Community Feedback — HGTV by Kristin Chang
Community Feedback is our recurring column that provides an opportunity for our audience to get some quick, free & exceptional feedback on a new poem.
It works like this: we give the prompt and the link to our open submittable category.
The category is only open for two weeks, and our editorial staff will select a poem to critique and comment on.
We publish a new poem and the comments a month after the original post, and repeat the process.
Submit your poem here.
This month, we chose Kristin Chang’s poem, “HGTV.” Thank you to all of our submitters.
HGTV
It doesn’t get dykier than watching
white couples on TVbuy houses to sell straight
away. I play prophet this episode, estimatethe cost of flood-proofing the basement,
baby-proofing the bedrooms, hanging a husbandon the walls. I know about drill bits, pipe
leaks, hidden asbestos, all the domestic namesfor death. You once joked about buying a wrecked
house to flip together, a roof that rants when it rains& wasps wintering in our walls. There is something home
about the wrath of wings, a wood crowned with holes. In bedyou boat your hands into me & I flinch the night
toward light. When I kiss you, I killmy father. I learn orgasm like a knife earns
its edge. In the old house, my mother watches Flipthis House on the flowered couch. It’s
our favorite show, the one that airs beforemy father’s home. My mother swears
at every white couple, says why does no one thinkabout feng shui? In our first house, she hired a shaman
to plot a river through the kitchen, to holy the holesstill gagging on my father’s fist, replace
all our mirrors with marbled meats. My mother sayswhite people have insurance & Chinese
have feng / shui, wind / water, the two elementsof ruin. To choose between erosion & flood. To choose
between a mother & you. I once considered childrenwith a man my mother chose. When flipping
a house, choose the floor planany family can de-mine. Choose
the husband your walls won’twary of. Instead, I choose the channel
upstream & oar myself straightinto morning’s sharked mouth. I choose to pause the TV
when the couple walks into a newnursery. I have built cradles from lunch
meat & buried them shallowin the trash. A hammer must hurt a home
for its nail. You guess the listing priceof my body & miss by one figure. When I tongue your belly
button in the dark, you laugh & say wronghole, sweetie. The couple on TV says now we have space to start
a family. Every show ends with a montageof mothering, a neat summary of sons. We rank
every woman at Home Depot on a scale from lostto lesbian. We buy too much of what we can’t
use: sacks of hammers, every size screwdriver, not enough woodto build something real, but enough to burn
something false. Like a cage or a cradle or a child-sizedpyre.
Feedback
First: this poem is very close to its finished form—and it’s wonderful. Chang’s work here shows a real maturity of voice, tackling a theme and scene that’s filled with pit falls. A lesser poet would say these same things with cliché and zero surprise, but a lesser poet Chang is not. A few strengths that really stand out that we should all aim for:
-great timing
-fresh imagery
-authentic movement from triggering subject to generative subject
I’ll begin with a discussion of how these perform in the poem, and then move into some edits and critiques Chang’s work might benefit from.
The structure of the poem is well built, and particularly I want to point out two moments where the timing of the poet showed exceptional. The first happens around line 6:
the cost of flood-proofing the basement,
baby-proofing the bedrooms, hanging a husbandon the walls.
This is the first really significant image of the poem, and it lands with such pleasurable surprise that I knew I was immediately hooked into my reading right at this moment. Before, there were some interesting things accomplished with line breaks and language, but this image, the husband hanging on the walls as a domestic chore, anchors the reader’s expectations for the rest of the poem. With a long poem like this, the audience really needs to build trust with the poem in the proper time, not too soon or too late—the 5th line turned out to be a very satisfying place to make the move, and likely shows the deep intuitive skill of the young Kristin Chang.
The second moment happens at what screenwriters and novelists call the Midpoint—in the poem, right around line 27 (of 51). Chang introduces to the reader the central conflict and choice of the narrator: “To choose between erosion & flood. To choose / between a mother & you.” This is what the Act 1 set up for us, what Act 2 complicated and urged on, the choice of two worlds, one old and one new. I’m so tickled to see it appear smack dab in the middle of the poem—all the energy and momentum that carries the reader from line 1 to line 51 arises from this invisible structure.
