Consider the Rooster

by Oliver Baez Bendorf

From the publisher: Consider the Rooster serves as an ode to a rooster's crow, a catalyst for awakening, both literally and figuratively. Amidst the Covid-19 Pandemic, the aftermath of George Floyd’s murder by police, and the resulting upsurge in reactionary right-wing militia violence, a neighbor in Kalamazoo, Michigan threatens to call the police after discovering the author’s pet rooster. The rooster sounds the alarm and our author wakes to revolutionary transformation. An ecological consciousness embedded in these verses invites readers to acknowledge their place in a web of relations. Oliver Baez Bendorf’s voice resounds through liminal spaces, at dusk and dawn, across personal meditations and wider cultural awakenings to form a collection overflowing with freedom, rebellion, mischief, and song.

Genres: Poetry, Queer, Transgender, LGBT

124 pages, Paperback

Published October 1, 2024

About the author

Oliver Baez Bendorf is the author of Consider the Rooster (Nightboat, 2024), a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, and two previous collections of poems: Advantages of Being Evergreen (Cleveland State University Poetry Center, 2019) and The Spectral Wilderness (Kent State U.P., 2015). He has received fellowships and awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, The Publishing Triangle, CantoMundo, Vermont Studio Center, and the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing. He was born and raised in Iowa.

Reviews

[Bogi Takács]

Find me elsewhere: My Patreon | My Bluesky account

I've been reading through last year's Lambda award finalists for Transgender Poetry, and this one is my favorite (my library could not get ahold of Arasahas, but I read the others). Ecopoetry, science poetry, a lot of deep *and* heartfelt engagement with the natural world + trans masculinities, fitting uneasily into society, and also somehow a rooster. There are a lot of beautiful and unexpected lines in this, and little nods to everything from the Greek classics to Octavia E. Butler. (The author is also a mixed-race Latino man, but there's only one poem explicitly addressing that - though I do feel like it is often in the background.)

My only issue was that occasionally it felt a bit too 'academic poetry'-ish, and also I honestly did not quite get the conflict about the rooster, which is one of the key points of the book. I understand having issues with the municipality about a rewilded front yard, which doesn't really bother anybody (so the municipality is definitely in the wrong there), but a rooster can wake up the whole neighborhood and I don't think that was quite resolved...? I probably missed something, but this is a small point, really.

In any case, this was a great poetry collection and I recommend checking it out! It has a bit of an odd physical format, it's oversize, but don't let that deter you.
___
Source of the book: Lawrence Public Library (my purchase request - thank you for filling it!)

[Skylar Miklus · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a playful and effusive work, a new trans ecopoetics.

[Ally]

Somewhere swings open a gate we all know we all want.

-- "T4T

---

Let the heavens fade lilac to orange on
the longest night. I'll leave you candles.
May racoons walk their spidery prints all
over the dirt, may berries sprout
magic. I leave you my pleasure and joy
for which I worked so hard.

-- "Will and Testament"

---

Does it hurt to say we saw.
Can you tell us what we saw, was it.
Just some glorious raccoon in
Gelatinous debt.

-- "Me and All That is Unsolved, Me and the Fire"

---

How should I be
both beautiful and strong? It was as if
the atmosphere had a pink
story. The atmosphere was pink
for a while as I walked back,
and heavy. Never look a deer
in the face. The whites of human
eyes give me away. Like a gift.
To a god.

-- "Wonderland"

---

I try to love myself as if I am some imperfectly shaped flower. No less miraculous
For being one of many. Somehow, many bad and good things happen
Even though it is possible that we, along with asters,
Are simply stardust trying to know itself again. For the sake of beauty
And change, which is also beautiful.

-- "Frequently the Woods Are Pink"

---

also notable: a cento of Elizabeth Bishop first lines.

There's a through line about a rooster, Walter, who's dead, who the speaker's neighbor hated? There's a lot of narrative running through this collection that's undecipherable from the given context. A bunch of the collection reads like diary cutups, meaningful only to the author and not that interesting from a raw language perspective. The notes are essential to getting a handle on a number of these poems; it's a weird practice to put them at the back. Though they often just make things more mysterious.

A wildly uneven collection not just between poems but within them - a lot of poems have brilliant moments, but none of them really keep it going all the way from beginning to end. The prior publication list in the back is so impressive - I have to imagine that that's from solicitations, I can't imagine any of these poems making it out of those slush piles?

[Cheryl · Rating 3 out of 5]

I am in need of music that would flow
Each day with so much ceremony
The year’s doors open...

I have been tormented lately by Canada geese in their mating season, squawking at dawn, all day, late at night, and let's turn that into poetry. Grateful for these wise and wide-ranging poems from a queer, trans, Latinx poet and educator from Colorado.

[Maddelyn · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really like the writing, but the form annoyed me – I know, I know.

[Tessa! · Rating 5 out of 5]

i fear this may be one of the best fucking books i’ve ever read in my life,,,,,

[Dina Samimi · Rating 5 out of 5]

Day 8 of the sealey challenge. Considering the rooster, and grief, and nature and fields through a trans lens. So smart and deliberate. What a gift to read!