transtrender

by Manuel Arturo Abreu

transtrender is a book of lyric poems investigating the impossibility of language to express the bodily and social experience of transness. Written from an afrolatinx trans position, the work deals with the trap of visibility, the coloniality of gender, and the refusal of cogency in a moment where trans is trending (that is, being commodified and whitewashed).

abreu manically darts from image to image in their poems, working in a digitally-influenced poetic register which, as Brian Droitcour describes, “looks like flarf but isn’t.” The result is a text that resists opportunities for the reader to connect the dots, instead pushing toward an expanded lyric awareness in which poiesis does not betray its site-specificity, and gender nonconformity is not confined to a false narrative of emergence from white modernity.

divided into four sections: untitled, naming, site-specific poems, amotivational speech

Genres: Poetry, LGBT, Transgender, Queer

84 pages, Paperback

First published December 21, 2016

Reviews

[Wren · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm not quite sure I understood all of this, but what I did get is brilliant. Besides, the parts I got the least from were the lists, which even then I love b/c I'm a big fan of alternative poetry formats and lists are fun. This is a beautiful, thoughtful book worth digging into.

[Natalie Hayner · Rating 1 out of 5]

Whew boy did this not help my reading slump.

This book felt pseudo-intellectual to me and each poem relied on “impactful” (inflammatory) one-liners more than any real cohesive meaning.

[A Templeton · Rating 5 out of 5]

These poems went so deep but with a touch able to be so light as well. Generically and formally on it. In control of the reader while pretending to not care, maybe, like a Scorpio brooding in the corner.