Advantages of Being Evergreen

by Oliver Baez Bendorf

LGBTQ. Poetry. Latinx. From the author of award-winning debut collection The Spectral Wilderness, this is Oliver Baez Bendorf's second book, Advantages of Being Evergreen, winner of the Open Book Poetry Competition from Cleveland State University Poetry Center.

"Equal part prayer and potion and survival guide, Oliver Baez Bendorf’s remarkable Advantages of Being Evergreen is an essential book for our time and for all time. With rigorous compassion and great formal dexterity Bendorf imagines a new world for all of our animal selves in which we are truly seen and truly safe. At the same time these are poems that never shy from the shocking violence and cruelty of this world. I don’t know when I’ve read a book that is so gentle and ferocious at the same time. Over and over again people come together to make their individual and communal body whole, knowing all the while that so much of the world seeks to wreck even the simplest kinds of safety. Baez Bendorf is making a future grammar for the moment all of our vessels are free and held. I am living for the world these poems anticipate. And I’m so happy to be held by them in the times that keep coming on this endless road to safety. This is a book of the earth’s abiding wonder. And the body’s unbreakable ability to bloom." - Gabrielle Calvocoressi

Genres: Poetry, Queer, LGBT, Transgender, Latinx, Read For School

70 pages, Paperback

First published September 10, 2019

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

[Tamira · Rating 5 out of 5]

This lovely book of poems is so powerful to take in. Each time I open this book it truly feels like I'm holding a book of potent spells and prayers, woven with threads of magic, nature, ritual, identity and the tender yet fierce wildness of that which is otherworldly and also human. There is so much deep and good medicine here. It's truly nourishing to be present with this work that is so clearly shaped in depths of intimacy, vulnerability, truth and magic.

I'm placing this book on my cultural healing shelf as this body of work inspires deep listening and perspective outside of the dominant eurocentric cis-hetero narratives that are pushed in mainstream literature/culture. Let yourself be stirred and nourished by this book of spells, let these prayers inspire you to come home the holy wildness of your authentic self.

[Areeb Ahmad (Bankrupt_Bookworm) · Rating 4 out of 5]

// Oracle

sorry I missed your message, I
have no excuse except the kava
numbed my tongue again

(sure, only for a moment)

honestly felt I was deep under
water—awash in sunlight's move-
ments through canopy birch

I have come to the playground

to work (yes it seems I have this
backward)—children in neckties
sort papers on a bench, why?

I think I have come back,

already, as something else.
what am I still doing in this park,
pockets full of coconut meat,

scars where my breasts

were? dear fish bones, dear
open hose, today I am a static channel
carrying the weight of logic.



Baez Bendorf writes: "I become my wildest self through make-believe—to the river with this thunderous me: carrier and carried / both, everything else a tenderness held with string until it becomes my face entirely." Rivers, rain, and water are recurring images in his poetry. Whether it be "River I dream about. River from the inside. / River where we shout the feeling." or "I go to the river I was under, // I make the // river // red" or "... when the river rock is done / with me, I could belong to the evergreen." In a way, water is both outlet and home, a symbol of permanence and change, attuned to feeling and emotion. Reflected throughout is Oliver's vision of being, teeming with multitudes: "I thought I wanted to be everything all at once."

There's both joy and uneasiness about bodies, of being trans(formed), on belonging, and the dysphoria rising not out of gender identity but (trans)phobia and the status quo. "I wish for / all of us / bearded mon- / sters to know / we can be / soft too, loved too." Asking God to be commanded to come on the water, of the joyousness of sanctuary in the woods and the uncertainty of safety—this collection is an embodiment of tenderness, of "small pleasures / which are the bright- // est treasures in this dark- / ness". Bendorf is pleading: "mercy mercy mercy / mercy on us all." Softly echoing out into the night is a pithy but fervent prayer: "What I want from the river is what I always want: / to be held by a stronger thing that, in the end chooses mercy."

[Kathryn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautiful work of poetry. A deer, the body, rivers, a haunted house, the body as a haunted house, tears into salt, confetti staplers from a dream, warm campfire smoke, an adult who goes to the playground to work...
I read this book cover-to-cover, slowly, savoring the poems, and then revisiting my favorites. The imagery is gorgeous, full of wildlife scampering by and the smells of the forest and rivers. I really enjoyed the variety of emotions, lyric styles, and structures. Some of these poems are going to stick with me for a long time, like "After a while, we stop asking," "Elegy," "Dream," and "My body the haunted house."
I have to admit I read more prose than poetry but this was a great change of pace to slow down and savor the language, puzzle over some of the lines. I highly recommend! Thank you Oliver Baez Bendorf

"--so how long I take to open?
just look, you said.
look."

