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Him or Her or Whatever is ultimately a book of love poems, it’s just that the poems sometimes don’t want to be seen as love poems because, after all, that might be embarrassing. These poems are interested in the whatever-ness of gender and genre and anything else that categorizes. They are fierce and vulnerable and extremely shy. There are lots of competing ideas in these poems. These poems are, after all, written by a Gemini.
In Him or Her or Whatever, "nothing is exactly like it is." Instead, everything is seen anew, washed in lyricism, (un)gendered, and made beautiful. Tyler Friend has written a powerful debut poetry collection.
– Sean Prentiss, author of Crosscut Him or Her or Whatever, posits the pronoun as an accusation, illuminating the ways syntax can affirm or challenge what we know, how it can be both weapon and refuge. This is trans poetry—trans from the Latin meaning "across, over, beyond."
From a review in Up the Staircase Quarterly by Rachel Stempel There is a profound fusion between nature, gender expression, sexuality, human experience, and that which is beyond human, that grows increasingly with each poem until the concepts become homogenous. Sex is two trees stood against each other; the human body’s two calves are “eager” mountains.
From a review in Miracle Monocle by Tessa Pickle |
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