Wick Poetry First Book: Spectral Wilderness (PDF)

Winner of the 2013 Stan and Tom Wick Poetry Prize Mark Doty, Judge"e;It's a joy. . .to come nearer to a realm of experience little explored in American poetry, the lives of those who are engaged in the complex project of transforming their own gender Oliver Bendorf writes from a paradoxical, new-world position: the adult voice of a man who has just appeared in the world. A man emergent, a man in love, alive in the fluid instability of any category."e;-Mark Doty, from the Foreword"e;Bendorf's collection indeed opens the door to a spectral wilderness, an otherworldly pastoral, a queer ecology endlessly transformed by possibility, grief, and the unruly wanting of our names and bodies. Stunningly lyrical and beautifully theoretical,The Spectral Wildernessis an invitation one cannot turn down; the book calls us to travel with Bendorf, to study the topography of becoming because "e;what we used to be matters"e; in the way that language matters-however fleeting, however mistaken, however contradictory it might be."e;-Stacey Waite, author ofButch Geography"e;What gorgeous and ravenous rackets Oliver Bendorf's poems are made of; what a yearning and beautiful heart. 'Lift a geode from the ground and crack me open,' he writes, which is more or less what these poems do for me: break me open to what might sparkle and blaze, what might glisten and burn inside. The Spectral Wildernessis a wonderful book."e;-Ross Gay, author ofAgainst WhichandBringing the Shovel Down