奥利弗Bendorf
参观诗人
奥利弗Bendorf is a cartoonist, librarian, and educator. 他的第一本书， 幽灵荒野, selected by Mark Doty for the Wick Poetry Prize was reviewed widely and greeted with high acclaim. 在他的介绍中, Doty wrote: “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… 奥利弗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.”
Stacey Waite described the book, which was named a Best Poetry Book of 2014 by 熵的杂志, as “a queer ecology endlessly transformed by possibility, 悲伤, and the unruly wanting of our names and bodies.” And Natalie Diaz proclaimed that “Bendorf’s poems give us all we have ever wanted, to wake up and feel that the body we are in is ours, that the hands on the ends of our wrists—our body’s gates of tenderness—are large enough to hold in them all the things we have desired.”
Bendorf himself writes: “I’m interested in poetry that invents or cobbles together a vocabulary for all those little loves and miseries between or outside existing taxonomies. We invent when no other kind of structure fits the bill. We do it with tools, with relationship and family structures, with gender, bodies, poems. No name until we name, no form until we shape.”
出生于爱荷华州, he earned a BA in English from the University of Iowa, an MA in Library and Information Science and an MFA in Poetry from the University of Wisconsin, where he was the Martha Meier Renk Distinguished Graduate Fellow in Poetry, teaching workshops on 创意写作, 漫画, 和zine-making.
He has presented and taught internationally on topics including visual composition (漫画, color, 信息图, 和杂志), 创意写作, 动画, 酷儿数字化. A recipient of a Lambda Literary Fellowship in Poetry, his writing and comics have appeared in, 或者来自, 阿拉斯加季刊, 最佳新诗人, 黑鸟, 印第安纳州的审查, 第九个字母, 的骚动, 跨性别研究季刊, Troubling the Line: Trans and Genderqueer Poetry and Poetics，以及其他地方. 他目前住在华盛顿特区.
选择诗歌
But she’s decided we need to trace them in case I
结果证明是错的. 每天早上她叫醒我
用一张纸. 一开始，她很低调
all the tracings in a folder, until one day 我说 我想
至少看看事情会怎样发展，从那时起
we hung them on the wall chronologically. 当我
study them, they look back at me like busted
头灯. I wear my lab coat around the house to
make sure they know who’s observing whom. 如果我们
can ensure records, if we can be diligent in our
测试. 我用手指搂住她的手腕. 没有什么
感觉更小了. 不是她，不是水壶，也不是钥匙.
If my hands do grow, they should also be the kind
that can start a fire with just a deer in the road.
From THE SPECTRAL WILDERNESS (Kent State University Press, 2015)
我说 在幽灵的荒野中与我相见.
你说 I’ll meet 你 in the spectral wilderness
带上独木舟. 我说 在幽灵的荒野中与我相见
带上独木舟; I will bring a folio of blank paper. 你说
Okay, I’ll meet 你 in the spectral wilderness 带上独木舟; 你 will
bring paper; don’t forget a pen. 我说 好了，别忘了桨.
In the spectral wilderness, we grew ears like mushrooms.
We could hear things that were supposed to make us sick.
We smelled something we didn’t understand but someday
将. 这让我们变得有耐心. 在幽灵的荒野里，我依然
had to strap on my pleasure but it was bigger. 我站着撒尿
up. There was a house we loved in the spectral wilderness.
It had a rickety elevator and cracks between things and a yard,
so it seemed we 将 at last not have to choose between
gardens and goats and the affection of our neighbors
because we had forgotten to bring any cups of sugar with us
进入幽灵荒野，还是蛋. 大多数情况下，我们只想要什么
we wanted every day: some greenery, a base camp of our own,
& always a better way to remember the poetry
是在睡梦中出现的.
From THE SPECTRAL WILDERNESS (Kent State University Press, 2015)
Sometimes I mistake the sound of my voice
for a rubber tire on the shoulder of the road.
I mistake my shoulder for an angle formed
by two lines coming together in geometry.
I mistake geometry for the way mothers
are the holy holy holiest of holes in the heart
and I mistake holy for a dried-up plant
rolled into the pages of someone else’s vision.
I am just as full of shit as everyone, incl. 你.
And I mistake my fullness for abeyance,
mistake suspension for an early spring
兔子冻在了路上——我是
not the spring rabbit, I know, but it’s easy
to mistake my ears for tambourines; I am
good at them without expending any effort.
Once I mistook the tart infatuation of a
金橘是另一场无籽灾难.
I mistake seeds for nothing all the time.
I mistake time for space, space for freedom,
sparkles in the alley for a sign that our
universe is sentient after all, and loving,
and will take care of those of us who pray
然而错误，不是我们跪着
没错，不过是我们的手握在一起
that we may be mistaken for believers.
I mistake my hands for belief all the time.
我每天醒来都希望他们是
someone else’s, but so far they’re only
我的，当我把距离误认为
我容易误入歧途. 就像当
I can’t tell if someone is walking away
from me or toward me until it’s too late
在任何一个方向. 我想知道验尸官是否
mistake knees for elbows the way my love
分不清左右. 有时候，
or should I say spaces, in which I mistake
fire for work gloves, which is almost always
一个错误，反之亦然. 我想要一个指南针.
我需要解脱. 上帝啊，带我去吧，
错我回柔肩，
which I mistake so often for the road itself.
From THE SPECTRAL WILDERNESS (Kent State University Press, 2015)