Your Emergency Contact Has Experienced an Emergency by Chen Chen

Chen Chen is definitely a poet not to be missed on the modern poetry scene. While I preferred When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities, it was only by a small margin. Your Emergency Contact is a phenomenal, evocative poetry book that manages to straddle a line between ‘poetically vague’ and ‘blunt and honest’ incredibly well.

I read this book as an eBook, which isn’t my preferred way to read poetry because I enjoy the tactical feeling of the book in my hands and underlining things with pencil—but it was interesting to see what passages were most highlighted by other readers. It was especially interesting when they weren’t what I would’ve considered the best lines in the poem or book.

One of my favourite things in this book was Chen Chen’s use of language, specifically switching languages within a poem. I ended up downloading a Google Translate app on my phone which allowed me to take a photo of the page and see the translation ‘live’, which was an interesting experience. I like when I have to work for a poem.

Here’s an example: In the poem Summer, I can see that thirty people highlighted the line:

Reporters & fathers call your generation “the worst.”
While really means “queer kids who cuold go online & learn that queer doesn’t have ot mean disaster.”
Or dead.
Instead, queer means, splendiferously, you.

I think that’s great. I love the poem. But I don’t think that’s the best section. I highlighted the ending:

The next day you will tell your father, You were wrong to say that I had to change.
To make me promise I would. To make me promise 
& promise.

The most commonly highlighted passage in the entire book is the one I chose as the ‘excerpt’ section for this blog post, to feature with the image on the main page. 40 people highlighted that, including me. I think it’s really cool how eBooks and the interconnectedness of the internet gives that little peek into what other people liked about a book, whether you thought that line was the best or not.

I don’t generally recommend Chen Chen to people who are new to poetry, as I find that his work can be harder to get through at times if you aren’t used to poetic conventions and the ‘way’ to read poetry, but I highly recommend both his books if you’re looking to branch out and try something new! Even if you aren’t a huge fan of poetry, I think this could still be a useful book to read and maybe come back to in the future to understand more.

If we could communicate fully, there would be no need to communicate. If we could love perfectly, there would be no need to love. If we could finish grieving, there would be no need to live. If we could touch completely, there would be no need.