Trans (Wesleyan Poetry Series)
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | 4.71 (757 Votes) |
| Asin | : | 0819565040 |
| Format Type | : | paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 108 Pages |
| Publish Date | : | 2016-01-29 |
| Language | : | English |
DESCRIPTION:
Raz (Divine Honors) has long taught English at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln, where she edits the journal Prairie Schooner; some vivid verse describes the Nebraska landscape and its hardscrabble citizens. Many lines seem over-the-top; some are mawkish: "you, for all we've been through,/ are identical genetically to the daughter you were." Raz does better with terser, harsher verse, as in "Doing the Puzzle/Angry Voices," where "Every book that documents birth/ puts on to gender a meaning./ That piece of the junco tree is filled with sparrows." Always articulate and sometimes well-crafted, the volume relies too heavily on its subjects, yet its pleasures, like its concerns, are genuine. Whether she writes of Aaron or Sarah, f
Born Sarah, now Aaron, Raz's child has had a profound impact on her understanding of what it means to be a family, to be whole, and to know oneself. The physical and sensuous language of Raz's poems, and their humanity, keep them intimately bound to the world and to the senses.. "Trans" means across, through, over, to or on the other side, and beyond. They are equally testaments to Raz's insistence on making an order out of chaos, of finding ways to create and understand and eventually accept new definitions of self and family. The journey takes us from intimacy to strangeness and back again
adead_poet@hotmail.com said nothing spectacular. This book claims to have an interesting premise, and I quote from the back, "This elegant and moving collection grew out of Hilda Raz's experience with her son's journey to a transgender identity." And while she does touch on it in several poems, she leaves so much of this unmined. I didn't find any of the poems in the book to be particularly outstanding, and as a whole the collection was rather weak, though it did have some highlights. It starts with a great poem by Rilke. Tough to live up to, and she does not. You get a couple of good lines and stanzas here and there, but there are so many really . Beautifully crafted! A Customer This beautifully crafted series of poems explores the meanings of 'trans', from the author's experiences with breast cancer to her adult child's female-to-male transition. Loss, movement, and processes of forging new understanding are important themes. The volume is organized into sections, each of which begins with a dictionary definition of the prefix 'trans-'. Raz is one of theUnited States' most important contemporary poets and editors of poetry, so it is no surprise that she handles these issues with such dexterity in this book.. Powerful, amazing, crafted, real Palimpsest This is the real stuff here. Amazing content, rendered in powerful, crafted, beautiful language. From structure to line to word, this is a stunning, remarkable collection. My hat is off.