Documents

New Poets of America

by Jan-Henry Gray, D.A. Powell (Foreword)

“As a Filipino-American conscious of his multiple identities and the trove of experiences and external forces that shaped him, Gray uses the unfettered landscape of poetry to release himself and others from the limitations that aggrieve undocumented immigrants.” ― New City Lit Rooted in the experience of living in America as a queer undocumented Filipino, Documents maps the byzantine journey toward citizenship through legal records and fragmented recollections. In poems that repurpose the forms and procedures central to an immigrant’s experiences―birth certificates, identification cards, letters, and interviews―Jan-Henry Gray reveals the narrative limits of legal documentation while simultaneously embracing the intersections of identity, desire, heritage, love, and a new imagining of freedom.

Genres: Poetry, LGBT, Asian American, Adult, Queer

112 pages, Paperback

First published April 16, 2019

Reviews

[D.A. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Documents opens every closet and drawer and says "search me." It says "[hide History]." It is a full disclosure and a redaction, a history and its endless revisions.

[S P · Rating 3 out of 5]

On Translation
A tree's branch
breaks.

A falling branch is
a branch, not a twig

until it has fallen
and is with-the-ground.

There, the twig
is among other twigs.

Also there, it is near
the root of its tree. (39)

from EXAQUA
feels like it allows for greater breadth/depth ... I'm curious, what does the form free up? I'm not certain. I used to think that poetry = freedom. Freedom out of the sentence, proper grammar, or reasoned reasoning. I used to think that a poem, more than other types of writing, allowed for leaps, disjunction, mystery, even magic. I thought that the poem was the best (and cheapest) way to create collage. There's the poem as machine. The poem as sketch. As document. As a walk. As a conversation with oneself. As writing that cannot be paraphrased. There was a lot that drew me toward poetry but, being immersed in it (66)
[...]
Oh, that's what I was originally thinking of with the notion of swimming or orbiting that you mentioned: a giant essay that interrupts (or cleaves?) into the book. To cleave is to separate and to bring together. To yoke. To it: I'm thinking of this essay I want to write as ... Essay as Ocean. Not necessarily in a geographic, landscapey way but weirder, queer, dense, full of strange currents with different temperatures, something immersive, at times panicky, the feeling of losing oxygen but delighted by the sight of strange objects that litter the ocean floor. An oasis of sight. Geography textbooks and all of that richly descriptive language. How can anyone read about the unseen formation of volcanoes or the glacial creation of lakes and not feel connected to the Earth—capital E? Essay as a vast, limitless, edgeless, impossible-to-keep-in-one's-head-all-at-once phenomenon. Essay as a way of breaking up the rest of the poems that surround it. I wanted to offer a break, a reprieve. Freedom from forms. (69)
[...]
on the ocean floor is inexhaustible: language, tea kettles, dominos, plastic kazoos, birth certificates, terra cotta pots, typewriters, rosaries, faceless coins, light bulbs, epigraphs, one mahogany bedpost, gold door knobs, dictionaries, zebra costume, Hanukkah candles, cassava, castanets, ligature, mannequins from Asia, cables, cords, bricks, scrap of chain-link fence, hooks, shark carcass, shop keys, teeth, unopened can of paint, the color orange, jar of honey, rusted chainsaw, chopsticks, cameras, hard drives, a no-name map, a mirror pointed skyward. (75)

Frank Quizon Gray Jr. III
I practiced my father's signature
this morning. I practiced my

father's signature this morning.
He holds his pen softer than

me. He holds his pen softer
than me. His Q's, large and

open. His Q's, large and open.
His F's, like those telephone

poles. His F's, like those
telephone poles. His cursive

is beautiful. His cursive is so
so beautiful. The letters

are due tomorrow. The
letters are due tomorrow. (81)

[maria · Rating 5 out of 5]

They say the US is ‘the land of the free’ but who really gets to be free here (*ahem* stolen land *ahem*)? Who really gets to enjoy the privileges of living in such a *free* country?

Jan-Henry Gray’s poetry reads like small snapshots of life, poems that break the rules of structure, poems that are ‘free from forms.’ He speaks of what it’s like to have to be vigilant being an undocumented Fil-Am (Filipino American) and also being queer, capturing the feeling of what it’s like to live in a country that cares more about a person’s documents than the fact that they are a human being.

