"Chen Chen's debut collection is thoroughly of the moment, its energy devoted to explaining who Chen Chen is and how he got here. It tells the many stories that collude into identity: a mother, and a family, who cannot accept their son being gay, who blame it on their emigration, on the moral decay of the United States; a boy who grows up American, but is still seen as Chinese despite only the vaguest memories of the country and life there; a twenty-something, caught in the orbits of MFA programs, places like Brooklyn, the life of the precariat. All these are told in a fresh, playful, and often lonely voice shot through with references to high and low art, Celan and Kafka and Optimus Prime." -LA Review of Books

"The collection, as the title itself suggests, is about 'further possibilities, ' about revising, reinventing, and reimagining the relational modes we currently have. If we are all tasked with being 'someone 'for' someone else-a son, a friend, a partner, a student, a dear love, ' we cannot afford to be complacent or static in the ways that we inhabit and think about those relations. Interdependence is at the heart of Chen's writing, and if we are to survive in these troubled times, we must continue to believe that there really are new ways to find the impossible honey." -Up the Staircase Quarterly

"The word 'stanza' means one thing when it refers to a poem: a snippet of text, a line or several. In Italian, it means 'room.' Poet Chen Chen combines those definitions when he writes, thinking: what should be in the room of this poem? In his earlier work, he began to answer that question with pieces that explored his own intersecting identities, parts of himself that other people told him could not exist at once..." -PBS NewsHour

"Chen Chen's When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities has, in addition to a killer book title, a beautiful and complex story of identity to share. The collection tells describes a mother/son relationship from the perspective of an Asian American immigrant, queer son, and explores the complicated grief and love of familial bonds." -Bustle

"Visually vivid, erotic and intimate, at times bitingly funny, and refreshingly world-observant, Chen's poems are steeped in the pain of being other as both Asian American and gay. He's excellent at relating the confusion of childhood, recalling "Mom & Dad's/ idiot faces, yelling at me" as they confront his sexuality and grappling with the consequences of his heritage." -Library Journal

"Through the particular Chen reaches the universal. When I Grow Up I Want to be a List of Further Possibilities contains poems of friendship, love, family, the self, art, food, the contemporary moment, the past, and memory. Chen, I'm confident, will be an important voice in American poetry for years to come." -The Rumpus

"Let's waste no time: Chen Chen's When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities is a brilliant first book. Scratch that-it is simply a brilliant book and one of my favorites of the year." -Lambda Literary

"Chen Chen's marvelous debut collection is playful and full of wonder. Every poem sparkles with humor,