Ketner, Trevor: The Wild Hunt Divinations

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.