Poet of the Month: Anhvu Buchanan
It’s national poetry month, and in celebration, I decided to post a work by my friend Anhvu, whose first book is coming out July 9. Mark your calendars, bitches. Shit’s gonna be dope.
Anhvu and I, upon meeting, clicked almost immediately. We share a lot of common interests for instance, he’s Catholic, he loves Kimmy K, and he thinks Drake is a poet, just like me. He’s probably the one person on earth that truly appreciates my best story, which involves Kanye West. It goes as follows:
I was writing a piece on the George Condo opening at the New Museum, and I spotted Kanye West. He was wearing a fur coat and a gold grill on his teeth. “Can I interview him?” I asked one of the PR girls at the museum. “I don’t think he’s taking interviews,” she said.
But I approached him anyway. “Hello, Mr. West, I am a huge fan of your recent album, “My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy,’” I said. Which is the truth — I still can’t get over how good it is.
“Thank you,” he said. His voice was muffled by the grill.
“Can I get a quote from you about Condo?” I asid.
“I’m not doing interviews,” he said. Then he said what I thought was, “What’s your favorite drink?”
“Um,” I thought for a second. “I guess a Manhattan?” In my head, I say that with a Valley Girl accent.
“No,” he said. “What’s your favorite track?”
I blushed. “Oh, sorry,” I said. “It’s ‘Power’ right now, but that changes all of the time.”
Kanye West looked at me. Through his gold grill, he uttered, “You’re very beau-i-ful.”
It was the best thing that ever happened to me.
When I tell most people that story, they’re like, “oh, cool,” but Anhvu got really excited. “That’s fucking awesome,” he said.
“I KNOW!” I said. Normally, I’d feel guilty bragging about it, but one day, I know Anhvu’s gonna be like, “You dawg, Kanye and I are collaborating on a song because he read my book, and he likes my flow.” Then, I’ll be bragging about how I know Anhvu.
Needless to say, a lot of my time with Anhvu is spent waxing poetic about all of our favorite Kanye songs. Anhvu isn’t ashamed to admit when shit is good, no matter what the public consensus is.
One of the things I like most about his poetry is that he uses the vernacular he lives with — hip hop mixed in with a sort of literary sophistication. He’s very much steeped in the poetry scene in San Francisco — I wish I visited there more, so I could hear him read.
Anhvu has won all sorts of prizes, and is sure to win more. His work has been published in the Columbia Poetry Review and The Journal, among many others. I think it will appeal not only to the literary minded, but also the sort of sophisticated guy who’s like, “I don’t like poetry,” but loves sports and wordplay and sneakers. For instance, Anhvu has written a few killer pieces about Jeremy Lin.
I’m lucky that he let me publish one of his new poems in this post. He describes it as follows:
“So the poem was written about a year ago. Like all the poems in the book it is speaking to a psychological disorder. This poem in particular is speaking in the voice of someone suffering from Narcissistic Personality Disorder. When I tried to get into that voice the first thing I thought of was Kanye West of course who some consider the most narcissistic person alive. So the poem is almost a what if Kanye West or any other boastful rapper had a voice in a poem speaking about themselves in a poetic terms what would it sound like? What would it look like? And the poem was born from that mindset.
Without further ado, here it is.
Fan Club of One
My mouth might be the closest thing you will ever get to a world wonder and I know you are helpless when it comes to my landscapes. I’m a series of newspaper clippings you’ve been collecting for years. I’m replacing the dollar bills in your wallet with my poems because there is no such thing as currency only ways to follow the line break of my words. It only gets violent when the sun doesn’t wake up to the right side of my shoulder when the sky never meets breath. The laws follow my lead. My highways are boundless in this drive we call me. I know you want more spit more saliva more ways for me to open up your life. When you say charm you mean my face you mean my symmetry rhymes brightly. Me? I’m walking graffiti. Come closer, my arms wait for no one.
