Your New Feeling Is the Artifact of a Bygone Era

by Chad Bennett

Shirley Temple tap dancing at the Kiwanis Club, Stevie Nicks glaring at Lindsey Buckingham during a live version of “Silver Springs,” Frank Ocean lyrics staking new territory on the page: this is a taste of the cultural landscape sampled in Your New Feeling is the Artifact of a Bygone Era. Chad Bennett casually combines icons of the way we live now—GIFs, smartphones, YouTube—with a classical lover’s lament. The result is certainly a deeply personal account of loss, but more critically, a dismantling of an American history of queerness. “This is our sorrow. Once it seemed theirs, but now it’s ours. They still inhabit it, yet we say it’s ours.” All at once cerebral, physical, personal, and communal, Your New Feeling Is the Artifact of a Bygone Era constructs a future worth celebrating.

Genres: Poetry, Queer, LGBT

102 pages, Paperback

First published January 14, 2020

Reviews

[Sam · Rating 5 out of 5]

one of the best books of contemporary poetry I’ve read in a while. glad I snagged it from the library shelf

[BookChampions · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thank you to Sarabande Books for gifting me this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

For me, reading a book of poetry is like methodically combing through a great record. Each poem, like a song on a tracklist, works as a piece of the whole--with all the peaks of movement and moments of silence, the motifs (here: birds, cell phones, lots of weather), and an outtro: "how it / becomes / birdsong / if we / cut out / its tongue." It's terribly sad that musicians in 2019 have to fear the death of the album.

The upcoming January release, *Your New Feeling Is the Artifact of a Bygone Era*, written by Chad Bennett and published by @sarabandebooks, lulled me like a startling new LP. Read over the course of one day in three hypnotic sittings, this debut collection of poetry made me think about spaces, particularly queer spaces and how to claim them--but also the space between the reader and the writer.

First of all, these poems perhaps repeatedly engage with a relationship between the speaker and another man (or men). The showpiece poem, for me, was a list poem called "Silver Springs," about the marks we leave on each other (and about, of course, Stevie Nicks): "13. In fact if people hate poetry, and mostly they do, people hate / poetry because it, like humiliation, pretends but refuses to go away" and "20. For one blue decade I addressed myself to one person / only, and maybe I am still."

Second, these poems engage in a vibrant conversation with other, mostly queer texts, from Gertrude Striein to Roland Barthes to Frank Ocean. It was obvious to me that these writers have, in some way, altered the poet irrevocably; their presence all over this collection proves (and does not try to hide) the perpetual impact other texts have on the work writers create. These poems experiment with their ideas as if trying on clothes, and even dare to forge new structures. Ultimately the book creates an effect teetering between a surrealist wet dream and coffee-soaked gloomy Sunday daydream.

If the album is dead--oh god, please no--at least the poetry collection is alive as ever.

[Robbie Mata · Rating 5 out of 5]

I will come to the Silver Springs poem again and again. An enchanting collection.

[leah · Rating 5 out of 5]

CHAD WAS MY PROFESSOR!! (alex lent me his book)

this poetry collection is fantastic. the queer poetics here never fail to astound me — “hate something beautiful with all your heart.” & the references to the smiths/frank ocean/gertrude stein. i am floored!!! there is a possible yearning without violence that is just reflection and stillness. that is important to me.

notable poems in order of appearance: “trick”, “some faggy gestures”, “poem beginning and ending with a line by morrissey”, “blue”, “silver springs”, “i am odious (it turns out). i am monstrous glad”, “alice b. toklas”, “goodbye party”, “your fade-out is a tiny philosophy but no less true for that”

also. seeing the structure of some of these poems matching up with the assignments he gave us in class — emotional. so well done.

[✨Hannie✨ Reed Gowan · Rating 3 out of 5]

randomly pulled this off the shelf at magers bc i thought the title looked like a taylor swift lyric. THEN when i opened it up it was talking ab stevie nicks singing silver springs… i bought it. i read it. i liked the stevie nicks part. i liked some other parts but i kept fallin asleep but not in a bored way more like in a soothing way. overall 3.5.

[Larry Olson · Rating 5 out of 5]

New ways of thinking and feeling that demand our attention. Important debut collection.

         I guess the moon hangs mute in the wings of the sky
         I guess this is what it feels like to be monstrous
         I guess this is what it feels like to be deemed monstrous
         I guess this is what it feels like to inhabit the monstrous
         I guess on any crowded street there’s no concealing it
         I guess I thought I understood what it meant to be monstrous
         I thought we would go on forever because what else could we do

Your New Feeling Is the Artifact of a Bygone Era (Sarabande Books, January 2020) by Chad Bennett.

[Molly Thornton · Rating 4 out of 5]

These poems feel like they were written in 2020–as in, written in isolation and from a perspective where all one has is a library of books and memories. Phone calls are the closest thing to the present.

The best of these poems have an incredible quality of turning themselves inside out, taking you through an incomprehensible but intentional turn that takes it somewhere new yet makes it cohesive, amping up just when you think it will wind down.

The Silver Springs poem has my heart.

[Emma Bender · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is a beautiful collection of poems that artistically examines older artists and works of art through the modern, queer eye. Bennett was able to create a sense of solidarity within the LGBTQ+ community while sharing his own experiences and emotions. I loved how intricate and unique each poem was, with some similar structures, and some entirely different than the rest. With their different structures and “sounds”, I thoroughly enjoyed this work.

[Cassie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beautiful exploration of modernity, queerness, and how to ascend. A few poems had strong enough outside voices that the ephemera took me out of the collection, but I still found it a fantastic read!

[William Turner · Rating 5 out of 5]

I will have to come back to this sometime
Really good and possibly my favourite book of poems so far (not that I've read many)

[Inverted · Rating 5 out of 5]

Open to witnessing Chad Bennett's "every jizzed sheet" (Nights) IRL, even if this book isn't a serve. Though it is: sooo cunty. A lot of fabulous choices — "faggy gestures" (Some Faggy Gestures) — that satisfy both peculiarity and orientation. The extensive roll call (Morrissey, Stevie Nicks, Gertrude Stein, Frank Ocean, to name a few) firmly situates these poems within queer spaces and histories, and their formal experimentations often push the everyday towards the bizarre. Of note: the poems with [Ten discrete lines: four repeated] such as How that Bird Sings, White Halls, and Black Jacket, because the lines are meticulous and odd. Bennett can get too cerebral at times, but it's a small price to pay for this pink rollercoaster of a book.

[Courtney LeBlanc · Rating 4 out of 5]

A collection of poetry that focuses on sexuality, loss, survival, and growing up a gay man.

from Femmes: "I was with a grievance felt like I was with a blessing. / I was with a going but felt like I was with a beckoning."

from Little Thought Experiment: "Now the / poems I love go on too long. Now it's evening. Now it's morning. Now / there is something I wanted to say, or even sing, and now it is a / long time ago, in the twentieth century, and in the next room the / telephone rings."

[Scott Pomfret · Rating 2 out of 5]

These loose fragments did not speak to me. Perhaps others will have more luck making them cohere.