Books by Wren Hanks

" 'On Earth, a fish barricades her den / and emerges male two months later, / melon-head worthy of brawling and teeth, ' announces one of the brilliant sectioned poems central to Lily-livered. 'On Mars, the sunset is blue. / She asks me about this second life / of red dirt, burnt skin. What do you enjoy // about being a man?' Although framed by a series of 'transiversaries, ' to describe this collection in diaristic terms would not do justice to the overlay of questions raised around gender, beauty, diet, desire, violence, medication and self-medication. An interest in refrain and cyclical structures anchors us, pleasingly counterbalanced against enjambment and an adventuresome sense of the line; we welcome cultural cameos from Shakespeare, HBO, and indie rock. This is a stunning read that showcases a sophisticated, exciting approach to contemporary poetics." -Sandra Beasley, Count the Waves"Lily-livered is a beautifully braided catalog of ways to live and not die. Wren Hanks writes on friendship, hunger, touch, transformation, and the inheritance of a trait for which the chapbook is named. 'Imagine it happened in a barn, a meat cellar.' These poems unfurl as an array of forms, forms of life, with sensuous patterns and particulars. With 'stubble the possible field, ' Hanks breathes lines that combine ribaldry, romance, and refrain into stunning, surprising images and interconnections. This is a smart, moving collection that you will love reading alone or with friends. 'The ground is safe.' "-Oliver Baez Bendorf, Advantages of Being Evergreen

“We are witnessing the birth of an extraordinary voice in these poems” —Roy G. Guzmán, author of Restored Mural for OrlandoA truly incomparable collection, The Rise of Genderqueer constructs a voice with unmitigated and authentic yearning. Its poems soak ink into page from margin to margin, pressing into the reader’s assumptions about gender unmercifully. These poems demand, carry authentic wisdom, deliver keen argument, and disarm with sly wit. Wren Hanks challenges the status quo as neatly as a flower slid into the barrel of a rifle. These are utterly convincing prose forms studded with rhetoric he’s deftly remastered and sampled from our culture and conversations right now.“I’ll never be denatured, // I am nature,” Hanks’s poems insist, as the reader bears witness to a bigger world, light flooding into every corner, revealing what has always been true, vigorous, and expansive.