Dance Dance Revolution

by Cathy Park Hong

"The mixture of imagination, language, and historical consciousness in this book is marvelous."―Adrienne Rich, Barnard Women Poets Prize citation "The Guide" is a former South Korean dissident and tour guide who speaks a fluid fabricated language; "the Historian" interviews the Guide and annotates the commentaries. Cathy Park Hong's passionate and artful poem sequence weaves an ultimately revitalizing dialogue on shared experience in a globalized world, using language as subversion and disguise.

Genres: Poetry, Asian American, Fiction, School, Dystopia, Asian Literature, Read For School

128 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2007

About the author

Cathy Park Hong’s book of creative nonfiction, Minor Feelings, was published in Spring 2020 by One World/Random House (US) and Profile Books (UK). She is also the author of poetry collections Engine Empire, published in 2012 by W.W. Norton, Dance Dance Revolution, chosen by Adrienne Rich for the Barnard Women Poets Prize, and Translating Mo'um. Hong is the recipient of the Windham-Campbell Prize, the Guggenheim Fellowship, and a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship. Her poems have been published in Poetry, A Public Space, Paris Review, McSweeney's, Baffler, Yale Review, The Nation, and other journals. She is the poetry editor of the New Republic and is a professor at Rutgers-Newark University.

Reviews

[Jolene · Rating 3 out of 5]

I put off reviewing this collection because I really, really want to say that I loved it. Unfortunately, this is a case in which the concept -- and even the execution -- is impressive as f*ck but just ... not fun to read. Hong's Guide (yes, in the spirit of Dante's Virgil) speaks in a language that mixes vocabulary and grammatical structures from a bunch of different languages, including Middle English, and yeah, it kind of reminded me of reading passages The Canterbury Tales in undergrad. You need to hear the verses aloud to understand them:

"Me fadder sees dis y decide to learn Engrish righteo dere. / Become a Jees cucking stool fo means o survival / me lineage biggum on survival. / 'E tell me dis pep gem: / You can be the best talker but no point of you can't / speak the other man's tongue. You can't chisel, con, plead, / seduce, beg for your life, you can't do anything, because you / know not their language. So learn them all" (46).

And I know I just said these poems weren't fun to read, but I guess that's not 100% true. It IS fun, sometimes, when it all clicks and you feel super smart -- but it's fun in the way that a really complicated puzzle is fun. You feel accomplished. But no one would ever read this book on the beach with, like, a hazy IPA.

Basically, this shit is art ... but, like, art you need to read all the placards to *get.*

[Burnside Soleil · Rating 5 out of 5]

From the aether, Berryman shakes his head in disbelief, wondering, “How’d she do that?”

[Rigoberto Gonzalez · Rating 5 out of 5]

“In the Desert, the language is an amalgam of some three hundred languages and dialects imported into this city, a rapidly evolving lingua franca,” so scribbles the Historian of Cathy Park Hong’s second book of poems Dance Dance Revolution, an unusual journey into a post-apocalyptic landscape that grows more and more familiar with each visit to a different site.

To translate and facilitate the tour, the Historian enlists the help of a Guide, a speaker of this Desert Creole who proudly proclaims her authority as a navigator:

O tempora, o mores! I usta move
around like Innuit lookim for sea pelt…now
I’mma double migrant. Ceded from Koryo, ceded from
‘Merikka, ceded y ceded until now I seizem
dis sizable Mouthpiece role…now les’ drive to interior.

Virgil-like, the Guide spins her poetry and politics into revelations of global conflict, racial tensions, economic instabilities caused by terrorism, corruption and internal uprisings—devastations that resulted in a “dead scald world full o rust puddles, grim service men, / y ffyurious mekkinations.” And though a second world has been built to conceal the broken one, its attraction exists only at surface level. The damaged psyche seeps through very easily via the stories of the “guides who ache for their own/ guides / who mourn / who lead / men from human rinds of discontent.” Here, law is “the sin of choice.”

