Red Juice: Poems 1998-2008

by Hoa Nguyen, Anselm Berrigan (Introduction)

"Hoa Nguyen's poems probe dailiness to divorce us from our base assumptions about how language might present the world to us. Her poems comprise some of the most inviting lyrics I've found in a living poet."— Bookslut "Phrase by phrase Nguyen's work can be conversational, playful, funny, angry, acutely self-aware, and loaded with sensory information."—Anselm Berrigan, from the introduction Red Juice represents a decade of poems written roughly between 1998 and 2008, previously only available in small-run handmade chapbooks, journals, and out-of-print books. This collection of early poems by Vietnamese American poet Hoa Nguyen showcases her feminist ecopoetics and unique style, all lyrical in the post-modern tradition. [BUDDHA'S EARS ARE DROOPY TOUCH HIS SHOULDERS] Buddha's ears are droopy touch his shoulders
as scarves fly out of windows and I shriek
at the lotus of enlightenment Travel to Free Street past Waco
to the hole in the Earth
wearing water I'm aiming my mouth
for apple pie Born in the Mekong Delta and raised in the Washington, DC, area, Hoa Nguyen studied Poetics at New College of California in San Francisco. With the poet Dale Smith, Nguyen founded Skanky Possum, a poetry journal and book imprint. She is the author of eight poetry books and chapbooks and lives in Toronto, Ontario, where she teaches poetics at Ryerson University and curates a reading series.

Genres: Poetry

272 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2005

About the author

Hoa Nguyen [(Vĩnh Long, 1967)] was born in the Mekong Delta, grew up in the DC area and studied poetics in San Francisco. She is the author of 8 books and chapbooks, most recently Hecate Lochia (Hot Whiskey, 2009), Kiss a Bomb Tattoo (Effing Press, 2009) and Chinaberry (Fact Simile, 2010). Based in Austin, TX, Hoa curates a reading series and leads a creative writing workshop.

Reviews

[Samantha · Rating 5 out of 5]

I think I could be stranded somewhere with only this book and be sustained for a very long time. I'm in love with the way Hoa Nguyen uses words. Her poems have electricity, and this book is a god damn living creature-beast that's knocked me over (in a good way, not a predatory "I'm going to eat you" way). Get this, read it, co-habitate with it, and watch her read from the book here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nyn55...

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed these poems - they're accessible and engaging, with just enough surprise. I like the structure and style, too.

[Brian · Rating 2 out of 5]

Oh, I wanted to like this collection so much more than I did. I tried, in my morning poetry reading, over a period of weeks, patiently reading a couple of poems each day, hoping they'd connect. So, for me, Hoa Nguyen becomes a poet that I still love the idea of, and will one day return to in hopes of making a break-through. I take away a few isolated lines that sparked:
"Watch as nouns pile up/ piled in the thingified air"
"Ride a bike to Houston/ ride and put your foot down/ on the pedal unlike a flower"

[Zoe Tuck · Rating 5 out of 5]

Below is the condensed version of a longer review I'm working on:

Hoa Nguyen's RED JUICE: POEMS 1998-2008 (Wave Books, 2014) demonstrates the enduring power of the political lyric. The work collects several earlier volumes published during her years in Austin, Texas, spanning as well an historical era that moves from the peak of US confidence to the abysm of the Bush era, taking on disaster capitalism, environmental degradation, and racism with poetic intelligence. RED JUICE also holds dream and delirium, being threaded through with the chthonic feminist mysticism I associate with Alice Notley (a major influence). Nguyen's pedagogical practice of teaching texts by reading them aloud shows in her poetry. The consequences of this simple but profound act, beside a close reading, include a close relationship with a poet's music, her melopoeia. Although embodiment has become something of a buzzword, I can think of no other way to describe Nguyen's relationship to her influences. The result for the reader or listener is that Nguyen's own work hums with many musics which are nonetheless fully her own. We may live in a world in which, "They sell you what disappears" but the poems in RED JUICE are made to last.

[Neil McCrea · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm drawn to poems of fire
poems of chaos
poems of confession
where both the sinner and the sinned against
are burned

I'm drawn to poems of water
poems of change
poems of narrative
baggy poems, sodden with meaning
wandering out to sea

Hoa Nguyen writes poems of ice
poems of stasis
poems that capture a frozen moment
tiny crystalline doll houses
carefully arranged for optimal viewing

Hoa Nguyen writes poems of earth
poems of growth
poems that arise naturally
find their place in universal balance
then gracefully decline.

