Greyhound

by Aeon Ginsberg

A memoir-in-verse about the links between movement and how it influences gender identity, perception, and performance, utilizing the bus terminal as a throughway to discuss transition. The book discusses issues that deal with safety, passing, rural and city queerness, police and prison abolition, and autonomy. Greyhound is one poem, routed in the authors life, that is the journey and the destination and how those two places are linked through the movement between each other. It is a book for outcasts, true-freaks, weird-o’s, and forever and always anyone trans.

Genres: Poetry, Transgender, LGBT

83 pages, Paperback

First published October 15, 2020

Reviews

[Dylan · Rating 5 out of 5]

So happy my boyfriend found this for me at a random used book store in Michigan. :)

[Carolyn DeCarlo · Rating 5 out of 5]

I fucking loved this collection and how it made me think. There's something really higher thinking about these poems in their use of language and the way they play with language. There's a consideration for all meanings of the word, almost as if Aeon is a linguist meticulously excavating the origins of the words they use to define themselves and the world around them. A big influence on the book is the word "trans" and its use to define a person's gender, but also as the root of transit and transform. The eponymous greyhound here is not only the bus (i.e. transit service), but also the "bitch" (i.e. female dog). In their bio, Aeon refers to themselves as a bitch, and at first I thought this was meant to be inflammatory – but throughout the collection Aeon ponders the questions of whether they are feminine and/or animal. While this is initially denied, by the end the speaker's perspective has shifted to accommodate these modifiers. The speaker mentions having dropped out of school twice, but the tone of this collection is hyper-intellectual, in an incredibly accessible way. Aeon is encouraging you along with them through all of the questions and directions taken along the trajectory of this collection. By the way, this read to me as a collection of poems without titles, but I believe it may actually be intended as one long book-length poem. I enjoyed breaking them up across the span of the day. While the poems are never explicitly set in Baltimore, I know this is Aeon's home and it was a comfort to think of these poems being set in and around my birthplace while I'm living so far away. (5/30)

[zia]

poetry for people who have a relationship to a body

[Jorba · Rating 5 out of 5]

great. very beautiful at times