Following the release of the anthology Transmasculine Poetics: Filling the Gap in Literature and the Silences Around Us, editor Remi Recchia spoke with editorial intern Nic Job about identity, the nature of poetry, and the importance of representation and dialogue.
Nic Job: How does bringing the work of a number of different poets together differ from the work of putting together a collection of your own poetry? How does it mirror (or not mirror) the queer and transmasculine community?
Remi Recchia: There’s something exhilarating about, first of all, being trusted to read others’ work. I think it’s easy for us to forget that the very nature of poetry—that is to say, to reveal the truth of the universe in the most beautiful way possible—requires vulnerable. I’ve been an editor for thirteen years now, which is nearly half my life. So, naturally, I have the tendency to be cut throat, exacting. I am, for better or for worse, what the academy has trained me to be. But the saving grace of poetry is in its humanness. We have conventions in the genre, of course—are the line-breaks intentional? Does the guiding metaphor hold up?—but the job of the poet is to work within these formal constraints to, ironically, reveal the fundamental messiness of human nature. Poetry is Jurassic Park’s Chaos Theory. As famously argued by Dr. Ian Malcom à la Jeff Goldblum, “Life finds a way.”
All of which to say: assembling an anthology, much like editing a literary magazine, is different from curating a body of my own work. Because the work is by different poets, I’m presented with different styles, perspectives, lived experiences. Also, though, through that diversity, I’m able to find my own poetics reflecting back at me. Our names, are different, our bodies are different—but we’re all after the same thing, right? To live authentically as ourselves. Does it mirror the queer and transmasculine community? Well, sure. But no more than it reflects the beating, trembling heart of the human community at large.
NJ: In Transmasculine Poetics, many of the poems concern themselves with aspects of physical sexuality or the body. Can you speak to how gender and identity manifest in these tangible ways?
RR: I’d like to speak from my own experience to answer this question. As a trans man living in Oklahoma (which is why I was so excited to read and publish “Simple Divorces” with its refrain of “Oklahoma, receive me”), I don’t encounter discussion of transmasculine sexuality very often, and certainly rarely respectful, nuanced conversation. I am told on a nearly daily basis by those like Governor Stitt and Trumpian apologists that because I’m trans, I’m a pedophile, a rapist, a pervert, a person suffering from severe mental illness and delusion. On the one hand, this is extremely hurtful. I feel defeated at times. On the other hand, those claims are so ridiculous, unfounded—and, most importantly, so untrue—that it makes me want to insist on myself and my right to exist even more. Oh, you don’t want me to use that bathroom? I think I’ll hog the stall for an hour. You think my prosthetic penis is obscene? I’m going to get an even bigger one.
Since this is the current political atmosphere in which I am living, I found it refreshing to read accounts of sexual intimacy similar to mine. Not all trans men and other transmasculine people embody masculinity the same, of course, and I’m not making presumptions about the sex we “should” or “shouldn’t” be having. What I’m saying is that for many of us, sexual intimacy is tied to our perceptions of ourselves as men, and I want to celebrate that for what it is: joyful, enthusiastic (meaning, from the Greek, to be “filled with God”), and normal.
NJ: Can you talk a little bit about what transmasculinity means to you?
RR: I can try. I’ve struggled to answer variations of this question before, which is deceptively complex. I suppose etymologically, at its root, to be transmasculine is to be both trans(gender) and masculine. For me as a binary trans man, I find the “trans” part easy to explain: I have socially and hormonally transitioned from female to male. To be even more reductive, I once wore dresses; now I wear pants. But what does masculinity mean? I don’t know. It seems to me that in our culture, there’s a range, or spectrum, of masculinity. Some men, cis and trans, drive pick-up trucks and drink beer. Other men, cis and trans, write poetry and shop organic produce. Is one of them more man than the other? No. I guess what that means is that all men get to decide what manhood—what masculinity—means to them. For me, my masculinity is tied to the signifiers with which I adorn my body. I have a beard, I wear suit jackets, I tend to pick neutral colors. But if we remember Judith Butler, we start to recognize that we’re all just walking symbols, anyway. I don’t know. I have no interest in policing anyone’s gender presentation. All I know is that I’m a man.