The Guide weaves the history of the troubled city with her own participation as a revolutionary (“to fightim me yesman lineage”), which compels the Historian to write down her own strained father-daughter relationship set in a more safeguarded, but no less alienating, childhood. She too must come to terms with superimposing truth over deception, reality over memory, and language over language.

By the conclusion of the tour, from the karaoke lounge of the St. Petersburg Hotel to the New Town detention center (a cursory glance “lest ye covet a forkin sinus punch on ye gob”) to the Grove of Proposals where one can toast “to bountiful gene pool, / to intramarry couple breedim beige population,” the Historian (like the reader) has become attuned to the din of Desert Creole and to the spin of “stingy” history. By then, the Historian’s personal connection to the Guide has been disclosed and indeed, the reader can identify with the irony and layered meanings in the Guide’s final statement: “If de world is our disco ball, might I have dim dance.”

As a vision of the present Babel channeled through a futuristic one, Hong succeeds with stunning inventiveness. Dance Dance Revolution is a forthright critique of U.S. meddling (and fumbling) in world affairs, and is unafraid to take a heavy step into the lightly tread arena of American political poetry. This cutting-edge book is a warning to the complacent populations, as well as a “guide” to survival in the apocalypse the world is experiencing at the moment:

You can be the best talker but no point if you can’t
speak the other man’s tongue. You can’t chisel, con, plead,
seduce, beg for your life, you can’t do anything, because you
know not their language. So learn them all.

REVIEW PUBLISHED IN lunapoetry.blogspot.com

[jacq[ueline] · Rating 4 out of 5]

genuinely fascinating and i think i need to dedicate more time to it than squeezing it in between my commute

[kathleen]

loved! recommended by julie and my poetry professor
found the desert creole really fatiguing to read, then midway through i suddenly found i could understand, felt triumphant, started to miss it when i was reading the other poems
historical paired w speculative so good
thank you cathy park hong!

[Samantha · Rating 4 out of 5]

An ambitious, fascinating collection, detailing a fictional account of a desert world in a language that is an amalgamation of 300 tongues. I think you'd have to be very creatively and intellectually brilliant to take on this kind of project, and Hong pulls it off so well.

[Alison Channita · Rating 2 out of 5]

It pains me to give 2 stars to this collection of poems by Cathy Park Hong because I very much appreciated Minor Feelings. I feel like she was doing something profound here with the execution of these poems, but I just didn’t get it??

[Ching-In · Rating 5 out of 5]

Juan Felipe Herrera asked us to introduce a really exciting poet we were inspired by these days to our poetry workshop.

I chose Cathy Park Hong because of this book & here is what I wrote:

The poet who has completely altered my consciousness this year is Cathy Park Hong, whose Dance Dance Revolution won the 2006 Barnard Women Poets Prize chosen by Adrienne Rich. Hong creates her own dialect (a desert language compiled from an amalgamation of 300 tongues), landscape, geography, history -- a poetic sequence in a way that takes my breath away. I find her work exciting -- I think it breaks new ground & pushes aesthetically towards a border poetics that is political & engages what's going on in the world today, but not in a rhetorical way. Her work is challenging to the reader, but in a way I find transformative. She has DUENDE in buckets!

[Greg Bem · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a unique title in the canon of poetry reflecting the intensity of globalization. The book is mostly composed of poems written in a "desert creole," which is a collection of many languages and often reads like traditional creole language reads/sounds. Difficult to read, it does provide an extensive representation of the culture behind the language, including the lives lived within the pseudo-dystopia, ever-present desertification of the future-present. The book was hard to follow but I found the imagery of this desert landscape and the wilds within imaginative and captivating.

[Lisa · Rating 5 out of 5]

So frickin brilliant, the rest of us can just go home now.

