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We Are Mermaids: Poems
Effusive new poems by Stephanie Burt, “perhaps our greatest poet of having yet more to say” ( Boston Review )
Stephanie Burt’s poems in We Are Mermaids are never just one thing. Instead, they revel in their multiplicity, their interconnectedness, their secret powers to become much more than they at first seem. In these poems, punctuation marks make arguments for their utility and their rights to exist. Frozen isn’t simply another Disney animated musical but “the Most Trans Movie Ever.” Mermaids, werewolves, and superheroes don’t just fret over divided natures and secret identities, but celebrate their wholeness, their unique abilities, and their erotic potential. Flowers in this collection bloom into exactly what they are meant to be―revealing themselves, like bleeding hearts, beyond their given names.
With humor and insight, Burt’s poems have always cherished and examined the things of this world, both real and imagined objects of fascination and desire. In this resplendent new collection, her observation and care flourish into her most fulfilled book yet. These poems shake off indecisiveness and doubt to reach joys through romance and family, through nature (urban and otherwise), and through imaginative community. We Are Mermaids is a trans book, a fangirl book, a book about coming together. It’s also Burt’s best book.
Stephanie Burt’s poems in We Are Mermaids are never just one thing. Instead, they revel in their multiplicity, their interconnectedness, their secret powers to become much more than they at first seem. In these poems, punctuation marks make arguments for their utility and their rights to exist. Frozen isn’t simply another Disney animated musical but “the Most Trans Movie Ever.” Mermaids, werewolves, and superheroes don’t just fret over divided natures and secret identities, but celebrate their wholeness, their unique abilities, and their erotic potential. Flowers in this collection bloom into exactly what they are meant to be―revealing themselves, like bleeding hearts, beyond their given names.
With humor and insight, Burt’s poems have always cherished and examined the things of this world, both real and imagined objects of fascination and desire. In this resplendent new collection, her observation and care flourish into her most fulfilled book yet. These poems shake off indecisiveness and doubt to reach joys through romance and family, through nature (urban and otherwise), and through imaginative community. We Are Mermaids is a trans book, a fangirl book, a book about coming together. It’s also Burt’s best book.
120 pages, Paperback
First published October 4, 2022
15 people are currently reading
246 people want to read
About the author
Stephanie Burt
66 books81 followersStephanie Burt is the author of fourteen books of poetry and literary criticism, including Super Gay Poems and Don’t Read Poetry. A past judge for the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, she served as a board member of the National Book Critics Circle, is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, and writes regularly for the New York Times Book Review, the New Yorker, London Review of Books, the New York Review of Books, Raritan, and other publications. She is the Donald P. and Katherine B. Loker Professor of English at Harvard University.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 31 reviews
March 28, 2023
Content warnings are listed at the end of my review!
There's this balance with poetry and creative writing in general, where you have this air of frivolousness and illusion matched with the right amount of grounding facts (See the “Show, don’t tell” writing rule. This "tells" too much, and what it shows isn't particularly interesting.) and I just don't think the author has a firm enough grasp on it here despite her lengthy qualifications, which has me slightly dumbfounded as to how this happened. Nothing feels both genuine and refined to the right degree, leaving the whole collection feeling forced and undercooked. The theming is uninspired and typical (There is a Rick Roll poem for Christ's sake) while the writing is excessive, reliant on rhyme and thesaurus use to add "poetic" sparkle. I'm even trying to restrict myself here, but really, this was shockingly unimpressive. The attempts at grit are sterile, the attempts at bold are bland, the attempts at revelations are expectable.
The poems that are better still just aren't memorable, I think really comes down to the foundational themes not being fully considered and the storytelling needs refined. I read these and find myself asking "What was the point?" If someone asked me what was trying to be conveyed (on the less painfully obvious ones) I'd just blink and shrug. There's just a lot of describing with heavily diluted sociological observations that never clicks well into something final or artistic. I don't claim to be a poetry expert, I'm certainly not, so I could absolutely be reading this all wrong, but personally, this style was absolutely stale and bone dry for me to read.
Summary:
Readability: ★☆☆☆☆, 1.5 I think the only reason I finished this was I'd feel disappointed in myself if I couldn't finish a short poetry book. I spent hours mulling around trying to get myself together and just finish it. Poems were either mind-numbingly obvious or completely oblivious, both categories lacking any flavor to help swallow them down. At least it was just poems, I suppose.
Entertainment: ★★☆☆☆, 1.5 It wasn't downright evil or bad, it just... excessively wasn't interesting whatsoever. The themes were either birds, flowers, oceans, or punctuation out of all things.
Audience: Read it if you want, there's really nothing bad here, it's just forgettable.