NJ: What were some of the criteria you looked for in selecting poems and/or poets for Transmasculine Poetics?
RR: First and foremost, I wanted to represent a range of different personal lived experiences. I’m aware that I, as a white, heterosexual, cis-passing man, enjoy certain privileges that others do not. One of my very favorite things about literature is the windows, the tunnels, the secret passageways it creates into others’ worlds. That’s why it was such a natural leap for me to go from reading fantasy and writing wolfstar fanfiction to falling in love with poetry.
I believe representation matters, and what is an anthology if not the perfect medium to showcase a range of perspectives? Representation isn’t just related to identity politics, though. I was also excited about representing different forms of poetry. Transmasculine Poetics contains running titles (“My dick is a threat to national security”), erasure poetry (“The Poet Rewrites His Hysterectomy’s Operative Report”), found poetry (“Boy by Flood”), couplets (“The Apocalypse”), an abecedarian (“ABECEDARIAN for TRANS JOY”), and more. Lastly, I wanted to make sure I had a mix of emerging poets with little-to-no publication credits to their names and established, prize-winning poets. (And speaking of which, I’d like to give a huge shoutout to River Dandelion for his recent Lambda Literary award!)
NJ: Many of these poems focus on gender-affirming surgery, particularly hysterectomies and mastectomies. Is this a topic that you looked for when curating this anthology?
RR: In my original call for submissions, yes, I did encourage poems on the topic of gender affirming surgery. I suggested it as a potential topic, though certainly not exhaustive, because I’ve never seen an anthology feature such transmasculine intimacies before. I did my best to balance the types of surgery in question (e.g., top surgery, phalloplasty, hysterectomy)—along with other medical treatments such as hormone replacement therapy—because I did not want to argue, implicitly or otherwise, that one must undergo physical transition to count as trans. You’d be surprised at how many poems about top surgery I had to decline simply because I didn’t have room for them all! I think it’s beautiful that for some of us, after years of dysphoria and distress, we wanted to get this off our chest. Literally.
NJ: What are the “Silences Around Us,” and how does the poetry in this anthology work to fill them?
RR: What a good question! Thank you for this. On a metaphorical level, the “silences around us” are the appalling dearth of literature by and about trans men. I would have killed to get my hands on an anthology like this when I was a teenager or in my twenties when I was still figuring things out. Much of how we discover queer writers, even in college, is accidental. Did my instructor in Introduction to Poetry tell us that Whitman was gay when leading us through a close-read of Leaves of Grass? No. Did my American Literature professor tell us that Baldwin struggled with his sexuality? Or that Emily Dickinson was likely in love with Susan Gilbert? What about the fact that recent scholarship indicates that Louisa May Alcott used a male name among friends? No, of course not.
We’re told over and over again that these identities are incidental, maybe an interesting sidenote, that it’s the writing itself that matters. But how can you know the writing without knowing the writer? You can’t. I’d argue that that’s tantamount to citing a source without including the year of publication. People matter. People’s stories matter. Regardless of what Ron DeSantis and his legion of book-banners would have you believe, art doesn’t make itself.
On a literal level—to return to the question at hand—the “silences around us” refer to moments of exclusion and othering, be it the excruciating pause at work when a colleague figures out you’re trans and is unsure of how to proceed or when your doctor’s intake form fails to produce inclusive language to the extent that you don’t even exist. Need I go on?
NJ: This anthology feels particularly timely at the moment. Can you speak a little bit about how the poems you have curated illuminate the everyday realities of transmasculine individuals?
RR: I’m so glad that the anthology reads as timely because that’s exactly how I—and I’m sure most of the contributors themselves—feel. In 2023, when I was curating the anthology, forty-five states proposed anti-trans legislature. That’s all but five states in the country. The anti-trans bills have covered everything from bathroom access to state IDs to healthcare to youth athletics. Now in 2024, forty-three states have proposed anti-trans bills, and we’re only halfway through the calendar year. Forty-seven of those bills have already passed.
