The angst and transcendence of that unique point in a transitioning person’s life—the last days that they exist in their birth gender, aware something shattering is emergent beneath the surface— is rarely captured so well as with the clarity and grace of Joy Ladin’s Impersonation. Written as part of a poetry triptych that includes Transmigration… read more

This week, two poems from Joy Ladin’s The Definition of Joy, forthcoming from Sheep Meadow Press.

Ladin, Gottesman Professor of English at Yeshiva University, is the author of five books of poetry, including Lambda LIterary Award finalist Transmigration. Her memoir, Through the Door of Life: A Jewish Journey Between Genders, was published in 2012 by University of Wisconsin Press…. read more

I’d like not to tell you about Joy Ladin. I know her professionally, but if I tell you her history, Coming to Life becomes her life story. The poems flatten, as you go hunting for clues. Attentive readers might find them anyway: “You were twenty-five again./I was still a man. Lit/by a lifetime’s bitterness” (“Something… read more

Convention insists that I call Amnesiac (Sheep Meadow Press) a collection of poetry, but open Amnesiac and browse through its pages and you will see it is more than poetry. The forty-one ‘entries’ enumerated in the table of contents are poems, yes. Most are lineated with titles; they employ imagery; there are stanzas; the words… read more