Reviewed by Frances Sheridan Goulart
Introvert Pervert
by Jendi Reiter
Word Works
March 2026, 82 pages, paperback, ISBN-13: 978-1944585921
Poetry of any kind isn’t for everybody. Indeed, according to the National Endowment for the Arts and the US Census Bureau, roughly 9.2% of U.S. adults (approximately 22.4 million people) read poetry in one format or another. While only 1% to 5% of total poetry readers (roughly 200,000 to 1 million people nationwide) read in what we might call the experimental, avant-garde, or gender-interrogating categories of poetry that this book would fall into.
So there’s that, and in the interests of full disclosure, let me say that I am a she/her and not a they/them, so I am possibly not the ideal writer-reader to express an opinion about this book’s (chapbook) artistic virtues or lack thereof. But queer writing should be no more just for the queer than sushi is just for East Asians, so here’s my cis gender two cents’ worth!
The author Jendi Reiter, who identifies as trans and nonbinary/genderqueer, has written extensively about their personal transition, hormone therapy, and gender journey in personal essays and poetry collections, including their 2022 poetry book Made Man.
Reiter has, in fact, authored six poetry books as well as novels and short stories, and also has a few awards to their name, including two Massachusetts Cultural Council Fellowships and the Rainbow Award for Best Contemporary Gay Fiction for poetry. Reiter is also the editor of the writing resource WinningWriters.com. So they is no slouch.
On the other hand, Reiter’s self-authored bio in the end pages where I turned first comes across as abrasively coy, smug, and mannered. (“…The author is a two-time winner of the Utmost Christian Writers award, for which he subsequently became ineligible by practicing witchcraft…”) Just the facts, Jendi, would have sufficed, at least to these ears. It is also unnecessary since the next page contains the standard About the Author.
Similarly, the book’s cover displays a cut-out photo of two beefcakey men with hippy flower buds for heads, set collage-style against what looks like a torn-up pink and red valentine quilt. Setting the tone for the poems that follow, I guess. That and the epigraph from fellow poet Richard Siken “I want to fuck everything, but I don’t want to be touched” (Pornography).
The slim book’s contents are organized into four “Parts”- “Suicide Squad”, “These characters and Themes Cannot Exist”, “Waste Management”, and “Portrait of a Marriage”. I saw no relationship between the headings and the poems within, which were drawn from other magazines, books, and anthologies where they first appeared.
Other reviewers elsewhere have called Reiter’s work a “testament to the humanity of trans people everywhere” and a “tour-de-force” that leaves readers spinning and exhilarated, also “A gender-interrogating roller-coaster of a ride.” For me, it was more of a bumpy ride. I felt puzzled and a little annoyed rather than exhilarated by most of what I read.
Okay, then. as a she- not- as- a- they, much of the rollercoster ride was lost on me, probably for that very she/her reason, But, Reiter is no Walt Whitman, Oscar Wilde or WH Auden and if you are looking 2026 version of Howl, you won’t find it here (at least, I didn’t) although I suspect Reiter has great admiraiton for all of the old timer rhymers, especially Alan Ginsburg.
In the poetry of other queer contemporary gay poets like Jerrod Brown, in his poems “Bullet Points” and “Duplex”, along with the grief, pain, loss, and depression also found in Reiter, there is greater clarity and economy. Similarly, read Mark Doty and find a smooth, assured rhythm in his poems like “What is Grass?” Or read Richard Sikens’ “Meanwhile”, and hear a palpable emotion and feel no need to put it through a sensemaking machine to figure out what it is actually about.
“Introvert Pervert”, the poem that gives this collection its title, appears (wink, wink) on page 69. “I’m not in my fantasies” it opens and five stanzas later, concludes with “In my dreams I burn like garbage.” It is a very off-kilter rather than evocative image, and I almost feel as though parts of one poem got mixed up with parts of another here.
In the “Waste Management section, each poem is dedicated to a character in The Sopranos ranging from Tony Soprano to Paulie Walnuts and Tony Blundetto. Maybe it requires a greater knowledge of Sopranoiana to get the joke/inference, or to understand the overall homage, but I wasn’t up to the challenge. Although I did admire “The Soft Touch”, which evokes the grimness of prison life. Nor did I read through these 80 pages without some enjoyment and admiration for Reiter’s talents and way with words. “Theodore goes toward the Light” and “Brief”, for example, are both imaginative and moving, as is “Fifty Ways to Leave Your Mother,” with plenty of the long-line verse they gravitate toward. (And without the performative feeling of many of the other poems in this mismatched-feeling collection).
If you are keeping up with queer poetry trends, pick this book up and make up your own discriminating reader’s mind. After all, “We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.” as the most iconic gay poet of them all, Oscar Wilde, reminded us. (Note: he didn’t say immortal). I think Reiter is one of those we’s in good standing.
About the reviewer: Frances Sheridan Goulart is a nutritionist and personal chef and the author of sixteen other books on health, food, and cooking. She lives in Ridgefield, Connecticut. Visit the author’s website at: greenapronfood.com