There are poems that also speak of what it’s like to span the distance of the Pacific Ocean not knowing which end of it is really home. I am incredibly homesick, and for poems like these, my heart aches for the Philippines and for my family that lives there.

I personally love the section, EXAQUA. I felt like I really got to know Jan-Henry Gray through these poetic conversations. Vivid nostalgic memories came up for me reading the lines describing the list of inexhaustible objects on the ocean floor.

After finishing this book, I really felt these poems in my heart and reread so many of them again and again.

[Aian · Rating 4 out of 5]

i'm glad there are stories & works of art such as this uplifting the intersections of identity -- immigrant, undocumented, queer, Filipino

i most enjoyed the maid poems & Exaqua

poetry hasn't been hitting as strongly for me as it used to so i personally had a harder time staying focused and/or creating an interpretation for some of the pieces throughout Documents


here are some lines from Exaqua that stood out for me:

"I used to think that poetry = freedom. Freedom out of the sentence, proper grammar, or reasoned reasoning. I used to think that a poem, more than other types of writing, allowed for leaps, disjunction, mystery, even magic."

"Then there's the artless essay, the dreaded personal statement. The last one read: I intend to contribute to the seldom-told narrative of living as an undocumented Filipino-American whose path to citizenship is tied up with another politicized modern movement: the legislation of gay marriage. As a corporeal intersection of both undocumented & queer identities, my body is seen by many as unnatural -- a site of horror, a target of the phobic..."

[Patty Enrado · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was particularly drawn to the series of Maid poems, which I found both tender and heartbreaking. I was also drawn to the poems in which he uses lines from the documentation process of becoming an American citizen to great effect. I enjoyed the way Gray played with form throughout the different sections of the collection. Many of the poems were strong and evocative, and I look forward to his next collection.

[Nicky Enriquez · Rating 5 out of 5]

I got lost in this collection of poems. Jan-Henry’s poems embody the confusion and conflict that a non-white immigrant or first generation American feels. His use of official looking immigration documents with his poetry is masterful and visceral. So smart and stirring.

[Melissa · Rating 3 out of 5]

it was fun to read poetry again, but there were some i couldn’t extract a ton of meaning out of. which is definitely my fault as a reader- if this wasn’t a course book, I’d love to take some time to sit with it and truly understand what the author was trying to say.

[Not Mike · Rating 5 out of 5]

Poetry.


A phenomenal work.

[Lisa · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting collections of essays and short stories about Grays life, immigration status, relationship, etc.

[Robin Boyle-Laisure]

Excellent book of poetry. I particularly liked poems about contracts and immigration.

[Simone · Rating 5 out of 5]

In his probing documentary poetics, Jan-Henry Gray queries and exhibits the various meanings of the word “document” using it as verb—to record, to keep informed, to support by evidence; and, as noun—referring to a variety of government forms including birth certificates, 1-94’s, and other immigration and naturalization papers. Then, there is his own book, which functions as witness to the immigrant body and is now a published public document assigned an ISBN number, marking it as part of the historical record.

Similar to Claudia Rankine’s Citizen: An American Lyric, Gray’s Documents is a roaming, genre-defying book. And, like Citizen, Documents is crushing and profound. A hybrid, hydra-headed collection that ranges from tender to tough-talking to testimonial, Documents is an archive of ghosted lives. A record of loss and yearning. A chronicle of the undocumented experience as Gray addresses the strangling tangle of the immigration system, the fear of deportation, and the marginalization of those undocumented as well as the LGBTQ community. He writes, “as a corporeal intersection of both undocumented and queer identities, my body is seen by many as unnatural—a site of horror, a target of the phobic. As such, two major threats loom over the project: the risk of sexually transmitted diseases on the gay male body and deportation for the undocumented non-citizen.”

In addition to his central subjects, two other charged motifs loop their way through the book creating framework and fortification: those elements are labor and water. The theme of labor is particularly underscored by a series of “maid poems” interlacing the book, helping to form a narrative glue to the larger manuscript; whereas, water functions as both a drowning agent and a buoyant. Poignantly and imperatively, Gray reminds us, “The only way to know the ocean is to swim in it. I cannot wait any longer for the tides to rise to me.”