This is a beautiful little book of poems, published by A Midsummer Night’s Press. I didn’t expect to be so breath taken by these poems, and that it would provoke such feeling of recognition and new thoughts in me. It is often hard for me to get something out of poems in English, because I often feel that I lack knowledge of the finer tunes of the language. But Raymond Luczak’s poems got through that barrier of language. I want to quote some verses from «Instructions to hearing persons desiring a deaf man»:
[…]
His long beard is thick with distrust.
You are another curiosity seeker.[…]
His face is an inscrutable promise.
You are nothing but paper and ink.His body is more than a secret language.
Tourists are rarely fluent in it.[…]
Those lines describe a feeling I know, and probably most transgendered people do too. Those lines could have been written about a transman.
Luczak‘s poems really inspired me, and I would like to thank the publisher for giving me the opportunity to read them!
Tarald Stein 