ON A BETTER LIFE BY RANDALL MANN
Books
n the first and title poem of (Persea Books, 2021), Randall Mann looks back incredulous at having ever arrived at the age of thirty, a milestone now “fourteen years” in his past. Having survived longer than he might have imagined, Mann laments that thirty seemed old even then, “over the hill” he tells us, since “in queer years, / years are more than.” Thus begins this important collection where Mann, using both free verse and traditional forms, engages us in a type of queer history lesson. No, his feat is bigger than this. In , Mann has perfected the art of time travel, effortlessly jumping backwards from midlife to his teenage years, and then forward again, making poignant stops along the decades in between. From a time when gay men
