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Anybody: Poems
In Anybody, Ari Banias takes up questions of recognition and belonging: how boundaries are drawn and managed, the ways he and she, us and them, here and elsewhere are kept separate, and at what cost identities and selves are forged. Moving through iconic and imagined landscapes, Anybody confronts the strangeness of being alive and of being a restlessly gendered, queer, emotive body. Wherever the poet turns—the cruising spaces of Fire Island, a city lake, a Greek island, a bodega-turned-coffee-shop—he finds the charge of boundedness and signification, the implications of what it means to be a this instead of a that. Witty, tender, and original, these poems pierce the constructs that define our lives.
112 pages, Hardcover
First published September 20, 2016
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409 people want to read
About the author
Ari Banias
7 books20 followersAri Banias was born in Los Angeles and grew up in the suburbs of Chicago. He holds a BA from Sarah Lawrence College, and an MFA in Creative Writing from Hunter College, where he was a teaching fellow. He’s the author of a chapbook, What’s Personal is Being Here With All of You (Portable Press @ Yo-Yo Labs, 2012), and his poems have appeared in various publications, including Aufgabe, FIELD, Gulf Coast, Poetry Northwest, The Volta, and Troubling the Line: Trans and Genderqueer Poetry and Poetics (Nightboat, 2013). The recipient of the 2014 Cecil Hemley Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America, he has been awarded fellowships by the New York Foundation for the Arts, the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, Djerassi Resident Artists Program, Headlands Center for the Arts, the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing, and the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown. He is a 2014-16 Stegner Fellow at Stanford University. His first collection of poems is forthcoming from W.W. Norton in 2016.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 37 reviews
November 6, 2017
Banias is surely a boundary pusher as all the reviews say, and the boundaries demarcating masculinity/femininity are under closest scrutiny here. There are some outrageously beautiful moments in this book, but I found the poems on the average too broad and too fast—I found myself hungry for a refrain while IN each poem. Curious to see what comes next after a book this loud and confessional.
September 15, 2022
The first 50% of this book is a solid 5 stars, but I feel like it really lost its way after that. I mean, can you believe that the same poet who gave us this brilliance:
[...] we are meant to believe the poem can say moon
but not government. Both have flags
attached and can make a body
howl beyond its will.
And:
Everything is out there to be looked at and not to
look back at you who are small and like a god in your window
Is also responsible for:
If saddle up willingness plus experience what
can we make for us?
I think I would have loved this if it had been a poetry pamphlet, but the work doesn't feel consistent enough to carry a full collection. There are some genuinely fantastic poems in here, though! I just wish they'd not been surrounded by so many less wonderful ones.
[...] we are meant to believe the poem can say moon
but not government. Both have flags
attached and can make a body
howl beyond its will.
And:
Everything is out there to be looked at and not to
look back at you who are small and like a god in your window
Is also responsible for:
If saddle up willingness plus experience what
can we make for us?
I think I would have loved this if it had been a poetry pamphlet, but the work doesn't feel consistent enough to carry a full collection. There are some genuinely fantastic poems in here, though! I just wish they'd not been surrounded by so many less wonderful ones.
August 6, 2022
A dozen really, truly dazzling pieces on identity and cities carry this book.
October 21, 2022
Ari Banias chooses to discusses queerness, otherness, and humanness in with an eye for bringing together that which might be discarded. Moments, objects, and topics that might live on the edges and periphery are front and center. Anybody is not everybody, and anybody in this particular case could be any body if Ari weren't so clearly invested as the patient and keen describer. The body as crypt and exhauster, as exultation and triumph.
Aren’t We
from Anybody: Poems
Aren’t we so in on it together. Don’t we
hurt. Like huge holes in the ground
where demolished brick buildings stood
where weeds momentarily thrive
glass-faced condos will rise
soon don’t we hurt. At future
cocktail parties in those buildings aren’t we
attending uncomfortably, but not
so uncomfortably we don’t know people
who bought in the building. This was years
from now. But we hurt don’t we, brightly.
Zoned in where the pits dug out
by floodlight make sleep hard to come by.
For those when glass or brick hurts
hardest has to move. Now move
along. Near the park on the block
where the coffee is suddenly strong. Now what I
call an accident. The vinyl awnings
swapped for distressed wood signs. We did that.