[jada alexis]

not sure what to rate this, it's hard for me to decide but thjs was a really fun and interesting reading experience. i can't wait to talk abt this w my class next semester

// sealey challenge day 4

[Rachel · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is difficult and unforgettable. I both didn’t understand it and felt I was swept into incomprehensible and yet very familiar surroundings. No stroll in the park, this guided tour brought me into a deep and disturbing world that is ours. And made me think about what it means to be human.

[birdbassador · Rating 5 out of 5]

if you're gonna make a conlang then you should have fun with it, and i think this is a fun one. also there's a call to violently upend the existing social order which i liked also.

[Simon Wu · Rating 3 out of 5]

Amazing title
Very interesting formal innovation
I liked the sci fi aspects a lot
I just watched Fallout so I imagined that most of this took place in Fallout apocalypse world
Poetry is intense

[Kika · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the best books I have ever read, but also one that is going to take effort!

When you first pick it up, you are probably going to be very excited and interested, and then instantly upset at how foreign the language actually is. Give it the time, even though it's difficult! The first section is particularly slow, so use it to get a grip on the style and how to interpret the different words (helps to speak aloud, but I was able to get most of it by just reading in my head). Part 2: "Stirrings of Childhood that Begin With" is where the story picks up and the poems really start to shine, both in literal plot and in thematic exploration.

I had to read each poem twice as I went through, even spending some extra time to really understand the meaning of a couple of the more confusing ones, but it was completely worth it. Only took about 1 1/2 or 2 hours total to experience this unique and beautiful character-driven narrative.

[Kira · Rating 2 out of 5]

I never leave reviews but I don't feel right about leaving a 2-star without an explanation for this one. This is one of the most technical books I have ever read and it feels strangely above my reading level in such a way that I had a hard time reading it and could not generally recommend it.

I don't feel smart enough for this book but I want to be. I might try the audiobook or revisiting it in the future.

[Nuha · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hong's poetry tests the boundaries of English, of poetry itself when she plays with this pidgin English. In the tension between the Historian and the Guide she teases us, asking us to think critically about what is kept and what is left behind in history, the lives that are extinguished between history's paper-thin pages.

[Kristen Gunther · Rating 5 out of 5]

This might be the most ambitious poem-project I've ever heard of and/or read, and it totally works. Also, I read this right around the first time I went to Vegas, so it all made perfect sense.

[Will · Rating 5 out of 5]

A war story disguised as a bildungsroman or abstract history. About the futility of violence. Reminded me of Shake Hands With the Devil. Dont mistake the broken English for broken meaning.

[Jane · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found this book of lyric poems comprising a speculative, sf-ish narrative-slash-political commentary extremely inventive, fun, and interesting. There are two speakers. The poems are spoken by "the Guide," a woman originally from Korea and now working (as a guide) at a kind of Las Vegas like site in a desert somewhere in Africa, who speaks in an invented creole that the author says includes elements of 300 languages and that I imagine every reader will understand some parts of better than others (not only in the compilation of languages, pidgins, and forms of English, but in the allusions and double entendres), as well as some sections / poems in a less bricolaged idiom reflecting "translation" and/or memory. The other speaker, the "Historian" who has gathered the material, uses a more familiar form of English, but her/his pronouncements are increasingly challenging to make sense of as the book goes on. I am certain that in the future, if literary studies haven't collapsed altogether, someone will do an annotated edition that will help the reader out, but it's really fun to just read it bare and discover for yourself what you will take away. It's also dealing with really Deep Stuff (tm) having to do with migration, globalization, ecological-political-economic catastrophe, and how all of these intersect with various literary and linguistic traditions. In other words, the author does amazing and highly original work with an incredibly ambitious concept. It's fairly short and, despite the language, far more accessible than a lot of poetry I like, and would make a good read for a wider audience than is usual for interesting poetry. You'll have to check another reviewer (or the blurbs) for more on the characters/plot/setting/themes, but I recommend this.

