Banango Lit

Banango is a literary blog that talks about exciting literature. We like to read stuff. We are also Banango Street, a literary journal. You can email us at banangolit (at) gmail (dot) com if you would like to send us stuff to look at, or you can send a link in our Ask box. We will try to look at it but we have learned to avoid making too many promises.

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Justin Carter
Rachel Hyman
Diana Salier
Matt Margo
Katey Metcalf
Thom James
Jackson Nieuwland

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Review: PANIC ATTACK, U.S.A. by Nate Slawson

By: Diana Salier

i first read nate slawson last year on linelinelineline — he wrote an echap of love poems to zooey deschanel, and i share his love for zooey d, so i really enjoyed that. last month i bought PANIC ATTACK USA at powell’s and started reading it on donald dunbar’s living room couch. i read it on a plane from portland back to san francisco when i thought i was going to die because the turbulence was so bad. i finished it in bed tonight.

the point is, i think it’d be so fucking cool (and ok maybe a little creepy) to be the “you” in one of nate slawson’s poems. his style is breathless and electric and most of all, weirdly obsessive over whoever the “you” actually is, if it’s anybody, but he’s full of amazing images of who this “you” is to him (or the speaker, but i think the speaker is slawson) — everything from musical instruments, and there are a lot of music references here, to bodies of water, places in the Midwest, indispensable body parts, various states of mind.

though the poems are short, you have to take a deep breath before reading any of these and then just dive in. they take you from point A to point B really quickly. slawson is real good at staying locked within the microscopic frame of his poems and existing within their world, whether the world is gym class, antidepressants, or Cameron Frye.

the book is broken up into 4 sections and the ones that resonated the most with me were part 1, Teenage Sonnets, and part 3, Essays for a Broken Heart.

here are my favorite poems from both sections, respectively:

YOU ARE EMILY VALENTINE
I know I promised you
I wouldn’t make a scene
in front of all your friends
but is it wrong if I write
your name on the soles
of my tennis shoes is it
wrong if I want to stand
next to you in gym class
your legs remind me of
a Bruce Springsteen song
I would do a hundred sit-
ups for you & whisper your
name every time & kiss my
knees pretending they are you.

AN ESSAY ABOUT BLACK KEYS
at the movies I play
the same character
every time so you will
always recognize me
I would like you to believe
I am not acting
I would like you
to believe my hands
do not shake
my arms do not go dumb
my body is the house
you grew up in
& the way my face gets
when I look at you
sometimes is difficult
practice not unlike
drawing maps of your
circulatory system or
making you the perfect
grilled cheese sandwich
which is one more thing
I’d rather be doing
than talking to you
on the telephone or
writing you this letter
on my old Casiotone.