Anybody: Poems
In Anybody, Ari Banias takes up questions of recognition and belonging: how boundaries are drawn and managed, the ways he and she, us and them, here and elsewhere are kept separate, and at what cost identities and selves are forged. Moving through iconic and imagined landscapes, Anybody confronts the strangeness of being alive and of being a restlessly gendered, queer, emotive body. Wherever the poet turns--the cruising spaces of Fire Island, a city lake, a Greek island, a bodega-turned-coffee-shop--he finds the charge of boundedness and signification, the implications of what it means to be a this instead of a that. Witty, tender, and original, these poems pierce the constructs that define our lives.
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To speak any truth that can resonate beyond the particularities of their position, a poet must understand every particularity of that position, and all the forces that intersect to determine their view of the world. Banias is such a poet. It is questions about what constitutes the lyric and the universal...that drive his debut collection forward, and his readers into a more expansive, fully considered future.
Banias poses questions of identity and belonging in his striking debut...In lines alternately straight-talking and philosophical, Banias asks what it means to be 'a white dude' in our country, to be educated and privileged but still 'a fake man.'
Ari Banias has written one of the finest first books (OK, any book!) that I've ever read...These poems stake a claim on the future: they give us a poet who understands to the bone how syntax and line and music embody emotion, and how the integrity of the spirit is the maker's integrity.--Tom Sleigh