[Cedar · Rating 4 out of 5]

Stark and meditative interplay of wildness, sacredness and personal embodiment. Adored some parts, ambivalent about others

[Meg · Rating 3 out of 5]

read for school

[Tina Hull · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read for class. Very inspiring poetry. There is one specific style that while I would agree is creative, is not coherent. This text builds empathy for its author.

[Jamie Miller · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read it for class, I liked it

[S.G. Huerta · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is my favorite poetry collection I've read this year. I'm incredibly bad at writing reviews but this was everything I needed to read right now. Poems like "Elegy" and "My Body the Haunted House" will definitely stick with me for awhile. Shout out to the person at Malvern Books who recommended this book to me, and to Poem-A-Day for first introducing me to the amazing work of Oliver Baez Bendorf!

[justin · Rating 3 out of 5]

bedridden read #02!! discovered oliver's craft on a whim. while some poems i think left me a little empty-headed, others were immaculate. loved how solemn the collection is, tender and bathed in witchlight

[Camille Dungy]

The landscape of these poems is beautiful and treacherous. These pages are filled with catalogs of what it means to breathe deeply in your own living body, even if that body has yet to be lovingly recognized. Poet Gabrielle Calvocoressi (see her work also for more quality reading) calls Advantages of Being Evergreen (Cleveland State University Poetry Center) “Equal parts prayer and potion and survival guide.” Swollen rivers, congregating burs, and common spiders spin spells. There are mountain trails in these pages, and badlands, and precarious passage through hunters’ terrain. There is also hope, and hollering (and hollowing), and prophecy, and praise.

Review published originally with Orion Magazine: https://orionmagazine.org/2021/06/pri...

[Kham Labbé · Rating 4 out of 5]

It took me a fat minute to finish this book. On page 19, I read a poem that unlocked something in me that I didn’t know existed. So I needed a break to understand what was happening in my self conscious and how to process it—which is what makes this book a 9/10. It made me step back and learn something about myself.

My poetry professor gave it to me because she felt like it would fit me best as a person and as a writer and in each page I could see why she said this book was the one for me; it all hurts so good.

This book taught me to savor nature, my heart, my hips, my body, all parts of that nature I am to be enamored with.

[Cody Stetzel · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed the latest collection from Baez Bendorf. "Dear Rane Arroyo," while Rane Arroyo was invocated throughout the book both in spirit and intention, stood out as being one of the horniest and most lovely poems I found.

The work as a whole did a great job with contending with the image of monster and rivers, flooding the reader throughout with those damp and tender attributable sensations.

[Gabriel H. · Rating 4 out of 5]

"What I want from the river is what I always want:/ to be held by a stronger thing that, in the end, chooses mercy." --from "Who Spit into the Pumpkin, Who They Waiting For"

Other favorites: "Evergreen," "Rain and Ticks in Tennessee," "Dear Rane Arroyo," "Texture of Needing Brown," "Faggot Turf," "Who Stitched the Road Together," "Rainwater from Certain Enchanted Streams," "River I Dream About," "Other Names," "Witch Kept."

[Jonas Adam Stargazer · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book changed my life. I'd like to write a more full review at some point, but what I will say now is the poems are so formally innovative and expressive, and I felt myself encountering a language that felt entirely new and mysterious. Even though I'm transfemme not transmasc, I could really empathize with the speaker. One of my all-time favorite collections.

[Kathryn Turner · Rating 5 out of 5]

“What still grows in winter? Fingernails of witches and femmes, green moss on river rocks lit with secrets.”

From “Evergreen”, the poem that brought me to this collection.

Scenes from dreams, trans and queer magic, meditations on rivers, trees, moons and Midwest nature. Bendorf’s poems are quiet, sometimes violent, bite-sized spells.

[zoe · Rating 4 out of 5]

really enjoyed this work, particularly “dear rane aroyo,” “rainwater from enchanted streams,” “who spit in the pumpkin, who they waiting for,” “witch kept,” “we congregate,” and “the earth is my home.”

reading poetry written by queer people always feels like returning home to those who understand you most <333

[Simon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Takes my breath away - while also giving me room to breathe. Insistence on the body - then turns it inside out. Will be reading his first collection and returning to this one often.

[Mary · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved the nature in these poems, the quiet, the magic, the surrealness of the body and identity.

[Sam]

thank you Niya for lending me this book!

[Dora Prieto · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a very warming read. I love the subject matter and the relaxed tone. Definitely recommend.

[Ross Williamson · Rating 4 out of 5]

090520: quarantine buddy read #6 with keagan! who doesn't like a lot of river metaphors.