Transgenesis

Praise for Transgenesis “Ava Nathaniel Winter’s Transgenesis puts us in the presence of a curious and brilliant mind. They seek to understand past deadly bigotries—the Shoah and lynchings—as a way of surviving the present and imagining a future of change. There is querying in these poems, which delve into various archives and engage with historical texts—old stories—and question the market for Nazi and KKK memorabilia and other material culture from historic atrocities. These kept objects and texts are carefully considered as the speaker ruminates on masculinity, gender, and discrimination, sharing intimate moments wherein the speaker sees and is seen in their body. Ultimately, these care-filled poems provide the reader with nourishment. You will be changed for the better by reading this necessary book—I am immensely grateful to see it in the world.”—Sean Hill, author of Dangerous Goods “In this fearless exploration of gender and identity, Ava Nathaniel Winter meditates on the ways humiliation and degradation shape us all. Navigating a path forward by engaging the pasts of Jewish forebears, those who survived the Holocaust and those who did not, Winter contemplates both the nature of desire and the global consequences of racism, sexism, transphobia, and colonialism. The poet courageously faces her own complicity in these matters of ongoing marginalization and oppression, writing with compassion and psychological acuity into the deep work of creating and maintaining an authentic self among others. The scope of Transgenesis, along with its crucial discoveries, are timely reminders of our common humanity, in all its flaws and struggles.”—Kathy Fagan, author of Bad Hobby Praise for Safe House “As Ava Nathaniel Winter insists in her poem ‘The Field,’ we must ‘Know the field, / pungent and sun-touched, is both more and less / than a field.’ Contained within its cultivated cycles of growth and harvest are, beneath the horizon and our notice, lives and deaths we cannot control. It is this carnal joy and decay that Winter writes her poems in praise and memory of. In lines decorous and restrained, Winter builds us a Safe House that is anything but safe, where our passionate bodies are thoroughly at home.”—Kathy Fagan, author of Bad Hobby “Ava Nathaniel Winter’s Safe House is a dense and untamed collection. With marked precision and rich language, the poems tug, lure, and serenade you into a labyrinth of unexpected tales. Some toothy and smart-mouthed, others demure and at times devious, Winter’s poems change the world you thought you knew.”—Jeanann Verlee, author of Racing Hummingbirds “This collection is full of absence, loss, heartbreak and most importantly, a reclaiming of the voice. What I found fascinating is Winter’s interrogation of maleness and bodyness—a gay mob boss meets his lover, Abraham studies his son, a man is released to his family on parole. These poems know that all love carries risk.”—Hannah Stephenson, author of In the Kettle, the Shriek “The poems somehow find a fulcrum in a space that occupies both violence and compassion. They are gentle poems, but unafraid to illustrate for their readers some of the complicated questions we seem to face so often we hardly realize it—questions, for example, about how we treat those we love, especially after we love them, when we have entered that odd space that we tend to call ‘moving on.’”—Molly Rector, Daily Record