Men & Sleep

Author: Jay Besemer

Publisher: Meekling Press (2023)

Composed using words chosen from children’s early-mid 20th century readers and from early 20th century natural history textbooks, Men & Sleep exposes hidden currents and meanings in teaching materials from the past. The two long poems presented in this volume draw readers into a strange yet quotidian world of ordinary wonder and transformation. Inhabiting creaturely life & plant/animal co-embodiment–queering sexual, gender & even species distinctions–this book invites readers to mix (in) their own evanescent experiences. Moving beyond the limits of linear narrative or cause and effect, Men & Sleep requests and makes space for repeated engagements, just as if readers were exploring a forest or a marsh. When it’s never quite clear whether the being you encounter here is a human, a tree, an insect or some unique combination of all of these, how do you behave? How does their behavior impact you? How do you both change in the encounter? Perhaps these questions will help Men & Sleep reveal itself to you.