Staff Pick
This book is astounding in so many capacities — its queering of language, its commitment to ambiguity and opacity, its attentiveness to violence against trans bodies on the one hand and to beauty and wonder on the other. What I love most is the way I find myself having to sound out each and every word in order to really recognize the language I am reading — the alternate spellings of words not only allow for different possible readings of a word, they also make me feel the struggle of articulation, the struggle of trying to find or say or receive a word that is being offered. There is such an uncertainty, an anxiety, around speaking — and why wouldn't there be? Words have been used to silence and oppress and negate trans bodies. These poems wish us to be more willing to struggle with language, to be less quick to understand and more open to what we don't easily grasp. Recommended By Darla M., Powells.com
Synopses & Reviews
Longlisted for the 2018 National Book Award
A finalist for the 2018 LA Times Book Prize in Poetry
A
New Yorker Best Poetry Book of 2018
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Vulture Best Poetry Book of 2018
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Library Journal Best Book of 2018
Selected by Fady Joudah as a winner of the 2017 National Poetry Series, Jos Charles’s revolutionary second collection of poetry, feeld, is a lyrical unraveling of the circuitry of gender and speech, defiantly making space for bodies that have been historically denied their own vocabulary.
“i care so much abot the whord i cant reed.” In feeld, Charles stakes her claim on the language available to speak about trans experience, reckoning with the narratives that have come before by reclaiming the language of the past. In Charles’s electrifying transliteration of English — Chaucerian in affect, but revolutionary in effect — what is old is made new again. “gendre is not the tran organe / gendre is yes a hemorage.” “did u kno not a monthe goes bye / a tran i kno doesnt dye.” The world of feeld is our own, but off-kilter, distinctly queer — making visible what was formerly and forcefully hidden: trauma, liberation, strength, and joy.
Urgent and vital, feeld composes a new and highly inventive lyrical narrative of what it means to live inside a marked body.
Review
“Disarming and engrossing . . . The collection undoes easy divisions between interior and exterior or science and nature.” Publishers Weekly (Starred Review)
Review
“Completely stunning in its lyrical leaps....The joy in reading this out loud, in the unraveling textures of each word....Vital, tender work.” Poetry Magazine
Review
“Through the strange labor of deciphering the text of feeld, I come to understand that Charles is transmitting an experience that I must allow to travel from her body into mine.” Tracy K. Smith, New York Times
Review
“Dazzling...In Charles’s hands, the language itself transitions, defamiliarized, and in its new spellings it opens to a poly-vocality where words contain hidden meanings.” Paris Review
Synopsis
FINALIST FOR THE PULITZER PRIZE
FINALIST FOR THE LOS ANGELES TIMES BOOK PRIZE
LONGLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD
A NEW YORKER BEST POETRY BOOK OF 2018
A VULTURE BEST POETRY BOOK OF 2018
A LIBRARY JOURNAL BEST BOOK OF 2018
Selected by Fady Joudah as a winner of the 2017 National Poetry Series, Jos Charles's revolutionary second collection of poetry, feeld, is a lyrical unraveling of the circuitry of gender and speech, defiantly making space for bodies that have been historically denied their own vocabulary.
"i care so much abot the whord i cant reed." In feeld, Charles stakes her claim on the language available to speak about trans experience, reckoning with the narratives that have come before by reclaiming the language of the past. In Charles's electrifying transliteration of English--Chaucerian in affect, but revolutionary in effect--what is old is made new again. "gendre is not the tran organe / gendre is yes a hemorage." "did u kno not a monthe goes bye / a tran i kno doesnt dye." The world of feeld is our own, but off-kilter, distinctly queer--making visible what was formerly and forcefully hidden: trauma, liberation, strength, and joy.
Urgent and vital, feeld composes a new narrative of what it means to live inside a marked body.
About the Author
Jos Charles is a trans poet, editor, and author of the collection Safe Space. She is the recipient of the 2016 Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Fellowship through the Poetry Foundation and the 2015 Monique Wittig Writer’s Scholarship. She received an MFA from the University of Arizona and currently resides in Long Beach, California.