Unanimal, Counterfeit, Scurrilous

by Mark Anthony Cayanan

Unanimal, Counterfeit, Scurrilous is a work of wild erudition and rococo elaboration, a collection of poems that loosely channels the dynamic of desire and inhibition in Thomas Mann’s novella Death in Venice. The poems follow the trajectory of the ageing Aschenbach’s pursuit of youth and beauty, transmuting his yearning and resistance into jittery flirtations with longing, decay and abandonment against a backdrop of political violence. The poems have an exuberant candour, formed by polyphonic allusions which enact the intersectionality of the speaker, by turns melodramatic and satirical. Like the tragic protagonist of Death in Venice, Cayanan’s collection manifests a longing for extroversion sabotaged by its own will. It is a queer performance of anxiety and abeyance, in which the poems’ speakers obsessively rehearse who they are, and what they may be if finally spoken to.

Genres: Poetry

128 pages, Paperback

Published April 1, 2021

About the author

Mark Anthony Cayanan was raised in Angeles City, Philippines. He has an MFA in Creative Writing at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He teacher at the Ateneo de Manila University.

Reviews

[Zymon · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am here to say that Mark Anthony Cayanan is so brave for writing that last long poem about shame. I have read Thomas Mann’s Death in Venice back in college for a final paper in one of my literature classes. It is indeed an classic queer novella, which narrates old Aschenbach’s desire for youthful Tadzio. From the I in Narcissus to the You in Except you enthrall me, Cayanan moves to He in this third poetry collection. The persona wears the body, with all its frailties, of Aschenbach and transports it into present day. This poetry collection is sort of a modern retelling of the novella, if we think about it. Above all, it’s a confession, one that’s made to the beloved but more so confided to the reader, whether they like it or not. We may deeply feel embarrassment for the persona here, but, in the lingo of the internet nowadays, we cannot deny that the persona’s feelings are “real.”

[Naomi Cammayo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Erudite and unforgettable. Philippine queer literature at its finest.

[june · Rating 5 out of 5]

"... They could only love each / other within the limits of their hunger, beyond / which love is anaemic as memory" girl wthhhhh. what a treat for a summer read !!!

[justin · Rating 5 out of 5]

2023:
I took another visit to these poems sometime at the end of this year's second quarter. I reread Mark's Except You Enthrall Me last January too. After reading Roy Guzman's Catrachos I've been really into poetry books that sprawl in their syntax.

Just like how my opinion on Cayanan's second book strengthened over time, I absolutely loved my second time reading Unanimal, Counterfeit, Scurrilous, and I would love it even more if it wasn't such a mouthful to say or type. I like the coarsened density of the language Cayanan writes here, and that despite it the poetry is still full of song.

Cayanan sort of borrows the overarching narrative to Thomas Mann's Death in Venice and disavows its segregated lived-in reality with theirs. Poems that repeat the title As Aschenbach are scattered throughout the book, and although Cayanan usually writes their "As" poems while entering the fictional space of the person the persona is trying to be (not in service of demystification or obfuscation, by the way. Something else, something elusively poetic), most As Aschenbach poems are written in third person. A Sylvia Plath and War of the Foxes -era Richard Siken thing to do, because through the apostrophe distance is born alongside close proximity (which, in my readings of Except You Enthrall Me, was what their second book also attempts to accomplish).

The way the poems are ordered is so deliciously done. While it wasn't, I think, its purpose, the thickest parts and the more digestible attention-wise are well within each other's grasp. And, maybe because it was my second time reading it, I had no trouble jumping between the spaces these poems make. In the notes and acknowledgment section, Cayanan credits artists from whom he altered and re-negotiated sentences and lines. One might recognize a stray Anne Carson or Conchitina Cruz line in between, but the acknowledgment section is larger than one might find in most poetry collections. Through Cayanan's centos, I think, is the referential reality of queer poetry (I think I remember them mentioning that their interest in Aschenbach was his queerness. If it isn't in the acknowledgments, its in an interview online somewhere). Eileen Myles, in the afterword of CA Conrad's Book of Frank mentions the same queer praxis that Conrad does, and Cayanan I think carries in them the same imposition, too. Like Book of Frank, Unanimal (...) is weird and a little out there, the scrappy-kneed cousin during family gatherings, but it's also gorgeous and bright and, in all the ways, celebratorily queer. I love this book to death.

Favorite parts:
"they could only love each other within the limits of their hunger, beyond which love is anaemic as memory" - Sentence with charming composure in the empty and severe service of form

"to what extent is damage / the extreme form of / transcendence?" - mundane and strange business

"you rest your body on the sand and you're what the view has been missing all along" - notes on terror

"through you mourning finds its shape" - same as above

"and since most days queer out-lustres class i parenthesise my grievances!!" - no truer variation on lived made independent of each other

The entirety of ben ben ben, but specifically these golden parts:
"i make every heartache ballad salacious, vaguely offensive, absurd"

"my role models are either abject homosexuals or absurd women / why don't you ask yourself what that reveals about you"

"for encouragement i curate a spotify of pathetic indies"

"i want to keep sighing your name while i'm in the back of a Grab"

"mann offloads his gay shame onto his characters, make the kypjotic music lover kill himself / ambition was his antidote to self-disgust"

"since i was 14 it's been my dream to be the person someone masturbates to"

Thanks to my friend Mark for sending me a copy of this poem last year, and for resending it after my computer lost all its files.

2022:
teetering opinion on it. however, the last poem was brilliant. absolutely in love with it