"Rereading these poems in the aftermath of my own recent transition, I can discern a depth of reference now (“the bones of direction”) that viscerally acknowledges the fear and pain that trans women feel in having to negotiate a new and strange relationship to time. I think about the young person listening to kari edwards reading these passages, and I think about how much paralyzing fear I had in my own negotiations with time, and how many walls I had set up to block myself from being happy. And I want to go back to the young person who was sitting in the audience that day listening to kari edwards read these poems, feeling so many conflicting things, and tell her, “See? The future is going to be possible.”" - Trace Peterson, on kari edwards’s obedience

[That brings up the challenging but important idea that the viewer or the reader is in part responsible for the meaning of any text, be it a poem, a photo, a newspaper.] "And I really think about that when writing. For me it comes from my embodied experience of feeling like identity—particularly gendered identity—is a collaborative act between self and viewer. I really felt that when I hadn't started testosterone yet but was dressing [like a guy], trying to guide the "reader" in how to read me, but knowing ultimately that if they didn't want to read me that way, there was nothing I could do about it. Everybody gets to have their own reading." - TC Tolbert (Under a Warm Green Linden interview)