In their raw debut collection, Binded, poet H Warren, based in Fairbanks, Alaska, boldly charts a gender transition and expresses outrage about recent politics. The title has literal and figurative meanings. It's one element of transitioning to a nonbinary identity--"I inherited/ my first binder/ handed down/ by one/ of the only two/ trans men/ I know/ in this rural/ Alaskan town"--but also refers to feeling constrained by others' perceptions: "Binded when my friends say but you have a lot of feminine energy" and "I thought I was a boy/ and cried to my mother/ when I found blood between my legs." The metaphors for embodied trauma are of clothing and mending, both of which are often gendered. "I sewed myself together/ from a wound soaked in fabric," Warren writes.
The collection transcends the personal in satirizing media preoccupations and government failings. "Anti-Bathroom Bill: A Poem with P," which employs p-heavy alliteration, skewers a conservative obsession with bathroom facilities and ends with "piss off." "Get Back to Work America" gives voice to the widespread indignation about the events of Donald Trump's presidency, mocking the promise to "make [the country] great again" while ignoring "what Covid swallowed" and "the men with guns/ safe at the capitol." Allusions to other writers connect to a literary lineage. "A Love Song" opens with an allusion to T.S. Eliot, and there are poems "[r]e-working" Robert Frost and "In Conversation with" Toni Morrison.
These 50 heartfelt poems form a tender exploration of gender identity and an exposé of heartless politics. --Rebecca Foster, freelance reviewer, proofreader and blogger at Bookish Beck