[Mia Snape · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 An amalgam of languages and dialects that span time, the language the primary speaker uses is a tad corse to digest however stands out as inventively eloquent to me. I found humor in treading Hong’s mysterious sea of words which essentially was me decoding through audible resuscitation whenever I cracked the book open on the train. Discovering meaning in the writing for me was through the snap associations I would have to certain onomatopoeias or catch phrases when read out loud. The poetry invokes those seemingly scatterbrained old people who have popularized exclamations pounded into their vocabulary. They express what they need to say only through specific past references rather than choosing a singular exclusively constructed grammatical invention like a cherry pitter or a hard boiled egg slicer. Hong’s protagonist’s grasp of the English language is though these kitschy and obscure tidbits of quotes and phrases. The main character didn’t go to formal school to study English but rather her English here shows how she exists in her environment. People, upon examination, are like incredible historical vaults [there’s a better word I’m looking for “fossils” perhaps maybe “paper”; every crinkle and mark changes our form and being as a result of environment]. Everything a person says and does and looks like is so universally and cataclysmically intentional even if it is “without intention” on the person’s part.

Hong orchestrated a whole spider web of historical and human connections and with multiple layers of cultural consciousness that I’m looking forward to accessing more of past the stunned processing of my initial read.

[Dylan Zucati · Rating 4 out of 5]

Traditionally I’ve seen poetry as strictly collections of poems, but Dance Dance Revolution by Cathy Park Hong weaves in and out of narrative and poems, all of it poetry. Using pidgin english accumulated from different cultures colliding in a land called “The Desert”, Hong tells two stories that meet at the end. The narrator “Historian” is narrated through a fact finding vacation by “The Guide”. At times entirely conversational story telling from the guide, the characters grow as the history of The Desert is revealed. Nothing is fully clear until the final pages when the connections teased out through the book are finally solidified. I generally liked this book, with my only problem being how inaccurate it felt for me to hear the words in my head. I think what would take this from a memorable book of story and poems to an unforgettable story is seeing it live. While I’d love to hear Cathy Park Hong read these poems and this book, I think it would come most alive as a one-person show. I can imagine seeing one actor play all the characters that come across the pages of this book, centering The Historian before The Guide takes over, morphing from the characters of her youth, into the modern-day citizens featured throughout The Desert. The more I think about it, the more I can imagine lights, sound, and a talented performer could bring this story to life the way it feels on the page.

[Keun Young (Jennifer) · Rating 2 out of 5]

In her anthology Dance Dance Revolution, Cathy Park Hong examines Korean historical events and the fictitious “Desert” from a critical outlook. Through the use of an imaginary creole language and the rejection of capitalism, the author speaks as a narrator, the Guide, and the Historian both explicitly and implicitly detailing her personal, communist view towards the class warfare dialectic, multiculturalism, and “imperialism” that should raise questions amongst readers.

The poetry consists of a creole English that is intertwined with Korean, Spanish, French, Latin, Greek, Hawaiian, and a few others. Through the use of such technique, the poet allows herself to establish a multicultural and racially diverse environment in the Desert throughout her collection of poems. In the poem “5. Toasts in the Grove of Proposals”, for example, the first stanza reads:

“Lo, brandied man en rabbinical cape,
dab rosy musk en goy’s gossamy nape,
y brassy Brahmin papoosed in sari’s saffron sheet
swoon bine faire Waspian en ‘im wingtip feet,
les’ toast to bountiful gene pool,
to intramarry couple breedim beige population!” (pg. 92)

Indeed, at first glance, the language seems to provoke a musical rhythm that can entertain a reader. However, such use of language can confuse the reader in such a way that it interrupts the flow of the poem. Specifically, it invites the reader to question as to why the poet used a pidgin language that ironically seems to interrupt and disorient the focus of the poem when the poem is supposed to highlight the racial unity derived from marriage between people from diverse backgrounds. Likewise, another poem “Almanac” says:

“we will tar you with birds
succor soon yassir a fleet of skiffs
zigzag paths look here to sylvan arroyo” (pg. 75)

Here, along with no punctuation at all, the creole language embodies a strong sense of hysteria, almost recklessly listing what one would normally take a quick glance at as he or she passes by late at night in Desert. Through this voice, the poet thus perplexes the reader to an extent that the latter should prefer a language so hysterical. Thus, this creole language an aspect of the author‘s failed attempt to build an appropriate setting for the poetry.