Content Warnings: plane crash, self hatred, sex
There's this balance with poetry and creative writing in general, where you have this air of frivolousness and illusion matched with the right amount of grounding facts (See the “Show, don’t tell” writing rule. This "tells" too much, and what it shows isn't particularly interesting.) and I just don't think the author has a firm enough grasp on it here despite her lengthy qualifications, which has me slightly dumbfounded as to how this happened. Nothing feels both genuine and refined to the right degree, leaving the whole collection feeling forced and undercooked. The theming is uninspired and typical (There is a Rick Roll poem for Christ's sake) while the writing is excessive, reliant on rhyme and thesaurus use to add "poetic" sparkle. I'm even trying to restrict myself here, but really, this was shockingly unimpressive. The attempts at grit are sterile, the attempts at bold are bland, the attempts at revelations are expectable.
The poems that are better still just aren't memorable, I think really comes down to the foundational themes not being fully considered and the storytelling needs refined. I read these and find myself asking "What was the point?" If someone asked me what was trying to be conveyed (on the less painfully obvious ones) I'd just blink and shrug. There's just a lot of describing with heavily diluted sociological observations that never clicks well into something final or artistic. I don't claim to be a poetry expert, I'm certainly not, so I could absolutely be reading this all wrong, but personally, this style was absolutely stale and bone dry for me to read.
Summary:
Readability: ★☆☆☆☆, 1.5 I think the only reason I finished this was I'd feel disappointed in myself if I couldn't finish a short poetry book. I spent hours mulling around trying to get myself together and just finish it. Poems were either mind-numbingly obvious or completely oblivious, both categories lacking any flavor to help swallow them down. At least it was just poems, I suppose.
Entertainment: ★★☆☆☆, 1.5 It wasn't downright evil or bad, it just... excessively wasn't interesting whatsoever. The themes were either birds, flowers, oceans, or punctuation out of all things.
Audience: Read it if you want, there's really nothing bad here, it's just forgettable.
Content Warnings: plane crash, self hatred, sex
December 20, 2022
Picked this one up thanks to On Being's Poetry Unbound. A nice gateway into poetry for those new to it, like myself. An overall solid read. "A Prayer For Werewolves" is still my favorite poem in this collection.
August 10, 2023
there were aspects i did enjoy but… i wanted more?? a bit more depth, maybe? might warrant a reread!!
February 6, 2023
I feel really bad about giving a book of poetry one star, but I honestly did not like this collection at all. I should have DNF'd it after 5 poems, when I realized they were not hitting for me, but I needed this book for a book challenge. So I pushed on and read them all. Of the 56 poems in this collection, I liked 5. And honestly, I think I only really liked 2, but understood 5. The rest I didn't get at all. Obscure language, crazy spacing, the pacing felt wrong a lot of the time. I'm no poem expert, so this is probably all just me. Sorry.
March 8, 2023
You can live with your doubt,
that’s why it’s yours.
Some of us are going to be okay.
(from “We Are Mermaids”)
(from “Prayer for Werewolves”)
What will you do with your youth,
It wants to know, once you are safe
And free?
(from “Kurt Wagner’s Song”)
that’s why it’s yours.
Some of us are going to be okay.
(from “We Are Mermaids”)
Someone will probably love you for who you are.
If not, you’ll still find friends,
friends who, given time, or given warning,
will probably gather around you, hold your hands,
and wrap you in soft coats and blankets till the violence
inside your body ends.
Someone will probably love you for who you are,
not just for who you labor to be.
Maybe you’re lost in your skin today. Maybe you’re burning
and wish you could tear it all off. Please don’t. You are variously
a marvel, an athlete, a wilderness, a source of warmth
and a way to learn from fear.
(from “Prayer for Werewolves”)
What will you do with your youth,
It wants to know, once you are safe
And free?
(from “Kurt Wagner’s Song”)
December 22, 2023
DO POETS WHO write well and publish widely on the topic of poetry ever worry that their criticism will overshadow their poetry? Arguably, this happened to Randall Jarrell, one of the best American poetry reviewers of the 1950s but also a poet--but, as it happens, one now remembered for only one poem, "The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner," even though he wrote quite a few other good ones (e.g., "90 North").
Ange Mlinko, say. At this point, do more people read her reviews than read her poems? Is that unfortunate?
Stephanie Burt is perhaps an even more striking example, as she is not only a widely-published reviewer of poetry but also the author of several books of criticism (including one on Randall Jarrell). Given that she publishes in the New Yorker, the New York Times Book Review, and the London Review of Books, are her poems ever going to have as large a readership as her reviews?
Probably neither Mlinko nor Burt worries much about this discrepancy. Still, I wonder, if they could magically flip the size of their audiences so that their poems were more widely read than their reviews, would they hesitate to do so?
Graywolf Press is doing their part, having given the cover of We Are Mermaids an eye-catching trio of comic-book-style mermaids, so that the bookstore browser might think the book a short graphic novel and give it a quick perusal.