This book may not be my bag, baby,
but I know the good stuff when I read it.

[Greg Bem · Rating 5 out of 5]

My head responded to such an array, such a fan spread, of the words and ideas of womanhood and personhood in a landscape of beautiful secrets and beautiful images, through language shaped like stepladder, through mindfulness shaped like ampersand.

[Ronni · Rating 5 out of 5]

Basically the best poetry happening these days. Accessible but bottomless. Perfect. I want to own this book.

[Mark · Rating 1 out of 5]

I won this book in a First Reads giveaway.

I do not understand this book of "poems." To me, they're not poems. So far, I have read 72 pages. I don't think I will be able to finish it, but I will try.

Reading these "poems," makes me think the author, when she sits down to write, just word-vomits onto the screen. Seriously. I cannot discern any of the metaphors or images she's trying to convey. Her use of language is lacking as well.

Here is one "poem," titled "18-Year-Old Kurt Cobain Arrested For Painting 'Homosexual Sex Rules' on the Side of an Aberdeen Bank: Police Report of Pocket Contents"

a guitar pick
a key
a beer
a mood ring and
a cassette
by the militant punk band
Millions of Dead Cops

That is literally a list. Not a poem.

Here's another titled "Smell the Purple Incense That May or May Not Smell Better than the Rat You Name 'Composition'"

Winter fails You drive
a motorcycle around it!
The difference in today is
a Valentine zit

"You have your whole life ahead of you
except for the part you've already live"

Calmly la la
your swirly clothesline habits

Why can't I have glitter toes?

Magic lifts my hair (That's the wind)

WHAT?! Can someone explain this poem? Give some insight into her work?

To be fair, I will find random lines that I do like, but they are few and far between. For example:

If only the world wasn't glob-al
"Don't be a sucker"

-from "I Woke Up This Morning and It was Friday"

If I can finish this book and my opinion of it changes, I will update this review. Sorry if anyone thinks I am being too harsh, but it is my opinion.

[D.A. Gray · Rating 3 out of 5]

There are a lot of things to like in this collection. Each compact poem makes unexpected connections. There are lines such as "grooving on Armageddon gas" from [Find & Fund It's a Prison Oven], or the connection between planet and speaker in "The Earth is in Me" that draw the reader in for multiple reads, to create synthesis out of ideas and objects we often don't use together, perhaps because of the limits of our own vision.

My only drawback to rating this higher is that while Red Juice is a strong intellectual book, it didn't have that connection between intellect and emotion for me. I'll admit though that may be more my personal taste than any reflection on the poet. A strong collection.

[Elena · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent - refreshed & surprised me. often reading people's anthologies or books of poetry feels like work, and that i am reading to glean some technical craft, but Hoa Nguyen's books taught me and delighted me. so good. especially loved her poems that dealt with pregnancy and eating.

[Jacqueline Valencia]

http://www.therustytoque.com/rusty-ta...

[Maya · Rating 5 out of 5]

I will be returning to this collection often.

[R.K. Cowles · Rating 4 out of 5]

4 1/2 stars

[Cavak · Rating 4 out of 5]

Connected with a handful of the earlier ones, but they were sometimes too abstract for me to get a grip on. Must not be my cup of tea.

It's the latter half that got to me, when her ordinary meanderings of chores and motherhood popped out. They're accessible and easier to read, but they're also heartfelt and powerful strokes of her quiet dilemmas when life can be so chaotic and loud. Bite-sized concrete, they sang to me. Soul of poetry. That's what got me sucked into them, on an unexpected level the more I read. Perhaps not revolutionary in their subject matter, but eh. It reached me.

I dug how her style has changed in the years before A Thousand Times You Lose Your Treasure . Appreciated reading this one.

[emmy chen · Rating 3 out of 5]

i will not claim to be a poet, but some of these poems fell very flat to me. just a jumble of words that have no intention of conveying any meaning—but perhaps that was the purpose of it, and maybe i’m unable to interpret it as it was meant to be. i also may need to just read them again to fully grasp it all.

there were some poems in this collection that i did enjoy though and i wish that the whole collection felt the same way as they did. i think that because the poems range from 1998-2008, there wasn’t a sort consistency that i usually crave. some of the poems were just lists? is that classified as a poem? i fear that i do not know.

[Aidan · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5

makes me think of light and colors and how they’re all together and aparting and how the worlds colors are still so much to marvel at.

some of these made me cry but a vast majority made me think.

[Michael Buebe · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is currently my favorite book of poems.