Customer Reviews

Trans (Wesleyan Poetry Series)

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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.

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 good collections of poetry out there, that you can safely avoid this one.

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.