directed at young gay people.
Parker does not preach. Rather, she helps us to empathize with Clementi and the others portrayed.
Stylistic variations of many kinds help her to create distinctive voices. In "Viral," the title poem, Parker lists brief messages (texts or online comments) in which people respond to the invasive video, complete with "OMG" and "LOL." The comments--petty, hateful, ridiculous--are arranged like a wall of words, the wall that must have surrounded or enveloped Clementi when he later became aware of them. (More of this review at Poems for the Writing blog)
January 19, 2016
I don't love poetry, and I've only ever had a few favorites that I could talk about with great affection (Whitman, Auden, Dickinson). And yet, here I find myself, being proven so wrong on my resistance to/ distance from poetry. That is all thanks to Suzanne Parker and VIRAL.
This re-imagining or inspired-by meditation on the life of Tyler Clemente is moving, is creative, is simply genius. Shifting perspectives, spatial play, sound seances...how does one life get connected to/ infect us all? VIRAL answers that question.
I am incredibly grateful for this reading experience. What else can one ask for from a text, if not to be challenged to rethink one's relationship to it and its genre?
This re-imagining or inspired-by meditation on the life of Tyler Clemente is moving, is creative, is simply genius. Shifting perspectives, spatial play, sound seances...how does one life get connected to/ infect us all? VIRAL answers that question.
I am incredibly grateful for this reading experience. What else can one ask for from a text, if not to be challenged to rethink one's relationship to it and its genre?
March 23, 2014
I am so pleased to have encountered this book (and the poet) in my recent reading. Viral is such a sensative and thoughtful celebration of life despite tragedy, and such a commentary on the cruelties of misunderstanding and juvenile hatred; that the subject matter of the poems is only trumpted by the tender telling in poetry.
I enjoyed the second two sections more than the first, though it, too, has its merits. A real testimony to contemporary poetry and its small subjects expounding on large ideas.
I enjoyed the second two sections more than the first, though it, too, has its merits. A real testimony to contemporary poetry and its small subjects expounding on large ideas.
May 4, 2014
This slender volume of poems about Tyler Clementi, a college student who committed suicide after his private acts with another man was broadcast on the web by his roommate, was savored in one extended sitting, and it is an intriguing example of alternate storytelling. These poems speak to the power of the genre to complicate the essence of an event and to singe with outrage. It stirs my center and feeds my multigenre soul. A unique book.
September 19, 2019
This hurt. This hurt so deeply that my body still aches from having read it. It was beautifully written, and the heartache that was depicted was so real and so terrible that I felt as though I was living it myself. I would recommend this to anyone, and then I would recommend it again. Like Hum, I immediately want to read it again.
April 8, 2014
This strong debut collection by Parker focuses on the intimate relationships between people--their beauty and their ugliness, using the story of Tyler Clementi as a scaffolding. Poignant and lyrically intense, not every poem is successful (and I was surprised that the book's title poem is one of the weakest ones to me--selfconsciously clever), but the majority are and they're worth rereading.
February 5, 2016
Written on/about Tyler Clementi (the Rutgers student who committed suicide after video released by his roommate) these ooems are moving and suprising. The poems regarding gay life are unusual content for a woman. The theme of death of a gay male was better handled in Matthew poems of last year.
December 15, 2013
So many lines haunt and linger after they've been read. Parker's presence and compassion is evident in every poem of this powerful book.
January 24, 2014
Lovely elegy for Tyler Clementi--and important commentary on all the ways we hurt and disappoint one another.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews