(re-Tuesday) Poets you gotta know: Janine Joseph
"Are you feeling the rush now / as you look to me, your brain still / in your head—is it still in your head?"
Hey y’all:
Every now and again, we’ll re-post something we’re particularly fond of — that maybe some folks didn’t get to see. For today’s re-Tuesday, our newsletter about the poet Janine (J9 to her friends) Joseph!
Janine Joseph and I once sat in a little room with Jack Gilbert at the 92nd St Y as part of a masterclass we somehow got into. Neither of us remembers what Gilbert said about our poems; it was an extraordinary experience; one of us has a tattoo of a line from a Gilbert poem.
Janine Joseph is one of my favorite poetry people—the world is so much better for having her in it. I don’t get to see her that often: actually I can’t remember when we were last in the same room. But her poems are a gift, and it was a joy to have her new book of poems, Decade of the Brain, released last year. The book was featured all over the place—the NYTimes, Ms. Magazine, Lithub, Poets & Writers—and is a truly beautiful and hard collection. Here’s a bit of her poem, “Circuitry”:
I spiral the parking lot, singing, It’s alright, I’m alright, while I count the pole lights back to my car. I practice red, table, lamp with a neuropsychologist and now I can tell you about how my brain blew in the acceleration.
Joseph is a formerly undocumented poet from the Philippines, and is an associate professor at Virginia Tech. Her first book, Driving without a License, was published in 2016. “Driving Without a License is political and virtuosic while maintaining a witty and down-to-earth voice,” writes Laura Donnelly in The Kenyon Review, “and the finely wrought tension between these modes creates a uniquely energized poetry.” Many critics noted this balance of humor, poetic innovation, and emotional resonance in Joseph’s poems. Of Driving Without a License, Stephanie Burt writes in the LA Times: “It stands far apart from most first books, and from most books of autobiographical or narrative poetry, for the unpredictable vigor in its rhythmically irregular lines, especially in its depictions of youthful adventures.”
Much of Joseph’s new collection, Decade of the Brain, reckons with the aftermath of a car accident she was in with her father shortly before she finished her first collection. B.A. Van Sise, in the NY Journal of Books, writes: "Decade of the Brain is 84 pages of elaborate metaphor wrapped around a body. An inky caduceus. It is trim. It is intentional. It is all neurons, and it is, in the end, all nerve.” And it is a brilliant collection: an experiment in language, sense-making, and self-understanding. “Decade of the Brain is a triumphant, unsettling document of polyphony and synesthesia,” Benjamin Landry says in Verse Curious poetry review episode about the book, “Why do we need this poetry now? The poems…reside at the intersection of powerful currents. The collection is an authoritative feminist statement and an immigrant’s story. It advocates for the 18% of Americans living with visible and non-visible forms of disability. It reminds us all that, inevitably, we will be made vulnerable to power structures and that it behooves us to use the wisdom of our empathy to hold power structures accountable when, where, and while we can.” Asa Drake, writing in The Georgia Review about both of these collections, also notes how Joseph is interested in the complex act of beholding, re-making, and storying the different aspects of self we each carry around: “To take charge of the record is necessary to our wholeness, an act that distinguishes witness from memory and holds room for both.”
Janine is also an accomplished librettist. In a commissioned work for the Houston Grand Opera, Joseph composed the libretto for What Wings They Were: The Case of Emeline, a story about a young African American woman who sued her enslaver and won the case. Her most recent work, Extraordinary Motion: Concerto for Electric Harp, co-created with composer D.J. Sparr, debuted at Symphony NH last month. In 2018, her poem appeared as part of PhilHarmonia’s American DREAMers; in the video link below her work begins at 7:02.
As a formerly undocumented poet, Joseph is deeply engaged in questions surrounding immigration and the experience of undocumented writers. Many of her poems explore her own experience of immigrating to California (such as this wonderful portfolio of poems in Connotation Press) as well as the process and wake of becoming a naturalized citizen. She’s written, too, about the experience of other immigrant writers, such as her book review for The Atlantic about the memoir of Jose Antonio Vargas. She also organizes for Undocupoets, a literary group promoting “the work of undocumented poets and rais[ing] consciousness about the structural barriers that they face in the literary community. In fall 2024, an anthology that Joseph co-edited will be be published by Harper Collins: Here to Stay: Poetry and Prose from the Undocumented Diaspora.
One of my favorite poems from Joseph’s new collection is “Abecedurian.” I’ve actually been teaching it for a while—since before the book came out—having discovered it in the magazine, Waxwing. As you see in this poem, Joseph is a bit of a master at mixing and mangling the playful, the visceral, and the heart-torn.
Get yourself a copy of Decade of the Brain, and keep tabs on Joseph through her X (@ninejoseph) and Instagram (@landscapewithj9). Or, as she encourages on her website, drop her a note about her poems.
—
On Tuesdays, we’ll be talking about poets past and current that are important to us and we think you need to read, ponder, and share.