THE JOY OF THE ILLEGIBLE

Megan Fernandes’s I Do Everything I’m Told

SIOBHAN HART

Books I Do Everything I’m Told by Megan Fernandes Tin House Books, 2023 paperback, 104 pages, $16.95 Megan Fernandes’ latest collection of poems, I Do Everything I’m Told, begins with an epigraph from Gwendolyn Brooks: “Sit where the light corrupts your face.” Fernandes takes this instruction to heart—the fresh light of each poem works to destabilize the lyric ‘I’. Much like Fernandes’ last collection, Good Boys, the title itself deals in contradictions. On one hand, I Do Everything I’m Told indicates domination and systems of power where marginalized people are rendered both invisible and hypervisible. It captures the demand to become easily identifiable under threat of violence, and how responses to these demands are ignored, humanity willfully misunderstood or erased. On the other, I Do Everything I’m Told is Fernandes’ rebuttal, a jouissance…

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The American Poetry Review (Digital) - 1 Issue, September/October 2023

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