Guest Writer: Brennan Lucas Staffieri on Lee, Young Lee
Owolabi's chapbook Lee, Young Lee is now available and roaming this troubled planet
To introduce my newest book of poems Lee, Young Lee to you, I share, with gratitude the words of my friend and co-conspirator Brennan Lucas Staffieri. This book has been more than a decade in the making.
and AWE Society Press have created a beautiful vehicle for this ancestrally inspired poetic process. The introductory words of Sherina Rodriguez-Sharpe welcome readers into a liminal space of transformation. The words and images of Lee, Young Lee trace echoes of grief from my brother Lee’s transition after suicide. It is a book of poems and a ceremony of mourning.I am elated, nervous, excited that Lee, Young Lee is now available from AWE Society!
I’d love to hear about your experience with this packet of words care-fully wrung out from my/our heart and craft.
Enjoy with me Brennan’s delicious writing:
July 3, 2024, Wheeler, OR
“At the ocean
my brother stands in the water
to his knees, his chest bare, hard, his arms
thick and muscular. he is no swimmer.”
-Li-Young Li, “Water”
On this night I decided to read a collection of poetry before bed, with my dog, looking out over the sleeping ocean. My friend Owólabi Aboyade had asked me to write a short exploration of his upcoming collection Lee, Young Lee, a title that had captivated my mind since he first told me of the project in early 2024. Names have a certain power and significance in our world today; the names we are born with, the names we choose, and the names we carry with us. In the naming of this collection, Aboyade had already hit on the power of naming by invoking the name of his brother alongside the name of a poet of note. He draws our attention to names and naming, signposting their importance in this work. All this was swimming through my head as I took off my outsideclothes and climbed into bed.
And then I read. I read from front to back; I tore through the work at a pace heretofore unfamiliar to me. I couldn’t put it down for a single page.
And I put my pants back on simply to retrieve my notebook so I could capture the lightning
Aboyade’s poetry had ignited in me. I will go on to discuss Aboyade’s deep and masterful understanding of his craft and his personal voice, but I cannot overstate this point because it defined my first read of this book: the love evident in this collection is so palpable that it insists you continue, because such love insists on remaining in our hands. Love like this must be held close.
Poets approach grief from many different angles and facets, from the anger of Amari Baraka’s “Who Blew Up America,” to the tenderness of Tretheway’s Thrall, to the measured and profound grief of Rankine’s Don’t Let Me Be Lonely. Aboyade, however, is uniquely skilled in capturing the day-to-day challenges that come with traumatic death and suicide in a way that feels fresh and untrodden. This is no surprise of you are familiar with Aboyade’s many other artistic endeavors, where his unique voice and rhythm are often on display in his prose as well as his music. His disjointed and beautifully enjambed lines mimic the experience of grief and its ability to surprise us. His floating lines mimic the call and response that grief invokes in us, the speaking to those we love that are gone and hoping we are simply heard. His use of the empty space on the page evokes the powerful lonesome feeling that comes with grief – the phantom limb, the incomplete feeling.
Each poem sits on the subject in a unique way, from the meditation of “Goodbye to the Gods” to the masterfully anaphoric “What the Bullet Said.” I was particularly taken with the final poem, “I Am You,” which places the speaker of the poem in the space where the beloved lives now in the final stanza. The speaker offers guidance in the final act, and in many ways closes the book on this chapter, ushering in the new world, the new grief.
Grief is an exploration of history, both personal and collective. Different people may experience the act of grieving in different ways based on their proximity to the act of dying.
Aboyade’s grief in this collection is something he carries with him daily, that lives in his body, and that speaks with the voice of the never-forgotten brother. Lee, Young Lee is a powerful expression of the living grief that sits with those who mourn. It sees the grief in the past, present, and future. It swirls around the speaker throughout the collection, and the speaker refuses to turn away from it.
Aboyade has a powerful and unique voice that transforms this collection and his grief into something beautiful and universally understandable. I am proud to call him my friend and honored to have had an early look into this magnificent collection.
For anybody who has experienced loss, you will find yourself and those you love in this work.
-Brennan Lucas Staffieri (they/them)
is a non-binary poet and educator born and raised in the Pacific Northwest. They completed their MFA in creative writing with Pacific University. They are a former intern with CALYX Press, where they were in charge of developing queer workshops and programing for the press. Their work has appeared in Oddball Magazine and on Portland stages, and has work forthcoming from Pen and Plow press. They live in Portland, Oregon with their wife and their partner.
Lee, Young Lee is now available from AWE Society Press.
Get one today for you and your loved ones…
If you, your community, bookshop, class, gallery, or organization would like to host me for a poetry reading or a talk on creative grieving, familial healing, or cultural organizing in personally or digitally, don’t hesitate to please let me know!
So honored to be featured here. Much love to you my friend