God-Poem

Thoughts on a poem by Tina Chang

As a songwriter, I appreciate repetition. The perpetuation of a word or phrase throughout a lyric can embed a thought beneath our surfaces in sly and unknown ways. That word or phrase works on us, like a rhetorician coming to the argument from multiple directions, seeking the clearest avenue into our psyches.

As a poet, your choice of a word or phrase to orbit around can afford you a level of lightness—even within the parameters of a heavy tone—that feels like play for a reader. A cleverness. A levity. A wit.

Tina Chang’s God-Country achieves a fascinating effect through the poet using “God” in so many different ways. And there is indeed a slyness here, as the real power of the poem resides not within the witty invocations of the deity, but in the deft use of … the hyphen!

Chang establishes the effect immediately with the opening line:

I am the God-code, God knows it all went wrong

Hyphenating the first but not the second reference is so instantly evocative, and this move is repeated throughout to hypnotizing effect—an effect made all the more hallucinogenic by the incredible strings of commas that carry the opening thought nearly halfway down the page: