nightsong, Ever Jones

The third poetry collection from Ever Jones, nightsong is a vigil for trans and queer bodies that have been lost and a prayer of hope and safety for those still navigating an often-cruel world. Jones’ poems feel, at times, like individual pieces, and at other moments like a fluid, flowing river—a single, connected poem. Gender is a clear focus of these poems—yet in many ways, the conflict is not with gender identity itself, but with the ways we talk about gender. The speaker wrestles with pronouns, with the singular and plural “they.” Jones writes, “my spirit folds its syntax into a choke.” This work explores a world of human construction. And language becomes a character in that world. At other points, however, the natural and spiritual take over, “Have you wondered why we follow the raven / to the other side of night / while it has little care for our created / world?” the speaker asks as the collection seeks guidance from the outside and from within. The speaker seeks solace in the natural world, in a world of animals and spirits, but as they wrestle with the human constructs of gender and language that try to define them, they feel themselves pulled away from that idyllic realm. As often as these poems are in conflict with the worlds around them, with violence against trans bodies, they are also in conflict with themselves, with violence against trans minds. But, still, there is hope, a pull forward. nightsong is an animal of feathers and fur, teeth and claws, pulling us forward into another space. At the same time, it is human, dealing in concepts of human construction, taking the time to look around at the world we’ve made.

“Given the threats to the trans body, to our body politic, and to the body of creation, nightsong might well have been a desolate report on our desolate times. Instead it is a book of glowing vision. In poems that are alert to the luminosity of what we call nature, to the violence that constitutes our national identity, and to the moments of being where the animal body and lyric consciousness meet, nightsong describes the pain and wonder that are at the crux of transformation. Ever Jones is very much the poet we need now—aggrieved, singing.”
—Rick Barot, author of The Galleons

“In measured lines rich with urgency, nightsong draws us a tender map for surviving our queer bodies. Jones writes, ‘if pronouns must be in agreement with their subjects / then i was made weather, a stretching infinitive.’ The poems in this collection, indistinguishable as individual poems, are an enactment of that stretching, calling us to expand ourselves beyond language, beyond articulation. Equal parts elegy, earth, and relational entanglement, nightsong is a deeply necessary book, and so many of us will feel visible in its landscape. Even in unending grief, and with unshakable precision, Jones’ poetic gift is in making queer life and queer language more possible. In reading this work, you will find yourself grateful.”
—Stacey Waite, author of the lake has no saint