[12/31/24] Kline, Ben: It Was Never Supposed To Be

Variant Lit, paperback

Publication Date: December 31, 2024

Publisher Marketing: 

It Was Never Supposed to Be contains multitudes: of desires, of risks, of fears, of fluids, of loves, of assignations, of histories. “I’m in a doom generation,” Ben Kline writes early in the collection as he charts the “one step forward, two shoves back” of change arched between “one plague pitted against another.” Occupying the familiarity of traditional form and the heady rush of innovative forms, Kline builds a uniquely queer structure, a house where freedom and desire, history and progress, risk and reward coexist. From the depths of the AIDS crisis to the physical distances of covid, from the risky connections of hook-ups to the enduring peace of companionship, Kline’s poems reflect on the price of progress—both personal and communal—but refuse to let go of love, joy, and pleasure along the way.

—Charles Jensen, author of Splice of Life: A Memoir in 13 Film Genres and Instructions between Takeoff and Landing

Ben Kline’s IT WAS NEVER SUPPOSED TO BE is a beautifully poignant American bildungsroman—crucial testimony to gay life from the 1990s to today—bearing us across hope and hate and humor to a place where nothing (n)ever changes. Led by a wizened yet vulnerable veteran of our culture wars, we take the long, bloody way home from one campaign after another. Antagonists range from likely evangelicals and politicians to less familiar, yet sexy sirens: foot fetishists, truckers, outside participants, and (first) husbands. Even as we navigate a perilous route through society’s most dangerous homophobic repudiations, Kline reveals the joy in lusty rebellion. Marriage equality’s complex gift is met with paradoxical loss and Kline’s tenderest reminiscences sparkle with clever spite. These poems’ journey won’t be waylaid, however … not by movie house porn or state park assignations … not by family members’ GOP vitriol or Clinton’s shame-faced “don’t ask, don’t tell.” Delivering delightfully executed formal diversity all with an informal frankness, IT WAS NEVER SUPPOSED TO BE is nothing less than an essential contemporary epic, mapping how far we’ve come across the Gen-X decades to return to a place we never really called Home.

—L.J. Sysko, author of The Daughter of Man