Diaries of a Terrorist / Christopher Soto / 2023
Diaries of a Terrorist / Christopher Soto / 2022
Fans of sad girl poems will find more to love as Soto’s pen goes beyond the queer coming-of-age narratives of their first collection, extending its vision to a critique of the prison industrial complex at large. Soto’s mix of punk, play, pain, and perversion cries while it laughs while it comes. The rare moments of laziness (the ending lines of Transgender Cyborgs Attack, for example) are easy to forgive when poems like “Concerning Our Necropolitical Landscape,” “Transactional Sex with Satan,” and “Two Lovers in Perfect Synchronicity” buttress them. The title Diaries of a Terrorist seems a bit like a misdirection, as the collection doesn’t consider revolutionary violence much at all, except for a poem “In Support of Violence,” which narrates the vengeance hundreds of Indian survivors took murdering their rapist. Of course, that’s perhaps the point: terrorists are first and foremost people with complex interior worlds and relationships, not just frenzied mass murderers. Still, the tenderness barely hidden in between Soto’s barbaric yawping betrays a much softer soul. Elsewhere, in Piscucha Magazine, Soto confessed “I hate the word revolution. I hate its bloody reality.” I don’t resent Soto for this, but I do think the title might understandably misdirect a reader looking for a poet whose political vision includes or interrogates revolutionary violence more explicitly and thoughtfully. I want to teach a queer poetry class where I teach this alongside fei hernandez, Danez Smith, and Marylyn Tan. 4/5