REVIEW: Almanac of Useless Talents by Michael Chang

Poetry. 120 pgs. Clash Books. September 2022.  9781955904216.

Text-speak closer to truth, sex so sexy it’s sexless, a lexicon collaged from the remnants of y2k paranoia and its subsequent cultural mockery. Michael Chang is smarter than to let you wonder what they’re talking about. In the age of an overly intellectualized, academically specialized poetic workforce, Chang asks the real questions, namely:

“Why are other people so dark so traumatic so sad”

In contrast, Chang lights up their prose with electric-blue smartphone pixels, radiating a kind of opulence familiar to Paris Hilton and her contemporaries; alternating between text-speak and pseudo-divinity. If a name is an incantation, then those invoked include Adam Driver, Timothee Chalamet, and a thousand ex-hookups. Both acutely aware of time and apathetic toward it, This prose mingles with Hollywood as a desert and the plastic rings of a six-pack: both wildly outdated (a thing Chang never seems to be).

An Almanac of Useless Talents could perhaps be called ‘experimental’, but its freshness comes from an acute self-awareness without self-pity, a collection of contradictions that stands confidently, if not with one hip popped. The unapologetic nature of “useless” as a hedonist – just because it’s useless doesn’t mean it’s not good. Though good doesn’t precisely describe it – rather, this Almanac serves as a catalog of possibilities, a grand list of ifs, hypothetical questions never left unanswered. Chang knows exactly what they’re not, a useful if not necessary skill in this age of embraced overload. And they tell us:

“if i were that kind of poet
i would tell you abt this marvel of a boy
reliable like the planets
if i were that kind of poet
i would talk abt the twink & his crystal collection
abandoned after his break-up with zachary quinto
if i were that kind of poet”

The kind of poet Chang describes? One that would rather talk about “this marvel of a boy” rather than themself. This collection refuses to appeal to the objective, the omniscient or unidentified. “They say find a job you love & you’ll never work a day in your life. Well I love judging your shit I am like so judgy it’s incredible” shimmers like a thesis statement for the entire book. And why shouldn’t it? Shouldn’t the poets, haven’t the poets, be allowed to be god sometimes?

This indulgence in the self is extended to what some might call “identity politics” – “azn” “queer” “pleasure to have in class” – but these are not designations that exist without action. The rich aesthetic concoction of Chang’s Almanac centers itself around the act of desiring which makes these identities a reality. Rich particulars which center themselves as the universal, ala a very bad-bitch-esque Aime Cesaire.  To be queer is to desire. To pleasure, to be pleasured, is to desire. And Chang’s desires are conveyed in an the most ironically intimate way: fractured stanzas reminiscent of teenage text message or chat room chatter. They are intimate in the way of the internet, the liminal realm in which secrets are easier to share with strangers than with best friends. Has the future not demonstrated that we are more comfortable with icons than with the closest of partners?

Rarely does a literary work ask us to luxuriate in the same feelings of judgment and speculation that social media elicits, and perhaps this is why Chang’s Almanac of Useless talents is so confrontational, so contradictory. Alternating between the apathy and obsession which characterizes the twenty-first century, they write in their titular poem:

1. Always keeping your white shirts spotless & clean
2. Always remembering your dreams
3. Always remembering not to give a damn

And never, in all its abbreviations and aesthetically felicitous Chinese characters, does this book stop to give a damn about all its various wrong-doers: politicians, boyfriends, self-loathing-poets, un-fashionable passer-bys or ideologically boring white ppl.

In summary: Chang’s Almanac is a front lawn filled with plastic pink flamingos, which spontaneously burst into flight. Vibrant. Plastic. Utterly alive. Unblinking.