*millennYELL: diatribes of self-discovery* is a collection of poems intending to complicate the characterization of millennials as naively hopeful or as helplessly impotent. Bryan D. Wright's first book of poetry sweeps the personal, political, social, and cultural minefields left behind by the culture warriors of America’s previous generations. His poems are a lament for the loss of the commonweal during the past thirty years of American life and culture -- while also being a rally cry to take action and seek meaning in the alienation pervading American society at the outset of the twenty-first century.
Mr. Wright’s poems in *millennYELL* are presented under four main themes of poetic expression – nihilism, longing, despair, and promise – each separated by a timeline of related events in American history from 1990 to 2020. His poetry grapples with key adversities for young adults coming of age since 2000. The poems – disquieting, exacting, and poignant – express key moments of personal anguish and insight that interrupted his prolonged inner dialog on the meaning of adulthood for the first generation to shape the next century and next millennium.
*millennYELL: diatribes of self-discovery* is a collection of poems intending to complicate the characterization of millennials as naively hopeful or as helplessly impotent. Bryan D. Wright's first book of poetry sweeps the personal, political, social, and cultural minefields left behind by the culture warriors of America’s previous generations. His poems are a lament for the loss of the commonweal during the past thirty years of American life and culture -- while also being a rally cry to take action and seek meaning in the alienation pervading American society at the outset of the twenty-first century.
Mr. Wright’s poems in *millennYELL* are presented under four main themes of poetic expression – nihilism, longing, despair, and promise – each separated by a timeline of related events in American history from 1990 to 2020. His poetry grapples with key adversities for young adults coming of age since 2000. The poems – disquieting, exacting, and poignant – express key moments of personal anguish and insight that interrupted his prolonged inner dialog on the meaning of adulthood for the first generation to shape the next century and next millennium.
A dastardly bastard
fruitlessly fortunate
and functionally
faster, than
any other master
or callous crafter
of socially intertwined
dreams.
Â
The people are
presently unpleasant
using phrenetic
streams of selfish
misconceptions.
Â
I wouldn’t suggest it,
the medicine of the masses
fallen through the
cracks between classes
cautiously aware
of nothing but
disasters
their spirit
lies shattered
as if the
world of
the living
truly mattered.
Â
Brutally battered
the self concept
hit hard
now staggered
not fractured as I
tragically traffic
the means to happiness
through verbal mastery
of concepts, clashing
creeds, stashing seeds
the growth is green
like the grass on
the other side
meant for we.
Â
Beautiful leaves and
sun-tinted trees
the substance of
life of which we
can see
surround yourselves,
regression to
the mean.
Marked by the passage of time and landmark, historical events from the 1990s to the present day, Wright's millenYELL attempts to capture the millennial experience, an experience which often feels like screaming into a void. As a generation, particularly in the United States of America, millennials have experienced severe shifts in politics and leadership, active school shooter drills, wins as well as tragic losses for marginalised communities and two economic recessions, with a third looming large. Much like the generation after the World Wars, millennials are left with hands but there is too much to hold, to understand and to change. It is an overwhelmed and often demonised generation. Wright's lyricism and clever structuring goes some way to capturing this, although it is a mammoth task.
The collection opens strong, Wright has a talent for lyrical poetry and the pieces which focus on the self and identity are the best. The rhythm and raw honesty in a poem like 'huNtErs MoON' bursts with the vulnerability of this generation to vice, to anything which will provide comfort during the turbulent years they have survived. Not to mention the sublime use of capitalisation in the poems' titles to convey the pitfalls and fears of millennials. Wright has some fantastic lines: 'A nation of escapists' and 'A rough drag of my cigarette / evokes a wasted future'. It is these reflective poems which carry the collection and our engagement in the speaker's fallacies and hopes. This speaker is one many readers will identify with.
Other poems, however, particularly those which centre relationships and love, are much weaker. Here Wright's work becomes quite repetitive, meaning the collection is book-ended by strong, visceral poems but fails to sustain this clarity and sense of voice throughout. There is a considerable lull that can be felt when reading this collection, which is a shame considering how cleverly it is structured.
Nevertheless, Wright's treatment of identity, particularly if you are a millennial, is superb and highly relatable. For this alone I would recommend reading this collection; it is a brilliant idea and a good attempt, I wonder if soon we will be reading about the Generation X and Z experience as the societies we live in continue to progress, regress and rumble on.