MILLENYELL

This debut volume of poetry explores the fraught experiences of today’s millennial generation.

Wright signals his overall stance on what it is to be a millennial by the titles given to his collection’s four sections: “niHilism,” “lOnging,” “desPair,” and finally “promisE.” The irregular capitalization subtly evokes the stumbling topography of a sidewalk buckled by tree roots—yet the capitals also spell out HOPE, nicely summing up the millennial experience. (This hidden-word trick is used throughout the book.) The sections are introduced by timelines noting thematic dates between 1990 and 2020; “promisE,” for example, begins with the launch of the World Wide Web and continues through events such as the Seattle World Trade Organization protests, the Affordable Care Act, and Donald Trump’s first impeachment. Many of the poems have a notable musical quality, as in “rEGRESSion,” where “socially intertwined / dreams” represent “the medicine of the masses / fallen through the / cracks between classes / cautiously aware / of nothing but / disasters.” These lines employ spoken-word techniques like rhyme, off-rhyme, alliteration, assonance, and a chanting rhythm while addressing social issues, in this case the mass media. The final lines tie the images together as “regression / to the mean,” a bit of wordplay nicely encompassing unkindness and the statistical phenomenon where natural variations in data (like disasters?) appear to constitute real change. The title, too, suggests hope despite appearances by capitalizing EGRESS. Still, not all of the poems have such facility. Many descend into the dramatically maudlin, as in “fAuX prISon”: “The flies find me an enticing scent. Unbathed and reeking of foul food and drink as they dine upon my wretched visage.” Other verses use stilted or faux archaic language, mixed metaphors, or offer unsurprising observations: “We find ourselves today lost in world consumption.”

An intriguing, if somewhat uneven, poetry collection with much verbal cleverness.