E

Shortlisted for the 2026 Chicago Review of Books Award in Poetry

Like a game of telephone gone haywire, these mischievous mishearings and homophonic translations remix a classic of 20th Century American poetry.

C’mon, take the E pill (is it estrogen? ecstasy? something else entirely?). E practices mishearing as a bodily reworking of language alongside the poet’s hormonal transition, stretching the upper limits of homophonic translation to unleash the unexpected queer resonances of Louis Zukofsky’s “A.” E alchemizes mishearing into a political possibility of glitching, noncompliance, and protest. Not a translation, but maximally trans, mishearing transmutes language to generate new possibilities: how hormones change the body; how relationships evolve, multiply, and implode over time.