Chang also pumps energy into the reading here with powerful, fresh imagery. We’ve seen her work before, so we know that she carries with her a deep reservoir of new and beautiful phrases, images, names for things. A few:
“replace / all our mirrors with marbled meats.”
“I have built cradles from lunch / meat & buried them shallow // in the trash.”
“I learn orgasm like a knife earns / its edge.”
“wasps wintering in our walls. There is something home / about the wrath of wings, a wood crowned with holes.”
“you boat your hands into me & I flinch the night / toward light.”
Chang infuses her imagery with subtle menace at almost every opportunity. This is a powerful technique to lean into—especially when coupled with imagery about the body. It’s simple, remember this: our bodies read and process before our conscious selves—the poet has to talk to the reader’s body. Scare it. Arouse it. Love on it. Hurt it. Chang excels at this.
The language of my final point—triggering subject, generative subject—is from Richard Hugo’s wonderful little craft book, The Triggering Town. I highly recommend it to all emerging poets. Chang’s poem here is a great example by which the point is proved: a poem begins with a triggering subject, something that starts the poet’s fancy, but finds itself, organically, approaching the true, generative subject—the thing which the poet really needs to say. The turn from triggering subject to generative subject is the emotional, psychological, spiritual heat of a poem, the mark of it’s living truth. Here, the triggering subject is declared for us in the title: HGTV, or watching HGTV with a loved one. Banal, trivial, but real—a great triggering subject. And from there, the poem reaches beautifully into the complicated relationships between the speaker and her lover, the speaker and her mother, the speaker and her idea of motherhood. The movement in “HGTV” is natural and wonderful and a great example of what Hugo was arguing.
Where this movement goes wrong in other poems— and it so often does—is when poets become stuck and infatuated with their triggering subject. For example, this is why political poetry can often feel so one-note and sermonizing. Some advice: Get off your triggering subject, poet! Relax and let beauty and associative engines in your brain lead you to new, authentic places in your poetry.
Okay, the tougher notes: this poem still has some rough-draft moments where the language is either flat or too pointy. But—these critiques must always be taken with a grain of salt. Any teacher or editor can only try to make authors write like the teacher or editor. If anything we say smells like BS, then put it in a little baggie and toss it.
Check out the second stanza. The line break after “straight” is great—obviously our poet has really examined her language through her themes—but the “play prophet this episode” doesn’t land. In this context, the phrase rings like it’s trying too hard—it’s not serving the poem, but rather the poet’s own ear. If it were serving the poem, we’d see similar antique language throughout, and we just don’t. The poem doesn’t seem to want it. Too pointy.
Fifth stanza. “the roof rants when it rains.” Similar problems, too pointy.
Stanzas 7-11 or so.
In the old house, my mother watches Flip
this House on the flowered couch. It’s
our favorite show, the one that airs beforemy father’s home. My mother swears
at every white couple, says why does no one thinkabout feng shui
These lines can be tightened—we’ve got the tension of waiting for the father to come home, which is nice, but the imagery and surprising language are largely absent. Also, the “before / my father’s home” has some verb tense issues that took me a minute to unpack. Overall, this small section feels flat in context of the rest of the poem and could use a second pass. Some suggestions: pull in a specific phrase from the show, be more specific with the “feng shui” with terminology like bagua center, unveil the mother a little more, etc.
Stanza 17.
Instead, I choose the channel
upstream & oar myself straightinto morning’s sharked mouth.
This is one of very few uses of boat imagery in the poem, yet it’s being used to deliver a very emotional and thematically significant turn. I love the image, the language of “morning’s sharked mouth”—but I feel a little emotionally cheated in the moment. The poem would be served by allowing the imagery to build to crescendo with the emotional story. I’d suggest adding in more boating, water imagery and language in the first half of the poem.
Last suggestion, and one I find myself giving poets often: cut the last line. End on “something false.” Restraint is attractive.