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stemmy things
A kaleidoscopic debut collection of poems performing queer excess and lyric ecstasy
This flirty collection traces unruly paths of becoming; its sprawling poems build towards an expansive world celebrating fluidity while casting a critical lens on state power, ecological precarity, and the yearning for queer utopia on stolen land. Referencing lineages of poets, musicians, workers and neighbors, as well as conversations between lovers and friends, stemmy things is a vision unraveling, breaking open to make space for glimmering while reckoning with the body’s multiple contexts. Layered, lush, and lavish, these poems offer up tangling, blossoming desire.
This flirty collection traces unruly paths of becoming; its sprawling poems build towards an expansive world celebrating fluidity while casting a critical lens on state power, ecological precarity, and the yearning for queer utopia on stolen land. Referencing lineages of poets, musicians, workers and neighbors, as well as conversations between lovers and friends, stemmy things is a vision unraveling, breaking open to make space for glimmering while reckoning with the body’s multiple contexts. Layered, lush, and lavish, these poems offer up tangling, blossoming desire.
144 pages, Paperback
First published October 11, 2022
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259 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
October 7, 2022
This is a strong debut collection from imogen xtian smith, a poet and performer living in Brooklyn. The title - stemmy things - is apt, as the collection blends an interest in gardening and cultivation with smith's lived experience as a trans person. The autobiographical pieces are thoughtfully done. So are the other works in this collection, some of which are excellent. My personal favorites were two of the longer pieces, Year of the Rat and true blue uncanny valley. There is more of a consistent voice throughout this collection than often seen in a debut, which would seem to auger well. smith is a poet to keep an eye on.
March 12, 2023
this is an excellent collection. the way smith grapples with and connects things like bodies, gender & sexuality, nature, growth, belonging, politics and language & its limits is dexterous, and leaves the reader questioning their own identity & perspective.
i lean more towards 4.5 than a straight 4, but i still think this collection could have been pruned down a bit more.
will definitely need to reread to soak everything in
i lean more towards 4.5 than a straight 4, but i still think this collection could have been pruned down a bit more.
will definitely need to reread to soak everything in
September 18, 2023
Loved loved everything loved
December 23, 2022
fuck. this book.
this perfect, messy, incredibly incredibly queer book. it is a living thing & it is the heart of everything & i have rarely loved poetry as deeply as this. every. single. queer. needs this.
this perfect, messy, incredibly incredibly queer book. it is a living thing & it is the heart of everything & i have rarely loved poetry as deeply as this. every. single. queer. needs this.
March 25, 2024
I’ve read so much in the last ten years about poetry as a statement on personhood. In Oren Izenberg’s introduction to Being Numerous: Poetry and the Ground of Social Life he argues the poem is proof of the person, their existence. And with Xtian Smith, the personhood is not just in the recording but the expressiveness while recording their life. In particular, sexuality, how personal the poems make sexuality to how they relate to their body. It’s the knowledge they find through pleasure—a knowledge explaining, celebrating, and elaborating on what inhabiting a body so completely can be for a person, and, in turn, the importance for a body to find the sexual expression that is best suited to themselves. I would further argue that Xtian Smith’s stance to sexuality and body is a rhetorical one. They are assertive and insistent on who they are, what leads them to realize they are doing what they need to to inhabit a body that is who they are.
And in the midst of this there exists a rhetorical position. Who are they in a queer utopia? Who are they when men see them, when other people see them, when people in Berlin see them, when their friends see them? How does their body make people see them? It’s the poet folded into the social, understanding how others contribute to them crafting themselves and also how they are still apart, solely themselves, even in a social context. In “year of the rat” the poet has found their chosen family, they feel the support and joy of being among others. But there’s always a senes of being alone, and knowing the self via those times when you’re alone.
It’s like how Xtian Smith chooses to account for personhood in poetry is twofold. A sexual, expressive, and poetic self among others, independent of them but also dependent on their support. And how to account for that to an audience, how to feel the body always as them and also as them to others. And being aware of this intersection the body is constantly experiencing as a part of the world, and the social aspect of experience, and how the social would act at the very least as a foil to their thoughts and at its worse a collective tyrant. It’s a drawn out description of what I see “audience” as in Xtian Smith’s book. And it’s because I imagine “audience” could have many facets to it. It could be viewed as a political statement, which Xtian Smith can be explicit about at certain points. The audience could be the people poets normally imagine sharing their poems with—readers composed of both the inside family Xtian Smith has registered in the poems and those people outside their chosen family, or the poetry world in general. In “so the maggots know,” Xtian Smith shows themselves mindful of an audience, and the people who might need to see who this poet is among their people.
And, for my reading, it’s the poet’s constant awareness of the people outside the poem, who the poet feels compelled to speak with, who the poet would like to be listening, because they need to, that makes a rhetorical reading so important to this book.
And in the midst of this there exists a rhetorical position. Who are they in a queer utopia? Who are they when men see them, when other people see them, when people in Berlin see them, when their friends see them? How does their body make people see them? It’s the poet folded into the social, understanding how others contribute to them crafting themselves and also how they are still apart, solely themselves, even in a social context. In “year of the rat” the poet has found their chosen family, they feel the support and joy of being among others. But there’s always a senes of being alone, and knowing the self via those times when you’re alone.
It’s like how Xtian Smith chooses to account for personhood in poetry is twofold. A sexual, expressive, and poetic self among others, independent of them but also dependent on their support. And how to account for that to an audience, how to feel the body always as them and also as them to others. And being aware of this intersection the body is constantly experiencing as a part of the world, and the social aspect of experience, and how the social would act at the very least as a foil to their thoughts and at its worse a collective tyrant. It’s a drawn out description of what I see “audience” as in Xtian Smith’s book. And it’s because I imagine “audience” could have many facets to it. It could be viewed as a political statement, which Xtian Smith can be explicit about at certain points. The audience could be the people poets normally imagine sharing their poems with—readers composed of both the inside family Xtian Smith has registered in the poems and those people outside their chosen family, or the poetry world in general. In “so the maggots know,” Xtian Smith shows themselves mindful of an audience, and the people who might need to see who this poet is among their people.
And, for my reading, it’s the poet’s constant awareness of the people outside the poem, who the poet feels compelled to speak with, who the poet would like to be listening, because they need to, that makes a rhetorical reading so important to this book.
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May 15, 2023an excellent debut collection that forges an ecopoetics of appalachia to nyc — with the tenuous understanding that the speaker moves “step step step over stolen ground.” asks what a love letter to the world, what utopic longing can be in the face of state and interpersonal violence — without answers, but with the insistence on asking and finding joy, eros, and creativity on the way. standouts include red dirt garden goth girl (the mashup of lucinda williams and paul takes the form of a mortal girl i’ve always needed), nicotine libidinal, wound/vision. after a reading of imogen and some other nightboat authors, my friends and i were discussing how we felt so anxious about what the state of art that engages the pandemic is. seeing its outgrowth in the midst and aftermath of so much pain feels strangely rewarding, like a first park rave after over a year indoors. the ache doesn’t go away, but new stages of possibility and new ways to have fun emerge.
November 20, 2022
the poems are often great - especially "year of the rat" and "true blue uncanny valley."
the problem is editorial. the collection is too long for the strongest poems to hold their ground.
the publisher should have given the poet at least 2 collections to let the poems do their full work.
the problem is editorial. the collection is too long for the strongest poems to hold their ground.
the publisher should have given the poet at least 2 collections to let the poems do their full work.
February 27, 2023
Extremely embodied poems that feel a little bit like you’re looking at a twitter discourse (not in a bad way)
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews