Anybody

"Banias poses questions of identity and belonging in his striking debut. . . In lines alternately straight-talking and philosophical, Banias asks what it means to be 'a white dude' in our country, to be educated and privileged but still 'a fake man.'" -- San Francisco Chronicle "I'm so impressed by the range and grace of Ari Banias' Anybody. It's discursive, straight-talking, and thinky, then ghostlike, elliptical, and mischievous. It takes its time, then rushes; it's quiet, then bold; it's steeped in sociality, then ringing with solitude. I happily recognize its arrival, even if I know (as does Banias, quoting Berlant) that recognition may be but the misrecognition we can bear." -- Maggie Nelson "Born late in the twentieth century, tutored under the twin suns of Frank O'Hara and Guillaume Apollinaire, vexed by 'this set of meanings on my body,' Ari Banias is a poet for this hour-bewildered, hopeful, and cracklingly alive, a citizen of the possible. How many utopias? (keep imagining them)." -- Mark Doty "Here is Anybody with its syntax of rupture and suture, its restless questions and metaphysical balloons. What a thrilling, original, generous, openhearted book. A book we have waited for, whoever we are." -- Donna Masini "Ari Banias has written one of the finest first books (OK, any book!) that I've ever read... These poems stake a claim on the future: they give us a poet who understands to the bone how syntax and line and music embody emotion, and how the integrity of the spirit is the maker's integrity." -- Tom Sleigh

Ari Banias is the author of Anybody, a finalist for the Kate Tufts Discovery Award and the PEN Center USA Award for Poetry. His poems have appeared in the Kenyon Review and the Nation, among other publications. He lives in Oakland, California.