Forthcoming 10/15/25
from Saturnalia Books
ISBN 9781947817883
120 pages.
Available for Preorder from Bookshop.org
The second book of poems by Trace Peterson, The Valleys Are So Lush And Steep, attempts to answer the question: what do you do after you’ve introduced yourself? Modeling aspects of trans interiority, embodied experiences, struggles, and desires from the era before the “trans tipping point” to our present state of emergency, this book also speaks to universal issues of how self, imagination, language, and the environment are intertwined; how gender can structure anyone’s experience as both limiting and enabling.
Through lyric poems, prose poems, serial poems, and texts that disrupt prosody and invent new forms, Peterson uses humor, non sequitur, equanimity, and anger to critique deserving targets and celebrate trans joy where she can glimpse it. Her love poetry, protest poetry, elegies, and pastoral poetry put queer romance in conversation with a utopian ecopoetics of enthusiastically unnatural nature. Jamie Lee Curtis, sporks, Black Lives Matter, hydro-powered turbines, Sappho, violets, Laverne Cox, art history, Imogen Binnie, wedding bouquets, Michael Kors, drones, gurus, Caitlyn Jenner, wasps, and Mark Rothko share pages with ecosystems that become courtly allegories, scenes of interrogation, or potential leads for a path out of this mess. This book addresses a combination of trans and non-trans audiences strategically, intervening in communities of both poetry and life.
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Praise for The Valleys Are So Lush and Steep:
“Trace Peterson’s poetry is unstoppable, generous, profoundly witty in parts. Witness the opening salvo title poem in this marvelous new book, a send up of what it takes–the inanity of the meds–to be oneself in a vulnerable trans life. We are better for passionate honesty in what I call The New Age of Demolition. We need this now, and ever, to fight the intolerance nightmare. Salute and salutation to Peterson’s irrepressible spirit in poetry. Onward.”
– Anne Waldman
“One of the most original poets of my generation, Trace Peterson tears it up with her new collection. Satirical and heartbroken by turns, these extended lyric sequences capture the zeitgeist of the twenty-first century. Through allusion and backtalk, the poet reckons with queer artists such as Coleridge, Rothko, and Stein’s “roses are roses.” Yet Peterson’s are also shapeshifters, violets, anti-violets and interplanetary poets “fed up / with our binary fetishes.” The Valleys Are So Lush and Steep is a decadent, seething pastoral for our age.”
– Carolyn Hembree
“Poetry … news that stays news. The world has lost lots of people and gained even more since this definition became common. These poems are great fun, great news, and, now and then, one flips over right as it’s sliding across your tongue to reveal something horrifying. This is, by far, the best book of poems I’ve read this year, and if folks are reading it sixty years from now, I wouldn’t be surprised!”
– Samuel R. Delany
“I love Trace Peterson’s rollercoaster of a book. Her poetry leaves you chuckling, crying, and guffawing, frequently within a single poem. Nothing superficial here; reading her work requires paying attention to how one worldview can slide sideways into another, revealing unexpected rocks and shoals. Bring your lunch, because it’s hard to stop reading.”
– Sandy Stone
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Book cover by Robin Vuchnich