The Guide is also politically provocative in a rather outdated way. In her narrative, she sympathises with communism and confronts with the contemporary society by showing a strong dislike towards capitalism and an even stronger one towards pre-WW2 Japanese imperialism and post-WW2 American neo-imperialism. Firstly, in the poem “New Town” - a narrative that is to be regarded as a poem but is seemingly a paragraphic passage with full sentences - the poet shows a critique of capitalism in a city that is socially and distinctly opposite to Desert:

“Population
Grows each time Desert officials exile natives to New Town: a guide, a hotel maid, a street
vendor who sells off-season fruit, and engineer of bombs.” (pg. 80)

Here, the poet implies that more and more are exiled from Desert to work in menial jobs. By describing other parts of the New Town society including architecture, borders, language, and landmark, the Guide personally criticises capitalism and the way such socioeconomic structure consistently moves the underprivileged out of where they originally belonged to simply due to their failure to adapt or keep up with the economic conditions. Although this can be regarded as a fresh, perhaps even mind-blowing, perspective towards contemporary society, it can be seen as being a bit too much given that capitalism is found in most societies and that the communism lost the Cold War, for good reason.

Furthermore, the narrator goes on to criticise the personal acts of her grandfather and father because they politically supported other countries, her grandfather supporting Japan for his personal benefit and the father supporting America for potentially a variety of reasons including an objection to communism. In the poem “The Lineage of Yes-Men” epitomises such idea:

“Me grandfadder sole Makkoli wine to Hapanese colonists
din he guidem to insurrectas
(...)
Din mine fadder sole Makkoli -- he a ‘Merikken GI chihuahua.
Some populii tink GIs heroes wit dim strafing “Pinko chink”
but eh! Those Jees like regula pirates, search for booty y pillage…” (pg. 43)

Along with the constant creole language, the poet uses such derogatory diction as “chihuahua” (meaning “lackey”) or metaphor - including colour symbolism -, an example of which is “pinko chink”, referring to the communist Chinese. Through such harsh language, the Guide expresses her antipathy towards her grandfather and father for being “yes-men” for the imperialistic-looking America and Japan despite the fact that she once served as an informer for the capitalistic Desert. Simply put, not only does she disrespect actions committed by others with a dissimilar perspective of the world, but she also (again) confuses the reader with her political stance.

The poet’s pidgin English and communist perspective, from one point of view, seem unique and fresh as they attempt to blend with the use of somewhat musical techniques to evoke a vision of the Desert as a structurally chaotic society. However, the combination of the language, setting, and ideology ultimately lack credibility and coherence. In addition, the use of the narrator as a political martyr conveniently hides the intolerant nature of communism and is a potential indicator of the author’s own political intolerance. Such intolerance comes out especially in her treatment of the narrator’s father and grandfather whose political beliefs clearly differed from her own. Although Dance Dance Revolution is recommended for those with desire for an alternative view of the world, it is not recommended for those who are satisfied with the mainstream political viewpoints available in contemporary society.

[Lukas Sotola]

“.... we float like incubated bodies,
cranial nerves pulse violet, fire tinsel out
we poppy seed eyes, deep en brine solution,
we blubba our slattern dreams.”