These bills are not abstract. They are not theoretical. They are traumatizing, violent, and dehumanizing. I’m not sure if this answers your question, but the poem that immediately comes to mind is “Bruce Springsteen Visits Me at the Doctor’s Office,” which is a wondrously imaginative piece in which the speaker, a transmasculine individual, gets a wellness exam. I think it really speaks to the displacement we feel and are, frankly, made to feel.
NJ: “The poets in this anthology offer great service in representing their softest, most vulnerable underbellies. They make love and tell jokes and pray to the Lord. I tremble and laugh and worship alongside them. Please, won’t you join us?” is a visceral impression to start the anthology with. What does this invitation mean to you, and why did you decide to conclude your editor’s note this way?
RR: Thank you so much for asking this. As an editor, it was important for me to honor the vulnerability that these contributors demonstrated in submitting to the anthology (which is, incidentally, the first anthology I’ve proposed and curated outside of school). So much of the work contained herein is, for example, not just about their bodies, but what they do with those bodies to other bodies. (Obviously I’m talking about sex.) I was—and still am, really—in awe at what the poets were willing to share. One of my absolute favorite poems in the anthology, “Post Op,” opens with the line, “I google how long after surgery can I have you / in my mouth and take my favorite answer.” Talk about evocative!
I felt compelled, too, to introduce a note of spirituality to the anthology. At first glance, some readers might question the reference to prayer in a collection of poetry written by those frequently shoved to the margins by religious communities. I would say, however, that God— whatever you want to conceptualize as God—is bigger than that. Faith is more than rules and sociological conventions. I mean, look at Kaveh Akbar! If he can’t provide a primer on expansive spirituality, no one can.
I’m going to take a leap and make myself super vulnerable here. When I started going to church again as an adult post-transition after a significant pause, I felt prouder and more certain of myself as a trans man than ever before. All the society-induced shame I was carrying because I was trans was lifted. I am beloved by God. I am transgender by God’s design. The two cannot be mutually exclusive.
NJ: Finally, for me, can you contribute to the age-old debate of activism vs art? Do you see Transmasculine Poetics as an act of activism, as art, or as something that is both, in-between, or something else?
RR: Aha! I anticipated that question, yet I’m not entirely sure how to answer it. Like I said before, art doesn’t make itself, which is to say that it doesn’t exist in a vacuum. You can’t sit by yourself in a dusty old study and think of beautiful things to say. That’s because beauty inspires verse. Community inspires verse. I think what I’m getting at here is that people need other people. If we’re going to survive anything in this age of genocide, white supremacy, and national disaster, we need to nurture art, poetry, music. But to do that, we need to see this art, poetry, and music, which is where visibility comes in, and thus activism. So, is Transmasculine Poetics a work of activism? Well, yes. Art is, by its very nature of representing the collective pain and joy of humanity, always activism.
Download the free PDF of Transmasculine Poetics today!
Remi Recchia (he/him), PhD, is a trans poet, essayist, and editor from Kalamazoo, Michigan. A five-time Pushcart Prize nominee, Remi’s work has appeared in World Literature Today, Best New Poets 2021, and Prairie Schooner, among others. Books and chapbooks include Quicksand/Stargazing (Cooper Dillon Books, 2021); Sober (Red Bird Chapbooks, 2022); From Gold, Ghosts: Alchemy Erasures (Gasher Press, 2023); Little Lenny Gets His Horns (Querencia Press, 2023); and Aphorism | Paroxysm (fifth wheel press, forthcoming). He holds an MFA in poetry from Bowling Green State University.
Nic Job is a queer writer with their MFA from DePaul University and a constant curiosity for the world—cultures, places, people, and themself. They are a human who loves humans, and all of their tangled-up ordinariness. Their fiction, non-fiction, and poetry is published in Club Plum, Defunct Magazine, Spare Parts Literary, and other magazines.
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