Apostatic, by Dean G. Lampros

Poetry, chapbook, 24 pages, from Bottlecap Features.

Apostastic is borrowed from the ancient Greek word ἀπόστασις, which can mean either departure or defection, even revolt. In biology the term refers to how a species escapes predation by evolving into something else, a skill each of us would do well to master. Of course, we all know its English cognate, apostasy: to walk (or run) away from one’s faith. Like many words in ancient Greek, this one was a compound word, combining “away/apart” with “standing.” It shares a root with the Greek verb “to stand off.” Standoffishness is perhaps more of a virtue than any of us realized. In modern Greek the word has evolved to convey distance. Transformation, standing apart, and putting distance between oneself and the world are what being queer is all about.

This collection of short poems embraces all of these things. Whether we are grappling with or casting off an inherited faith that makes us fall prey to intolerance and division, revolting against the bankrupt politics of the declining American empire, grieving a lost loved one, feeling alienated from one’s peers, or falling in or out of love, which is its own kind of apostasy, each new day has the capacity to transform us into apostates from the days that are behind us.

Dean G. Lampros is a Boston-based historian and the author of Preserved: A Cultural History of the Funeral Home in America (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2024). He teaches American Studies and cultural history (built environment, material culture, consumer culture, and queer theory) at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design, the Rhode Island School of Design, and Roger Williams University. When he’s not writing about funeral homes or Mid-Century Modern Byzantine churches, he dabbles in poetry, fiction, and music. For more than a quarter of a century, his home has been the Hyde Park section of Boston.