The first time I saw Diana Goetsch’s In America—both online, at its Rattle home, and in the flesh—I saw the Statue of Liberty giving the world the finger, and mentally shrugged. It seemed very understandable, especially after what we’ve seen, and where we are now. When I actually pause, howeer, and look fully at that cover photo, I realize I’m seeing it wrong: our great copper woman is holding a torch high, not a middle finger; she’s pointed away from me, though, and I have a dirty mind, and maybe it’s just me. Except then I read Goetsch’s poetry, funny and sad and tender and deeply humane, and I think maybe that photographic double entendre is just right.
The titular poem is, to be honest, kind of a well-deserved middle finger to the world. It’s grotesque, though that doesn’t rest on Goetsch: her words are rather lovely, sometimes funny, even as she writes of the hate she’s faced. It’s a thread that runs throughout these poems, an occasional irreverence, a light, humorous touch, one that paints humanity and our foibles and glories in tender relief. In poems ranging from “Elton John” and “Bowie” to “The Fabric Factory, Circa 1987” and “No Man’s Land,” Goetsch tells queer American histories through her own experiences, so intensely personal that they become almost universal.
In the midst of what is a profoundly beautiful (and sometimes also funny) trip through queer and trans histories, Goetsch also gives us poems that are sparkling with cleverness and humor. “Dublin,” which is, incongruously, about a pile of shit in a hotel shower in Dublin, “it’s deep / mahogany is-ness that, were it not shit, / would verge on the admirable,” is pretty much hilarious—although there are also flashes of sly wisdom, as Goetsch remarks about the almost-unflappable night manager, “This guy would be / good in an emergency, I thought, kind of / the opposite of whoever took that dump.” I mean—it takes a hell of a lot of power to take a random shit in a public space and turn it not only into poetry but into a kind of meditation on humanity, and Goetsch does it here.
In America is funny and clever and sometimes sad: I definitely cried when I read “Starbucks Name,” and came close as I read about “Lock on My Door,” and all the things it left unsaid. Goetsch is clever and funny and tender, and I know I will read her work again.
Essentially a Nerd 