By Editor-in-Chief J.N. Fishhawk
Former contributor Danae Younge (Prose Poetry: “Emissary on the Wall,” Bacopa Literary Review 2021) is the author of the award-winning chapbook Melanin Sun (−) Blind Spots. The manuscript was chosen by the National Federation of State Poetry Societies as winner of their annual College Undergraduate Competition. NFSPS is a conglomerate of the state poetry societies involved in the institution of Poet Laureate, and their CUP competition is considered one of the largest poetry undergraduate competitions in the country. Melanin Sun (−) Blind Spots, Younge’s debut chapbook, was published and made available for purchase in summer 2022. Younge describes the book as “a micro-collection of 10 cohesive poems.”
Reviewers cite the powerful way that Younge uses experimental techniques in these poems to craft a narrative through-line that expresses her grief at her Black father’s passing. This grief is filtered through and commingled with her struggle to find a clear sense of self, history, and identity as a biracial, queer woman in white supremacist, queerphobic, male-dominated U.S. society.
The poems in Melanin Sun build on and expand outward from the deftly deployed experimental elements that drew Bacopa Prose Poetry Editor Kaye Linden to choose “Emissary on the Wall” for inclusion in Bacopa 2021. The experiments include mixing techniques of erasure, such as government style black-rectangle redaction and the copy editor’s tactic of strike-through typeface with the deft use of more conventional poetic tactics such as innovative line breaks and fresh, lively metaphors and similes. Younge breaks her poetry apart from the inside out, exposing her own inner processes of self-criticism and the struggle for coherence and cohesion within her work and within her consciousness, boldly writing the kind of self-talk usually reserved for our most intimate inner monologues directly into her lines:
Tender hearts like soft
mollusks caught, heavy in some old white man’s net
behind a reed-woven tugboat, like love—no stop, STOP
doing that. Epic similes are the same deal; “like” carves a
crawl space, but there’s not enough room to hide unless
you make a home in the shadows…
In the months since this, her first chapbook’s critically acclaimed debut, Younge has not rested on her well-earned laurels. She tells us that she is currently working on a project with her college's letterpress printing shop to create broadsides with five poems from the collection and the work of visual artists from her campus community. She and her collaborators asked artists who connected with the themes of struggling to self identify or battling grief to submit. These broadsides will be displayed and sold at a pop up event in Los Angeles before being permanently moved to Occidental College's library.
To learn more about Danae Younge’s work, read reviews of her chapbook, and order a copy for yourself, check in with her at https://www.danaeyounge.com/.
