Blake Z. Rong represents a fresh new voice that immediately grabs your attention, and keeps it. The speaker in the poems by Rong is lost amidst Van Gogh’s paintings, the Manhattan skyline, and across crumpled bedsheets. In each, he “long[s] for words that will prove [him] wrong.” I love how the words being searched for aren’t facts but a music that in its “shattering” “makes a beautiful sound.” His inimitable voice is carried through with his wit and keen insight into the geographies to which he travels, geographies which are wrapped in the season of wanting, and desire, perhaps, that something might in fact change.
Blake Z. Rong is a writer in Brooklyn with an MFA from the Vermont College of Fine Arts. His debut collection of poetry, I Am Not Young And I Will Die With This Car In My Garage, was published in 2021. His work has appeared in Tupelo Quarterly, Brazenhead, New Mexico Review, and others, and he was a finalist in Oprelle’s “2021 Matter” Anthology Poetry Contest.