We would. What did
the before-buildings look like one could ask
but nostalgia seems novice.
Or as if we make claims beyond our so modest
brightness. So many choices at the bodega
now called a market.
In the future don’t we excel at
confusing ourselves about an experiment
in success that becomes actual hurt
made culture. Made rich
by scholarly interventions
into public loss. And oh I suppose
we meant to do that didn’t we. That sort of accident
Aren’t We
from Anybody: Poems
Aren’t we so in on it together. Don’t we
hurt. Like huge holes in the ground
where demolished brick buildings stood
where weeds momentarily thrive
glass-faced condos will rise
soon don’t we hurt. At future
cocktail parties in those buildings aren’t we
attending uncomfortably, but not
so uncomfortably we don’t know people
who bought in the building. This was years
from now. But we hurt don’t we, brightly.
Zoned in where the pits dug out
by floodlight make sleep hard to come by.
For those when glass or brick hurts
hardest has to move. Now move
along. Near the park on the block
where the coffee is suddenly strong. Now what I
call an accident. The vinyl awnings
swapped for distressed wood signs. We did that.
We would. What did
the before-buildings look like one could ask
but nostalgia seems novice.
Or as if we make claims beyond our so modest
brightness. So many choices at the bodega
now called a market.
In the future don’t we excel at
confusing ourselves about an experiment
in success that becomes actual hurt
made culture. Made rich
by scholarly interventions
into public loss. And oh I suppose
we meant to do that didn’t we. That sort of accident
August 28, 2025
This book gets five stars for many reasons, but most of all for the poem Dot Dot Dot, which has to be one of the most beautiful things I’ve read in recent days.
March 16, 2020
Took me a while...
October 31, 2018
4.5/5 Stars
May 22, 2018
Banias writes of feeling uneasy in any body (male or female), of feeling disconnected to self and to others. No body feels like his home. Poems in which I felt this the strongest and/or which spoke to me include: Grandchild, Exquisite Corpse, Handshake, Find Love in Brooklyn Now!, The Hole, Still Here, Horizontal, Recognition if the Misrecognition You Can Bear, and Various Attentions All Landing Like Birds Into the Same Tree and Thrilling There Some Minutes at Dusk.
Though this disconnectedness relates to a transgender experience, the way Banias puts it down frequently broadens the scope. Any reader who has felt awkward at attracting others sexually or who feels uneasy with the norms assigned to their gender (the musts you must possess in order to be attractive--for me, as a cis woman this means big boobs, long hair, high heels, and makeup, which I either do not possess or mostly do not feel at home in.) I particularly sit up and feel he's speaking for me with these lines quoted below:
From Find Love in Brooklyn Now!:
It's true, my bed's a thorny nest I never really/let anyone into. But right now I'm roses; so here's the floor (you're/welcome).
AND
Please/believe I want you,/...don't ungive the fly you flashed....I only need to/carefully breathe alone a few moments, count to/what, nine?/sharpen my pencils.
From Horizontal:
...I need to stop thinking/someone will appear in the doorframe silhouetted/extending their hand, I'm the one who has to build/from scratch the presence or the hand/must be my own...
That feeling of being wrapped tightly in yourself like a stone; though you want to engage, you are afraid of an other proclaiming out loud what you sense or know to be true of yourself; you are afraid of an other pointing out your foibles, and if you are "in love" with this other, if you love this other, you must address these faults if they truly harm the relationship and/or erode the other's being. In other words, you cannot ignore or resist what they bring to you; you must change for the better of you and your person. But aren't you good enough as you are? That's the conundrum of nearly every predominantly women's magazine article: you're fine just the way you are -- SELF LOVE, LADIES! -- but here's 10 ways to improve this or that about yourself.
I digress.
Another thing I dialed in to in Banias's poems is the physicality, the fighting terms he chooses to speak about how to beat back the parts of himself that shouldn't be or that are interruptive or messy for the world.
