Inside the refuse of our pre-/mid-/post-apocalyptic age, Ari Banias revels in the beauty hidden outside the reach of capitalism’s ugly hand—sometimes discovered in his microscope’s lens (“a large tree tosses its wig a little”), sometimes naked and agape before a vista (“when the frantic hummingbird darts / in the field of tinsel in the grapevines shimmering / what is it you see”). This book of poems is a meditation on the absurd majesty and horror of gender and the intersections of race and class, recognizing the crooked applications of care and violence and excoriating even the poet’s own complacencies (“I must / need to conquer the notion / anything needs conquering”). Banias has crafted, word by deft and hard-thought word, a shudderingly profound collection, holding the hypocrisies of living in this world up like a dollar bill to the terrible light: “microplastics buried imperceptibly in / the face I can’t completely / hold the / face I love.”
A Symmetry by Ari Banias. Published by W. W. Norton. The editor is Jill Bialosky. A Symmetry is a finalist for the Publishing Triangle Award for Trans and Gender-Variant Literature. The winner will be announced on May 11.