Well, this was quite unlike anything I’ve read in a minute. Much, though not all, of this is written in an invented creole made up of English, reportedly some Korean, some Spanish, and reportedly words from several other languages, and it certainly is one of the most unique reading experiences I’ve ever had. It occasionally resulted in moments of unexpected beauty, like the quote above. Much of it was hard to decipher, but the rhythm of this strange dialect itself was seductive enough to keep me going. The story behind the poems, about a South Korean dissident who has retreated to a city after a traumatic life that included time in a gulag, hit surprisingly close to home in 2025 America (unfortunately). Most definitely going to keep reading Cathy Park Hong.

[Will · Rating 3 out of 5]

Park Hong's collection is innovative and interesting but challenging! She invents her own dialect for her characters that when you put the time in is rewarding and brilliant but I had a hard time putting the work in. I should have read this collection in the winter when throwing myself at a book of poetry would distract me from the gray malaise that hangs in the Minnesota sky but I didn't and felt that I didn't enjoy this collection as much as I could have. It is highly acclaimed and I understand why but I wish I had read it in a class or with a friend to better understand all the moving parts/been committed in spending serious time with the book. Cathy Park Hong is a brilliant author and her poetry always leaves me thinking and interrogating. However, I enjoyed Engine Empire more than this work. A+ title.

[Aamir · Rating 3 out of 5]

Three stars just for the really cool concept and how innovative it with respect to linguistics, dialect, and culture. Also phenomenal world building and atmosphere with the dialect, sounds, and settings. But I can't say I found the story very compelling or moving, and I felt I wasn't as emotionally invested in the story or characters as I wanted to be. And I felt it should have been more powerful, given how interesting and ripe the plot exposition + story concept was.

Overall, I had a lot of fun, but I couldn't grasp much substance past the form, world, and sound.

[D · Rating 1 out of 5]

Unfortunately, I wasn't able to really read this book. About 85% of it is written in a fictional language described "an exuberantly expressive amalgam of new and extinct English dialects, Korean, Latin, Spanish, and other miscellaneous pidgins". This made it difficult to read each individual poem. I spent a lot longer on each page trying to sound out what was written, which took away any enjoyment I had and made it difficult to get a sense of rhythm or sound. I was disappointed in this formatting choice as the premise is very interesting - a historian interviewing an important revolutionary figure in a desert city. I also don't understand why the author chose to write in such an inaccessible way. It didn't feel like other poetry books, where authors bring in their native languages as either a love letter to these languages or as a way of adding a sense of place and heritage. I initially called this book pretentious, but I can admit that maybe it's just meant for a small, niche audience that doesn't include me.

[Potassium · Rating 4 out of 5]

Whoa this was super smart and creative. I love/am terrified of the world Hong has created in this book.

I’ve been wanting to read this forever but it took me a long time to find it. Luckily in that time I started learning Korean so I understood the Guide a little better than I would have had I gotten my hands on this book when I first discovered its existence. Definitely a good one to read out loud. And I kinda feel like I need to reread it because I was finally figuring out some things at the end.

[Carla Seravalli · Rating 5 out of 5]

“...I’s unpeel mine insides fo one clean note
tru all de marshy crowd sounds, tru all de trademark
cowed libel, I’s unpeel mefelf lika pin-hole
neck sweater...”

Wonderfully strange and intensely imagined to a degree that rivals Plath’s Ariel. Hong tangles herself in all the dominant metaphors we use to describe immigration, foreignness, and travel, and occasionally gets stuck. A crucial read for any poet concerned with voice and, I’d argue, all American citizens.

[S P · Rating 4 out of 5]

20 ‘This city is the center of elsewhere but perhaps that is not accurate. As the world shrinks, elsewhere begins to disappear.’

81 ‘New Town is without image. It cannot be imagined.’

115 ‘Such poisonous families
I startle. Alarum, the feudal world.
Plow the oil rig and plum blossom fields, the fields where they
danced half-ring,
the aorta mortuary fields. The fields. If not for
the field here, there are
animal wanderings.’