Especially in Exquisite Corpse:
to punch myself into the form//the content required,/to hunker like a boulder under//immeasurable pressure
AND
...if//lapels say a word then burn her/down to a pair of molten cufflinks
Especially in Various Attentions...:
Wrestle down "I" with "we"/Then wrestle down "we"
Though this disconnectedness relates to a transgender experience, the way Banias puts it down frequently broadens the scope. Any reader who has felt awkward at attracting others sexually or who feels uneasy with the norms assigned to their gender (the musts you must possess in order to be attractive--for me, as a cis woman this means big boobs, long hair, high heels, and makeup, which I either do not possess or mostly do not feel at home in.) I particularly sit up and feel he's speaking for me with these lines quoted below:
From Find Love in Brooklyn Now!:
It's true, my bed's a thorny nest I never really/let anyone into. But right now I'm roses; so here's the floor (you're/welcome).
AND
Please/believe I want you,/...don't ungive the fly you flashed....I only need to/carefully breathe alone a few moments, count to/what, nine?/sharpen my pencils.
From Horizontal:
...I need to stop thinking/someone will appear in the doorframe silhouetted/extending their hand, I'm the one who has to build/from scratch the presence or the hand/must be my own...
That feeling of being wrapped tightly in yourself like a stone; though you want to engage, you are afraid of an other proclaiming out loud what you sense or know to be true of yourself; you are afraid of an other pointing out your foibles, and if you are "in love" with this other, if you love this other, you must address these faults if they truly harm the relationship and/or erode the other's being. In other words, you cannot ignore or resist what they bring to you; you must change for the better of you and your person. But aren't you good enough as you are? That's the conundrum of nearly every predominantly women's magazine article: you're fine just the way you are -- SELF LOVE, LADIES! -- but here's 10 ways to improve this or that about yourself.
I digress.
Another thing I dialed in to in Banias's poems is the physicality, the fighting terms he chooses to speak about how to beat back the parts of himself that shouldn't be or that are interruptive or messy for the world.
Especially in Exquisite Corpse:
to punch myself into the form//the content required,/to hunker like a boulder under//immeasurable pressure
AND
...if//lapels say a word then burn her/down to a pair of molten cufflinks
Especially in Various Attentions...:
Wrestle down "I" with "we"/Then wrestle down "we"
January 27, 2022
First I will say that "recognition is the misrecognition you can bear" has always been my mantra for all creative and theoretical work, so I loved that A.B. feels that too.
Some favorites include "Narrative," "On Pockets," the end of "An Arrow." Also "Enough" and "A Version"
"Prairie Restoration Project" hit home on the loneliness of the Midwest, and "To The God of Sobriety" has the perfect sense of panic ("those twisty-ties their future lives!").
"Double Mastectomy," "The Hole" and the ending lines to "The Men" absolutely gutted me (and might be very much an IYKYK, I wonder how cis people feel reading it):
"what isn't there. Isn't there
a sweetness to it."
That being the end line to a poem about transness, gah.
Some favorites include "Narrative," "On Pockets," the end of "An Arrow." Also "Enough" and "A Version"
"Prairie Restoration Project" hit home on the loneliness of the Midwest, and "To The God of Sobriety" has the perfect sense of panic ("those twisty-ties their future lives!").
"Double Mastectomy," "The Hole" and the ending lines to "The Men" absolutely gutted me (and might be very much an IYKYK, I wonder how cis people feel reading it):
"what isn't there. Isn't there
a sweetness to it."
That being the end line to a poem about transness, gah.
January 23, 2021
the poems abt gender and sexuality HIT and i feel like stylistically, they were the best and most refined, too. really enjoyed them. the other poems, i felt like, lacked rhythm at points, which imo is essential to free verse poetry, which disturbed my reading flow and made it hard to concentrate on them
July 7, 2016
Striking poems of gender ambiguity – I think the author is trans. A couple of favorites were “Narrative” (“I was once / a sundress on a splintery / swingset in Texas”) and “On Pockets” (“what a staple of intimate transport both private and exposed”).
May 28, 2022
Best when the poems turn their attention to capital, IMO.
December 13, 2025
Where the sky ends / the water begins and where in that should we?"
Ari Banias's debut collection, Anybody, is an ecotone between vulnerability and privacy. Banias writes about his identity and its consequences while blending in moments of reflection seamlessly. In the early parts of the collection, I found the poems to be hiding. There was a lack of openness that the beginning half of the collection that made me unsure of the work's trajectory. However, the second half of the collection is honest and intimate that I was happy to have stayed.
"The table wobbles and because I am with you / I forget it."
