Diana Goetsch

Goetsch is well-known for writing 31 essays following her transition from male to female. These essays, called Life in Transition, are archived at The American Scholar at this link: https://theamericanscholar.org/diana-goetsch/#. In this poetry chapbook, Goetsch writes about a life in flux and shaped in part by her gender identity. The poems don’t seem to be in chronological order, and I was never sure at “what point” she was in her life, except by just going with the flow of the poem. When I read a poem near the end of the book where she called herself “a man / driving the Oklahoma panhandle,” I thought to myself, hmm, she clearly was a man there. But five lines later, she says, “I say a man. Back then I don’t know what / I would have said. I would have said tumbleweed.” These accessible, well-constructed poems bring the reader into the mutability of Goetsch’s past life.… (mehr)