Publication Date: November 15, 2025
Paperback, 76 pages
ISBN: 978-1-966677-23-9
“And so, one day, I found myself wanting to write formal verse narratives that critically addressed traditional themes of Western art, molded and shaped as it is by patriarchal thinking and feeling. Folly? Well, the poet will write what the poet wants to write!” What self-described “queer-friendly Marxist punk” Michael Perret has chosen to write in The Miracle on the Cross & Other Mythological Poems is a brilliant folly indeed, a breathtaking and often deliciously transgressive (with emphasis on trans) interrogation and reinterpretation of Western mythologies ancient and modern (Tiresias and Daniel Paul Schreber both appear), “progressive in interpretation, conservative in form,” focusing particularly on gender identity and fluidity. This book makes a vigorous case for the vitality of traditional formal verse as a means of addressing the most contemporary themes and experiences. It’s a bravura performance, even if likely a challenging and discomforting one for some readers, a celebration of the “divine miracles” of the body.
Praise for Michael Perret & The Miracle on the Cross & Other Mythological Poems
Michael Perret’s poems are dense, painstaking, honest, sensuous and jagged. They are concerned with myths – Greek, Christian, Freudian – but never depart from the immanent. They are always about the body, and always in the moment of speaking. In their formal compression, their determination to get the colloquial and the ornate, one inside the other, they remind me of Allen Tate or Randall Jarrell, but they deploy the resources of this stylistic lineage against the conservatism that often has, but need not, animate it: instead they work to transmute their myths, to turn them not only towards transness, but towards resistance; and not only towards resistance, but towards difficult, costly joy.
—Cat Fitzpatrick, author of The Call-Out
About the Author
Michael Perret is a poet and translator from Austin, Texas. His books include Ennui Sonnets, The Chimera, The Decadent Book of Babylon, and his translation of Octavia, the Quadroon by Sidonie de La Houssaye. (michaelperret.bandcamp.com)
Publication Date: November 15, 2025
Paperback, 76 pages
ISBN: 978-1-966677-23-9
“And so, one day, I found myself wanting to write formal verse narratives that critically addressed traditional themes of Western art, molded and shaped as it is by patriarchal thinking and feeling. Folly? Well, the poet will write what the poet wants to write!” What self-described “queer-friendly Marxist punk” Michael Perret has chosen to write in The Miracle on the Cross & Other Mythological Poems is a brilliant folly indeed, a breathtaking and often deliciously transgressive (with emphasis on trans) interrogation and reinterpretation of Western mythologies ancient and modern (Tiresias and Daniel Paul Schreber both appear), “progressive in interpretation, conservative in form,” focusing particularly on gender identity and fluidity. This book makes a vigorous case for the vitality of traditional formal verse as a means of addressing the most contemporary themes and experiences. It’s a bravura performance, even if likely a challenging and discomforting one for some readers, a celebration of the “divine miracles” of the body.
Praise for Michael Perret & The Miracle on the Cross & Other Mythological Poems
Michael Perret’s poems are dense, painstaking, honest, sensuous and jagged. They are concerned with myths – Greek, Christian, Freudian – but never depart from the immanent. They are always about the body, and always in the moment of speaking. In their formal compression, their determination to get the colloquial and the ornate, one inside the other, they remind me of Allen Tate or Randall Jarrell, but they deploy the resources of this stylistic lineage against the conservatism that often has, but need not, animate it: instead they work to transmute their myths, to turn them not only towards transness, but towards resistance; and not only towards resistance, but towards difficult, costly joy.
—Cat Fitzpatrick, author of The Call-Out
About the Author
Michael Perret is a poet and translator from Austin, Texas. His books include Ennui Sonnets, The Chimera, The Decadent Book of Babylon, and his translation of Octavia, the Quadroon by Sidonie de La Houssaye. (michaelperret.bandcamp.com)
