First

THE lobby of the Chase Park Plaza hotel in Saint Louis, with its glamourous chandeliers and elegant staircases, seems like an ideal place to meet Paul Tran. The poet walks in wearing one of their more casual looks: high-waisted joggers with a black, long-sleeve top and lace gloves, punctuated by chunky-heeled boots and a green rattlesnake purse. We are still in the age of the pandemic, but Tran doesn’t let the face mask—which matches the ensemble, naturally—cramp their style. In Tran’s arms, a bouquet of glorious sunflowers.

“I brought you these,” they say, setting the flowers on the glass coffee table between us.

Though Tran is currently a Wallace Stegner Fellow in Poetry at Stanford University, virtual instruction gives them the freedom to log on from anywhere in the United States. They chose to meet me in Saint Louis because it was here that they flourished as an artist while enrolled in Washington University’s MFA program, which is located two miles away from the hotel, at the other end of Forest Park. Three years after Tran graduated from that program, their debut collection of poetry, All the Flowers Kneeling, was published in February by Penguin as part of its Penguin Poets series.

This extravagant hotel, the competitive and much-coveted fellowship, the Big Five publisher—these spaces and opportunities that Tran is now navigating with confidence belie the poet’s working-class roots in San Diego as the only child of a Vietnamese refugee. And yet, where else would Tran, with their creative talent and penchant for fashion that demands attention, go? I remind them that I was present at the 2018 ceremony in New York City for the 92nd Street Y Discovery Poetry Contest, where they dazzled onstage in a formfitting gold gown and a hair clip adorned with roses. Tran