Sentimentally, I heard Banias read from this collection back in 2017 when I was first learning more about poetry. I found his language to be so mesmerizing and provoking. Parts of that wonder carried while I was reading this, but another part felt more critical and aware. I felt the evolution of myself while reading this.
Ari Banias's debut collection, Anybody, is an ecotone between vulnerability and privacy. Banias writes about his identity and its consequences while blending in moments of reflection seamlessly. In the early parts of the collection, I found the poems to be hiding. There was a lack of openness that the beginning half of the collection that made me unsure of the work's trajectory. However, the second half of the collection is honest and intimate that I was happy to have stayed.
"The table wobbles and because I am with you / I forget it."
Sentimentally, I heard Banias read from this collection back in 2017 when I was first learning more about poetry. I found his language to be so mesmerizing and provoking. Parts of that wonder carried while I was reading this, but another part felt more critical and aware. I felt the evolution of myself while reading this.
June 5, 2021
This is a strong collection of poems; Banias's voice is mercurial and raw. I particularly loved the pieces that toyed with grammar, subject, and plurality. Much of poetry here--while excellent--was not to my personal taste, however. (I find block-style stanzas with lack of punctuation irritating to read, and the language was a bit slangy for my taste.) No shade on Banias for these poetic choices; the work is high-quality, but it will not be a book I personally return to again and again.
July 14, 2021
Anybody: Poems is an outstanding collection of poetry, and I am looking forward to reading and discovering more work written by Ari Banias.
I have a hard time finding contemporary poetry that isn't a carbon copy of another poet's style or some half-baked cliché you'd find on Instagram, so I'm thankful for having stumbled onto this collection. 'Wedding,' 'An Arrow,' and 'Bouquet' standout amongst the rest; it's a lovely addition to my bookcase.
I have a hard time finding contemporary poetry that isn't a carbon copy of another poet's style or some half-baked cliché you'd find on Instagram, so I'm thankful for having stumbled onto this collection. 'Wedding,' 'An Arrow,' and 'Bouquet' standout amongst the rest; it's a lovely addition to my bookcase.
December 7, 2018
Finally got around to finishing this, but I read the second half while on lots of pain medication. Planning to reread a few poems that I'd like to spend a little more time with, and review after I do so. After the first six or so poems, I took this back to the library and bought it, though; it's worth the read and worth having around, in my eyes.
May 15, 2023
I’m new to reading poetry so much of the language and cadences Ari Banias used was confusing to me. I’d like to read this again with a little more experience under my belt. Otherwise, his words made me cry. Hearing his experience through this lens illuminated a new area of understanding of transness.
August 5, 2024
I used to really love collections that have that Frank O'Hara feel, but it's getting a little tired for me, in that regard. As far as what Ari has to say, though, this collection is a treasure. I read poetry collections that feel empty of things to talk about, but this was very thought provoking. Great read!
November 16, 2024
Really enjoyed the first half but then some of the poems lost me. I wasn’t feeling or understanding them like others. Although, I did love the last poem. I’m also not great with poetry. I go by the feelings it invokes in me or a message I can understand from it. I have not studied poetry enough to be able to say if a poetry collection is good or not.
December 29, 2017
i really liked many of these poems! especially towards the end of the book. banias subverts common poetic themes (nature, loneliness, love, and belonging) in unexpected ways. sharp commentary on masculinity and whiteness is studded throughout.
December 21, 2018
A grammar that pulses with absolute verve, that sings even as it dredges. Vibrant and beautiful poems here.
March 7, 2019
Fantastic
June 30, 2019
This book is a beautiful and personal exploration of identity. These poems will linger in my mind and haunt my daily life.
September 9, 2021
This collection is very emotive and provides excellent imagery. I didn’t collect with many of the poems but I do look forward to rereading it
Read
October 8, 2021absolutely lovely (my favorite remains the poem that inspired me to buy it: "on pockets")
April 16, 2022
unexpectedly -- loved this too
October 15, 2024
Great imagery! I feel like I've been given the privilege to see inside the triumphs, insecurities, anger, and sadness at this moment in time of Banias's life.
August 18, 2025
my favorite book of contemporary poetry
July 18, 2017
Game changer for poetry. Poets are going to be learning from this work and writing back to it for a long time. Congrats and gratitude to the author.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 37 reviews