The poet Monica Youn has long found inspiration in pop culture, probing its pleasures and possibilities for subversive verse. Her 2010 collection “Ignatz,” a finalist for the National Book Award, turned the madcap energies and mysterious syntax of George Herriman’s famed comic strip “Krazy Kat” into a lyric investigation of desire. “Krazy Kat,” of course, has long been seen as literary, earning adaptations across mediums, including a jazz ballet in the nineteen-twenties, along with admiration from writers like E. E. Cummings and Gilbert Seldes, who praised the comic-strip form as one of the “lively arts.” Youn’s verse is no less lively, blending a range of cultural references with piercing social and philosophical explorations; her most recent book, “Blackacre,” investigates race, childbirth, and being, through the lens of law, which Youn practiced for a number of years.
Now, Youn turns her keen eye on another iconic illustrator with a new sequence of poems, “Study of Two Figures (Dr. Seuss / Chrysanthemum-Pearl),” which considers the beloved children’s-book author—and poet of a sort—alongside the imaginary daughter whom he and his wife invented. By turns playful and sombre, this portrait is hardly cartoonish, tackling, instead, a series of fraught linkages—between Theodor Geisel and his alter ego the good doctor, between Geisel and his wife, Helen, between their fictitious child (whose name references the symbol of imperial Japan) and the shocking anti-Japanese stereotypes that Geisel perpetuated in propagandist cartoons before and during the Second World War.
Long in the works, this latest in Youn’s ongoing series of double portraits reaches us in a moment of reckoning with and reaction to the problematic imagery in some of Dr. Seuss’s children’s books. Poets are often prescient that way, drawing out connections that might otherwise be invisible and giving voice to unspoken tensions. Youn finds humanity in the inhumane and a poetry in the make-believe world of a child whom Dr. Seuss could only dream of, but was surely writing for. Her sequence inhabits Chrysanthemum-Pearl’s own perspective—“something behind / her face is buzzing like a bee / that’s lost its hive”—making noise and hay and, above all, meaning out of these overlapping faces, grappling with the fantasies that formed her, and with the disillusioning process of growing up, as we all must.
—Kevin Young
Read by the author.
Infantograph
not a double portrait but one face inter-
polated out of two the mister super-
imposed upon the missus and vice
versa that is to say super as in extra
that is to say impose as in impolite
taboo to force the real into the black-
box contraptions of the imaginary for
which there are many given names and
one of them is hopefulness but
not one of them is father
Pacific Coast
the marine layer like a swell
of flesh so cultivated so lush it
takes on a nacreous gleam the self-
soothing shield anxiety secretes
in self-defense to encase the incipient
irritant in a cocoon of quick-
dry sameness even the sun’s gold-
tone strivings raise only the palest
painless blister after all what is a pearl
but a cyst sent to finishing school
Dream
in the doctor’s dream the egg
doesn’t hatch at once it bides it
abides it is bidden it bores a little
peephole it perceives it surveils it
extends a prehensile tendril a
periscope a peril it dispenses with
all pretense no longer tentative it
taps its tiny teletype machine
Flora
eucalyptus leaf litter gold love
locks scatter the doctor gathers
a fistful the doctor fastens he
fashions a gilt-tiered coiffure
(à la Shirley Temple) a filigree
temple whose crosshatched
discretions screen her secret
face well-concealed in Greek
(à la Trojan horse) translates
as eucalyptus a leafy whispering
gallery for Santa Ana’s breezy
insinuations these invasive exotic
imports outcompete the native
species their incendiary seed
capsules open only after fire
Dream
in the doctor’s dream he sprints
from field to field he fits a lens cap
on the compound swivelling eye
of every sunflower in the drought-
dry orchards each almond’s
peachfuzz hull splits in a sinister
slit he shakes the spawning trees
he speeds a combine harvester
up and down the teeming nut-brown
rows he feeds but there are only
so many he can possibly consume
Studio
in the window-walled room she is
practicing always practicing some
thing is distracting her something
is scratching at the inside of her
face her head down on the doctor’s
slanted drafting table the doctor’s
drafts slide toward her drifts of
avalanching failure ink-stained
flurries of bungled beasties she
shuffles them into single file their
arms akimbo ampersands linked
elbow to elbow a can-can line
of might-have-beens of kick-ball-
change their pointed toes like paper
planes they’re dancing to the three-
beat cadence of her name are you
my real dad she asks the nearest then
the next-in-line the next-in-line
Beach
she’s tacky with lipstick
kisses she’s smeared with unctuous
brags envious mutters cling to her
like limp lace hankies charged with
static she flees to the beach she
scrubs herself with saltwater with
sand her peerless lustre shines
unmarred her scouring only serves
to polish it to a serener sheen she
sheathes herself in a tawny coat
of camouflaging grit something
itches where her scratch can’t reach
she picks up a sharpedged khaki
particle sees its atoms fluoresce
in sunlight something behind
her face is buzzing like a bee
that’s lost its hive
Studio
the doctor is angry he wants to convince
America or those he thinks of as
America he surveys his panorama
the Pacific whets its billion bayonets
against the California coast the native
seaside cypresses so decorative so
sparsely spaced they should be
functional they should interlace
their roots should knot their limbs
into a living wall against the rising
tide a palisade as in sleeping
beauty to barricade to safeguard
dreamy California in her pacific
innocence he scowls he narrows
his eyes he selects his inkiest pen
Dream
in the doctor’s dream she
bakes his favorite chocolate-
frosted birthday cake he takes
a bite he spews a spray of kerosene
excelsior she lights the sparklers
the sun winks out the sky
rains chocolate bonbons paper
airplanes killer bees
Studio
she presses her buzzing
forehead against the picture
window she’s killing time she
counts the little black barbs
of surfers dotting the waterline
their sped-up mini-pantomimes
of hubris rise rise fall she doodles
Xs over the eyes of every cartoon
beastie every former friend every
day every month every year
Dream
in the doctor’s dream the sunlight
fashions the facing windows into
mirrors a trapped bee ricochets
between them a maddened yellow
jacket a quantum of accelerating
light a pinpoint line too bright to see
the little light beam drills itself to be
a death ray practicing frustration by
frustration for its strategized escape
Studio
in the tower room she forces
open every window the Santa Ana
carries a whiff of smoke a scatter
of desert scree a folded newspaper
flaps open like an overeager eagle
a cartoon regiment of slant-
eyed bucktoothed father figures
a chain of paper dolls ad infinitum
unreels across the coastline like
a concertina queue with ink-
stained hands she rubs her own eyes
sees a daughter’s face reflected she
dips a rag in turpentine she wipes
away the inky lines the milky shine
unbinds her coronet coiffure she
dissolves the buffering lustre
down to her incessant itch a speck
of sallow grit flies toward the gold-
rimmed glaring eye of the Pacific
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