[Anybody] is the portrait of an inner life that asks itself steadily how anybody or any body can be said to be anybody--girl, boy, fox...This charming, chattering young self is preoccupied with...poignant absences.-- "American Poets"
Ari Banias's Anybody is a book that acknowledges a boundary, escapes it, and redefines it.-- "Lambda Literary"
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.'-- "San Francisco Chronicle"
Born late in the twentieth century, tutored under the twin suns of Frank O'Hara and Guillaume Apollinaire, vexed by 'this set of meanings on my body, ' Ari Banias is a poet for this hour--bewildered, hopeful, and cracklingly alive, a citizen of the possible. How many utopias? (keep imagining them).--Mark Doty
Here is Anybody with its syntax of rupture and suture, its restless questions and metaphysical balloons. What a thrilling, original, generous, openhearted book. A book we have waited for, whoever we are.--Donna Masini
I'm so impressed by the range and grace of Ari Banias' Anybody. It's discursive, straight-talking, and thinky, then ghostlike, elliptical, and mischievous. It takes its time, then rushes; it's quiet, then bold; it's steeped in sociality, then ringing with solitude. I happily recognize its arrival, even if I know (as does Banias, quoting Berlant) that recognition may be but the misrecognition we can bear.--Maggie Nelson
One of the most unique voices I have ever heard in a first book...through all its interstates of narrative, candor, and image, [Anybody] presents an intersectional cross section of the American lyric, providing the reader with many occasions for joy, for remembering, for 'time to quiet down.'-- "Kenyon Review"
This collection takes quick-witted brushstrokes as it tackles societal boundaries, then slows down to meditate on the minutiae of the spaces that define us and the inaccessible spaces, too...[Anybody] can be read in one existential sitting, but it begs to be reread many times over.-- "Chicago Review of Books"
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.-- "Fanzine"
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