Description

Wesleyan University Press, paperback

Publication Date: March 7, 2023

Publisher Marketing: Shakespeare’s 154 sonnets anagrammed into wildly new poems about queer desire and kink

The Wild Hunt Divinations: A Grimoire is a stunning second collection from National Poetry Series winner, Trevor Ketner. Comprised of 154 sonnets, each anagrammed line-by-line from Shakespeare’s sonnets, the book refracts these lines through the thematic lens of transness, queer desire, kink, and British paganism. The sonnets come together to form a grimoire that casts a trancelike and intense spell on the reader. Centered on love and desire in the English canon, this collection speaks to the ever-emerging and beautiful manifestations of queer love and desire. Relentless, excessive, wild, and tender, The Wild Hunt Divinations: A Grimoire sets itself to chanting from beginning to end.

When forty winters shall beseige thy brow,
gowns web (herb hysteria)–let’s thin flowery
then–gaudy bicep–insistent herd–leaf dyed
to holy doorway–hunt syrups–doze–given
that i swallow debt, let me whorl–feed lard
/ ale / ill breath–they get eye winks–husband,
of thudhurt, eyeray, saltwar–sheets yell,
tan–nude hyphen–i knot woe; sinewy, it sees
fingernails (limp waters, a hand sea), leather sets,
meshes–hewed out virus–debauchery: try a mop
or a match–i hot–i lucid–i wonderflush–stiffens:
exoskeleton / cum–cuddly human mass–la,
sings a boyish brute in his coven–cut–yep,
hood him–we want a wren duet / to be shelter,
a trans thud, sob, melt–oh, welt / honeyed wife.