[...]

by Ava Hofmann

At once a modern grimoire, a transition record, and a meditation on the encounter with the archive, […] employs visual techniques to reexamine that which is missing. Reimagining Old English charms in a willfully anachronistic, willful context, […] places the past and present into a conflicted conversation which finds synthesis in poems that combine delicately crafted verse forms and wildly experimental visual poetry. […] asks you to read what has not been written, and to rescue the things that have been lost.

Genres: Poetry

Paperback

Published November 1, 2021

Reviews

[DivaDiane SM · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is experimental poetry, which is fascinating in and of itself. I really liked the idea and for purposes of considering it for the 2023 Elgin Award, I skimmed quite a bit. I will definitely return to this and I think it will benefit from a slow read, rather than a quick one. I really appreciated the author notes at the end.

[Sarah Cavar · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hoffman is a writer of retaliation: she textualizes and (de/)contextualizes myth, counterhistory, and spellwork in service of her radical aims. Namely among these aims is a resistance to construction, whether under state-mandated participation in the violence of gender, or the page’s attempt at disciplining a transMad approach to creativity. In slicing, remixing, and strategically obfuscating the rest of […], Hoffman invites the reader to stick their hands in the muck, to turn away from the clean and the simple.

Multiple modes of presentation and purposefully hidden information hold at a distance those who seek transparent trans narratives. Languages of excess violence and destruction-by-omission entangle to invent a vexed bog body of trans mythological scholarship. After reading this book, I find myself lusting after the muck.