Trace Peterson, The Valleys Are So Lush and Steep

 

I’ve been freed from
inside the Fall of Rome,
my contract disrupted.
Civilization will
not descend without
my bet against it rising,
a weather balloon
that hangs against a vast
usurped sky. A carrier
pigeon, to be,
carries me. (“AFTER BEFORE AND AFTER”)

The second full-length collection of poems by Connecticut-born poet, editor and literary scholar Trace Peterson, following Since I Moved In (Tucson AZ: Chax Press, 2007; 2019), is The Valleys Are So Lush and Steep (Broomall PA: Saturnalia Books, 2025), winner of the Alma Book Award from Saturnalia Books. Set with two opening poems, the book opens into five sections of lyrics—“THE VAST CROWD,” “VIOLET SPEECH,” “VENUS,” “EXPERIMENTAL LIFE” and “THE BLUR”—all of which expands into a sharp and fluid collection of lyrics on being and becoming, and being within that pure moment of becoming and having always been. As the poem “THE OTHER MEMBERS WITH MY I.D.” includes: “Let me critique what / I’m saying about the other / members with my I.D. / Apparently the first time / I desired anything I / stayed up all night / thinking about its name / in coalescing form.”

The title poem, second of the two opening poems, runs through a sectioned list of naming a sequence of testosterone blockers: “I have not been having an easy HRT experience for a trans gal,” the poem begins, “especially when it comes to blocking testosterone so my body can develop properly to estrogen.” Each section of the poem begins with description and subsequent reaction, into what drug she switched to, with the next opening starting over, offering that new medication’s description, and so on, building into longer, more complex reactions, some of which expand into the abstract. “Walzanone helped ease off my body hair,” Peterson writes, mid-way through the piece, “but it gave me unanticipated telekinetic powers which would cause a table to fly crashing across the room when I got upset with someone, so I switched to Benefiontin.” The subsequent section reads:

Benefiontin seemed to be working for a while and I could genuinely concentrate, until I slowly became aware that it was making my skin fluorescent green and stretchable over any nearby hardwood surfaces. Punk rock anamorphosis had ended long ago, so I switched to Penalzombion.

In stunning lyric, and through surreal and dream-like stretches that veer commentary from the sublime to the ridiculous, Peterson clarifies the physical and physiological shifts of her transgender self, moving further into becoming that person that she already was, pointedly remarking on the experience itself as being surreal. In a beautifully crafted book-length suite, The Valleys Are So Lush and Steep writes gestural sweeps and concise prose lyrics around identity and public response, community and the self. Another list-accumulation poem, the seven page “EVERYONE IS A LITTLE TRANS,” includes:

Everyone is a little stitch in time
Everyone is a little grammatical error that changed the meaning of our relationship
    completely by accidentally introducing a surprise microaggression
Everyone is a little discriminated against
Everyone is a little interested in sitting on the dryer while it vibrates 

Everyone tells us everyone is a little gay means everyone who is cis
Everyone is a little white crisply ironed shirt
Everyone is a poet
Everyone says no more than what they meant

While a number of the prose poems really do strike, I particularly like the call-and-response piece “IDENTIFICATION,” offering a back-and-forth of the same repeated question—“Can I see your ID?”—through an array of responses, that include “Here it is. I changed my sex so I don’t look like this anymore, but you get the idea.” and “Do I really need an ID to return something that I already have a receipt for?” to “So here’s the deal, you correctly called me ma’am a second ago but no I am going to have to ask you to go against all available legal evidence and ask you to continue calling me ma’am after you have seen it.” to “No.” Again, Peterson showcases the brutal realities she and many others are forced to endure through such a process.

There is a music and an enduring empathy to the long threads of Peterson’s sentences, ebbs and flows of narrative of payoff and reward to move through to the very end in ways playful, layered and highly controlled. “This is a working sentence.” begins the poem “NO ONE COULD SEE THE VAST CROWD,” “Someone walks by. / Three sentences standing around bonding. / Terrible, terrible sentences. / The third sentence resents the fourth sentence more than the fifth. / Sitting in a late cafe crying. / Trying to stare down carbs with the mistress’s tools.”