The Crown Ain’t Worth Much is conversational, loose and intoxicating. In his poems, Abdurraqib is able to convey the way music accompanies him everywhere, from small to significant moments in his life. He often sets the poem’s scene through music, by remembering a particular song playing at a party or diner, or when he makes reference to a song he remembers listening to. By recalling music in this way, he casts the mood of that song over the poem and evokes the atmosphere of the memory. He also writes about music as a talisman, an heirloom that a community shares. His poetry speaks to both the desire and the inevitability of connection to a community, one that turns to the same music for healing and comfort. He uses memories of music to process pain, and poetry is his way of eulogising music.
In ‘On Jukeboxes’, Abdurraqib writes:
go down to Sheridan ave to see the old head who sits outside monk’s bar with a newport forever swinging from his bottom lip so low it defy gravity & for the right price, he been known to sing whatever marvin gaye song he’s sober enough to remember & so we take what change we got left & put it in his cup & he starts in on some marvin & the words ‘brother, brother, brother / there’s far too many of you dying’ crawl out from his lips & grow legs & a whole body right there on the sidewalk & it wraps itself around us. (36)
Abdurraqib is devoted to language, but also to aurality; the last line conveys how hearing music can be visceral. Certain songs, or even a couple of lines like ‘brother, brother, brother / there’s far too many of you dying,’ can evoke an entire domain of cultural and emotional memory. In this poem, the intimacy and pathos of someone singing ‘What’s Going On’ by Marvin Gaye leads Abdurraqib to imagine a physical embrace. He shows how poetry can echo complex feelings within song.
Vuong’s ‘Daily Bread’ also features a memory of hearing ‘brother, brother,’ in Gaye’s voice on the radio. While these two poems have a different connection to the song, a similar effect is produced in both. The song acts as a portal. A pause is summoned within the poem, where hearing Gaye’s voice induces a desiderium – a personal and collective nostalgia.
Hsu speaks elegantly of how music, especially in adolescence, gives us a way to understand ourselves and each other. How it acts as both a concrete and transient medium for validating our emotions, and for revealing new depths of feeling through the introspection it elicits. It’s an art form that can provide a refuge:
When we’re young, a love song can seem like a beacon. It translates the mystery of feeling – the erratic moods and palpitations associated with growing up – into the stability of language. Pop music is built on these pithy excavations of fantasy and desire, even as this actual thing called love remains ephemeral. (Hsu par. 1)
