Poetry Event: Rebecca Hazelton, Lisa Low, and Ryan Teitman

Generic Husband presents a queer take on an old, beloved, and troublesome subject: the husband. While the ?generic husband? of the cultural imagination has remained relatively static, the reality of the husband in contemporary marriage proves multidimensional and complex. Alternatively tender and bitingly funny, Rebecca Hazelton?s poems unpack the inequities created by gender, power, and patriarchal legacies, unraveling what a ?husband? can be, both personally and culturally.

Stand-up comedy, a celebrity non-apology, observations of racism, and the slipperiness of nostalgia underpin Replica. In poignant, witty poems, Lisa Low navigates the tensions of solidarity and hostility in white spaces as she sets out to write differently about race.

“The problem of being with a white man is also a problem of writing,” Low says in a prose poem that turns writing about identity on its head. She peers in from outside the poem, as if through an open ceiling. The poem itself becomes a site of investigation—a counterpoint to constricting narratives about Asian American identity—reimagined as a dollhouse, a stage with props, an image the speaker wears like a bodysuit. Replica asks what it means to represent yourself and your experiences in a world where you are indistinguishable from others.