“I’ve changed my name / & my clothes too / on my way to / liberation.” – H. Melt, “ON MY WAY TO LIBERATION”
Would hate for y’all to think the editorial standards here at Lazy & Entitled have fallen too far, but sometimes the column title and the week’s book title just align. Listen, because we used to say this back in the aughts, before gay marriage was legalized: you know a trans or non-binary person. It’s a small percentage of people, but they’re all around us, enough that you really ought to get over yourself if you have a problem with it. David Lynch had a different phrase. It’s just like how you know someone who’s had an abortion, even if no one has ever told you that they’ve had an abortion. Anyway, had to title this week’s post the same as the book. Sometimes the simplest sentence is best.
Before we get to the book—we had a new podcast this week! It’s mostly a few excerpts from our reading last week, featuring Sara Matson, Bridget Gordon, and Julián Martinez. Of course, you’ll hear some music from Brendan, and a poem from me, too. If you’re wondering whether we’ll have a reading put up on YouTube ever again, the answer is that we’d like to. Adam is our Video Guy, from cinematography to editing, and he’s got a lot on his plate right now (go watch Haunt Season). Doing the podcast thing is more in our wheelhouse, though. Brendan is smart enough to know how to record things live, although our first time trying was literally at the reading. So have a little sampler of reading. You gotta come out to see the whole thing, but hors d’oeurvres are better than starving, right? Yes, you will starve without poetry.
Apple | Spotty | SoundCloud
What I’ve Been Reading This Week
Well, I suppose I’ve spoiled the title.1 But a book by someone I’ve wanted to read for a while—I see them around my neighborhood, I’ve seen them around at events. A book by someone who makes a lot of the Chicago indie lit scene go, don’t I owe it to this author to give their actual work a shot, too? Well, making the rounds at AWP this year, I stop by the Haymarket table, and whaddyaknow. I could not put off this author any longer. I’m talking, of course, about There Are Trans People Here by H. Melt.
There Are Trans People Here by H. Melt: Poetry is an art form that demands precision in language. Poetry doesn’t always hold the promise of communication, but it does promise a certain care put into language. So when you come across a collection of poems that seems relatively straightforward, it’s good to ask “are other poets just trying to code talk with Robbie Coltrane, or is a deliberate choice being made?” H. Melt’s poems have music image metaphor, they have juxtapositions, they have enjambments and voltas, they do all the poem things. These poems don’t often surprise, but that’s not necessarily a weakness. What these poems lack in moongazing, they make up for in crisp clarity. There is a directness here that you have to realize is necessary. It might not occur to you, maybe because you’re the type of person who willingly picked up a book of poems by a trans poet and read it, but the direct (“Let us hope for a day / when we no longer / need to pray for / our safety.”) and sometimes pedestrian-seeming demands of this book (“At the trans museum / admission is free / for trans people”) are controversial to some people.
You might also just not know about Magnus Hirschfeld, who “established the Institute for / Sexual Science in Berlin // a hybrid / health clinic / & lecture hall / library & archive / proving we exist // in 1933 / nazis burned / Hirshfeld’s books.” I knew about the research into gender and sexuality that was happening in Weimar Berlin, and I’ve heard the name Magnus Hirschfeld, but I had forgotten what he did and had forgotten Hitler’s “most dangerous Jew in Germany” epithet for him.
This book was published in 2021. Trans people have been under explicit attack by just about everyone before, during, and after 2021. Conservatives and bigots2 alike have been in a hyper-panic about the fact that the gender binary is a myth, and it’s resulted in Republicans trying to legislate trans people out of existence and Democrats openly wondering if they should adopt a “we hate trans people too” platform. A book like this—which is full of wonderful poems, is a blast to read, and will teach you about some things—is a necessary statement. No matter what the politics are, trans people have existed and will continue to exist. They deserve liberation, too.
LINKS!
Something to listen to while you browse? How about some G.L.O.S.S., since H. mentions them in the book?
- This Week in ICE: Life As An Undocumented Trans Sex Worker In The Age Of ICE by Hallie Leiberman and Two Nights Outside ICE’s New Jersey Concentration Camp by E.Y. Zhao in Defector, Protester hit by car entering ICE’s Delaney Hall as families demand ‘Free the dads’ on Father’s Day by S.P. Sullivan in NJ.com, Federal agents track down Syracuse woman, demand she remove Instagram post about ICE by Michelle Breidenbach in Syracuse.com, ‘This is injustice’: how leftist zines were used to sentence anti-ICE protesters to decades in prison
by Lex McMenamin in The Guardian, one concentration camp down, how many left to go: Florida’s ‘Alligator Alcatraz’ immigration detention center has closed, governor says from the Jeffrey Collins in AP, via PBS - Ballroom culture shines at New York City Hall Pride celebration by Jack Walker in Advocate
- Children’s authors and illustrators launch ‘We Are Better Than This’ campaign against AI by Lauren Brown in The Bookseller
- “Wonton Gone Mad” by Elena Zhang in Pithead Chapel
- Want more OF Cieri? Of course you do. Here’s “GIRLS IN BIKINIS ON ROLLER SKATES IN OUTER SPACE VERSUS BIKINI GIRLS WITH MACHINE GUNS” in Misery Tourism
What’re you still doing here? Want to listen to a good band for Pride Month, while also getting a preview of next month’s Albums I Should’ve Listened To Already?
If you work in the service industry, may you clean up in tips this weekend. Look, summer’s starting in earnest. It’s the best time of the year. Stay safe out there, and most importantly, live life the way you want to live it. Be your truest self.
Sorry you got an email,
Chris
- And, not that you probably care, but I do want to say up front that I usually like reading more than one poetry collection for poetry week, but this has been a chaotic month. There is a light at the end of the tunnel for all of this enigmatic chaos that I’ve been alluding to, so rest assured that yr man the shipwrecked sailor will be fine. Alas, despite my TBR pile and my eagerness to jump into it like a pile of fresh damp leaves, I read one book this week. ↩︎
- all conservatives are bigots, but not all bigots are conservative ↩︎