The thing is...I don't think a quick perusal would do the volume justice. Burt is a subtle, understated kind of poet, her syntax sophisticated, her forms ingenious, her best trick a reverse-angle perspective, as when she lets punctuation marks speak for themselves, or the poem titled "Whale Watch" that turns out to be from the point of view of the whales.
Well, maybe I'm being pessimistic. I hope the folks who pick up the book will sit with it a while. It has some fine poems about being trans--and for that matter, some fine poems about comics, so that cover is accurate as well as enticing.
Ange Mlinko, say. At this point, do more people read her reviews than read her poems? Is that unfortunate?
Stephanie Burt is perhaps an even more striking example, as she is not only a widely-published reviewer of poetry but also the author of several books of criticism (including one on Randall Jarrell). Given that she publishes in the New Yorker, the New York Times Book Review, and the London Review of Books, are her poems ever going to have as large a readership as her reviews?
Probably neither Mlinko nor Burt worries much about this discrepancy. Still, I wonder, if they could magically flip the size of their audiences so that their poems were more widely read than their reviews, would they hesitate to do so?
Graywolf Press is doing their part, having given the cover of We Are Mermaids an eye-catching trio of comic-book-style mermaids, so that the bookstore browser might think the book a short graphic novel and give it a quick perusal.
The thing is...I don't think a quick perusal would do the volume justice. Burt is a subtle, understated kind of poet, her syntax sophisticated, her forms ingenious, her best trick a reverse-angle perspective, as when she lets punctuation marks speak for themselves, or the poem titled "Whale Watch" that turns out to be from the point of view of the whales.
Well, maybe I'm being pessimistic. I hope the folks who pick up the book will sit with it a while. It has some fine poems about being trans--and for that matter, some fine poems about comics, so that cover is accurate as well as enticing.
June 19, 2024
"All things must come/to an end, but I never/want them to end..."
The first quarter of the book was very strong. The poems were solid and real and tangible but then Burt began to describe flowers and trees and my eyes fell out. I know nothing about peonies or helical vines or lilacs. I don't even know what a quail looks like.
But back to the book. I had a hard time relating to Burt -- not because she's transgender but because she's so indomitable: "you can live with your doubt/that's why it's yours/some of us are going to be okay."
Burt has every right to her strength of spirit, the broadcasting of her intention to not only survive but to fully live. Good for her. Great for her. Huzzah, I say, but that's a one-way huzzah.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that nihilism is the way. If I believed that, I wouldn't read a book or do much of anything. I'm just saying that sometimes, nothing is gained. No lesson is learned. Sometimes the evil we do just goes right on exponentially multiplying into the future.
Well, that's that. It was ok. Burt is obviously talented -- it's just that she's talented in a language I find hard to understand.
Huzzah?
The first quarter of the book was very strong. The poems were solid and real and tangible but then Burt began to describe flowers and trees and my eyes fell out. I know nothing about peonies or helical vines or lilacs. I don't even know what a quail looks like.
But back to the book. I had a hard time relating to Burt -- not because she's transgender but because she's so indomitable: "you can live with your doubt/that's why it's yours/some of us are going to be okay."
Burt has every right to her strength of spirit, the broadcasting of her intention to not only survive but to fully live. Good for her. Great for her. Huzzah, I say, but that's a one-way huzzah.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that nihilism is the way. If I believed that, I wouldn't read a book or do much of anything. I'm just saying that sometimes, nothing is gained. No lesson is learned. Sometimes the evil we do just goes right on exponentially multiplying into the future.
Well, that's that. It was ok. Burt is obviously talented -- it's just that she's talented in a language I find hard to understand.
Huzzah?
December 23, 2023
A collection of poems about identity, the body, gender, sexuality, hope, and hatred.
from Poem of 5 a.m.: "The fear that you woke up again in your childhood bedroom, / that your whole adult life was a dream. / There is the plexiglass, or Prespex, case / guarding the used paperbacks from volume one / to volume nineteen. Volume three was a library loan. / They make a good team."
from We Are Mermaids: "The salt of the ocean is always the salt of tears, / melancholy but at the right / dilution, or concentration, life-giving. // It has been there since before / the beginning of tragedy, / when what would become / us was just trying to get through the day."
from Impatiens: "The mature blooms can lay across / each other casually, like couples in high school hallways"
from Poem of 5 a.m.: "The fear that you woke up again in your childhood bedroom, / that your whole adult life was a dream. / There is the plexiglass, or Prespex, case / guarding the used paperbacks from volume one / to volume nineteen. Volume three was a library loan. / They make a good team."
from We Are Mermaids: "The salt of the ocean is always the salt of tears, / melancholy but at the right / dilution, or concentration, life-giving. // It has been there since before / the beginning of tragedy, / when what would become / us was just trying to get through the day."
from Impatiens: "The mature blooms can lay across / each other casually, like couples in high school hallways"
December 9, 2022
Quite good. Probably merits 4 stars, but had the misfortune to get read right after a couple of Eavan Boland collections, and I prefer Boland's style--which few can match. (Li-Young Lee is a good match for Boland, though, if you need a readalike.) Anyway, good poetry. Special shoutout to the poem "Alison Blaire Explains Herself" which is an X-Men reference I wouldn't have understood without having listened to the Jay & Miles X-Plain the X-Men podcast. (Also shoutout to the podcast. It's great.)
Also, excellent cover art. Graphic novel quality.
Also, excellent cover art. Graphic novel quality.
January 8, 2024
Admittedly, i read this immediately following one of the best poetry collections of my life, but this just felt... flat? I don't regret reading it, but i didn't feel like there were any lines or images or poems that kept bouncing around in me as or after i read it. Which is my expectation with poetry--something that grabs my brain for a while. It felt very... factual? Which i know is a thing, but just isn't my thing.
2.5 stars rounded up.
2.5 stars rounded up.
April 26, 2024
This was fine. A lot of the poems seemed to lack depth and were just rambling. It took me a while to get into the collection and though there were a few very clever and lovely poems, the collection as a whole wasn't for me. I think I expected more from this than what it gave.
.
My favorites:
-"Whiter"
-"Sparrows in the Natick Collection"
-"Two Shields"
-"Love Poem with Major Appliance"
-"Otter Music"
.
My favorites:
-"Whiter"
-"Sparrows in the Natick Collection"
-"Two Shields"
-"Love Poem with Major Appliance"
-"Otter Music"
January 8, 2024
i picked this up on the new arrivals shelf to put in the graphic novels section. it has a graphic novel cover and a graphic novel title so it must be
poetry.
quite good poetry at that. some of which are comic related, "Love Poem With Comic Books On Saturday," "Plastic Man Meets Reed Richards In Heaven."
poetry.
quite good poetry at that. some of which are comic related, "Love Poem With Comic Books On Saturday," "Plastic Man Meets Reed Richards In Heaven."
March 27, 2023
This collection of poems is so relatable as a nonbinary person! This collection is “for all the letters in our alphabet, and the people inside of them”. One of the reviews on the back summarizes this collection perfectly when they said, “breaking through the binary to honor our most authentic selves” (Amber Tamblyn). I feel seen, I feel loved and I feel like I’m not alone in my struggles and perseverance in this world.
May 19, 2023
“I used to be the most relatable gifted child the world had ever seen, in my Yoda sleep shirts and pointe shoes. Come at me: I'd take it.
I used to be everyone's sweetheart. Now I'm a brass-buckled, leather-booted
pirate queen.”
I used to be everyone's sweetheart. Now I'm a brass-buckled, leather-booted
pirate queen.”
May 11, 2025
I was not expecting to be rick rolled by a poem.
In other news, this is hard to rate because I ABSOLUTELY EFFING LOVED some of these poems (;, the planes, the werewolves or the Parkway Deli ones for example) and felt meh about others.
In other news, this is hard to rate because I ABSOLUTELY EFFING LOVED some of these poems (;, the planes, the werewolves or the Parkway Deli ones for example) and felt meh about others.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
October 11, 2025
I really like these poems. The poet is calm and measured and clear and funny. She is a trans woman who is reaching out, in part, to describe her experience in really smart, thoughtful ways. It is subtle and wise, interesting and insightful.
December 25, 2022
Favorite poems: Before the Wedding, Some Like It Hot, Introduction to Trans Literature, Otter Music, & Love Poem with a Roll on Its Side
January 29, 2023
A great collection of poems with perspective.
April 18, 2023
3.5/5
August 1, 2023
More observational than insightful.
November 7, 2023
did not expect to be Rick rolled via poem
December 1, 2023
Read Harder Challenge #20 Read a book of poetry by a BIPOC or queer author.
February 28, 2024
Language is fabulous! Such imagination, such command of scene. And underneath it all, so much yearning and desire to love oneself as part of - not separate from - the rest of the world. Lovely.
May 3, 2024
the vibes were cool, i only really loved half of the poems. some of them had great ambiences but didn’t give me much emotion, however its got good poems abt the trans experience
May 19, 2024
Beautiful poetry. A quick and enchanting read.
June 8, 2024
This collection was a little hit-or-miss to me.
Read
August 19, 2024Sealey Challenge 2024. 18/31
June 12, 2025
Didn't completely finish. Poems are fine. Nothing mind-blowing. I'm also not a poetry connisiouer.
August 2, 2025
Ahhhhhmazing.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 31 reviews