The Guides by Susan Gevirtz

$17.95

26 pages

First edition: August, 2025

ISBN 979-8-9907346-2-3

The Guides is an investigation into the  schools that train guides and the global  guide-licensing tourist industry as an  arm of the state. The training of readers  is also under investigation – since the  way one is taught to perambulate  through a city or through a book shapes  perceptions of the foreign and familiar,  of theirs/ours. There are parallels  between migrants and refugees, such  as my ancestors, who were escaping  antisemitism and ethnic cleansing,  and those currently escaping genocide,  Islamophobia, and ethnic cleansing.  And there are not parallels.  

The Guides, documents visits to the  places my ancestors were not from but  where they stayed, temporarily, for  centuries. In this way it is an itinerary of  the irreconcilable, an unwriting. 


Where tourism organizations commodify diasporic longing, The  Guides offers a poetics of refraction,  shining light through every fissure  and facade in what we incorrectly call  history. These episodic ambulations  through Gevirtz’s Jewish “anti homelands” not only call out history’s  infelicities and erasures, but also refute  it as something lived and shelved. Here  the diaspora is present, vital, at turns  needfully unpunctuated—a mesh  where staid scripts are the seed of  a continually cohering midrash.

— Vanessa Kauffman Zimmerly 


Among the many questions posed  by Susan Gevirtz in The Guides is  this: “Where should those without a  homeland go?” Another, related, in this we hear: author become orphan,  protector become predator, tourist  become terrorist, place become replace,  antiquity become alibi. This feels like  necessary music to fortify against the  current dangers of language deployed in  the service of “nationhood.” Especially  so in the face of another haunting  question this extraordinary work pushes  us to ask and ask again: “Who is not  there?” The Guides is our guide for the  present as past, the past as presence, and  I don’t think we can do without it.

— Adrian Lürssen


With an irreconcilable eye, The Guides investigates how what we read and what  we’re told can misshape who we are.  The exigencies of Gevirtz’s personal  histories remain unchanged, but reading  this text shifts, perhaps uncomfortably,  the perspectives of its readers, pointing return is to rhyme, which  rhymes might we listen for in a made  landscape ‘passed as true’ by language,  memory, constellations of the absent?  Through Susan’s listening eye (“a  figment broken off from the flock”), us to the questions: What do school  and schooling in general bury, distort,  delete? And how do we, knowingly and  unknowingly, train ourselves to look away?  

— Justin Robinson 



Susan Gevirtz’s recent books of poetry  include Burns (Pamenar), Hotel abc (Nightboat) and Aerodrome Orion &  Starry Messenger (Kelsey Street). Her  critical books are Narrative’s Journey:  The Fiction and Film Writing of  Dorothy Richardson (Peter Lang) and  Coming Events (Collected Writings),  (Nightboat). “Sun Worship,” a section  excerpt from her manuscript Guide  School, is a recent chapbook from YoYo Labs (2024). “Doctor Shaman,” another  section from Guide School is a chapbook  from above/ground Press (2025), and  “The Guides,” another section from  Guide School, is a chapbook from  Antiphony Press (2025). She is based in  San Francisco. 


26 pages

First edition: August, 2025

ISBN 979-8-9907346-2-3

The Guides is an investigation into the  schools that train guides and the global  guide-licensing tourist industry as an  arm of the state. The training of readers  is also under investigation – since the  way one is taught to perambulate  through a city or through a book shapes  perceptions of the foreign and familiar,  of theirs/ours. There are parallels  between migrants and refugees, such  as my ancestors, who were escaping  antisemitism and ethnic cleansing,  and those currently escaping genocide,  Islamophobia, and ethnic cleansing.  And there are not parallels.  

The Guides, documents visits to the  places my ancestors were not from but  where they stayed, temporarily, for  centuries. In this way it is an itinerary of  the irreconcilable, an unwriting. 


Where tourism organizations commodify diasporic longing, The  Guides offers a poetics of refraction,  shining light through every fissure  and facade in what we incorrectly call  history. These episodic ambulations  through Gevirtz’s Jewish “anti homelands” not only call out history’s  infelicities and erasures, but also refute  it as something lived and shelved. Here  the diaspora is present, vital, at turns  needfully unpunctuated—a mesh  where staid scripts are the seed of  a continually cohering midrash.

— Vanessa Kauffman Zimmerly 


Among the many questions posed  by Susan Gevirtz in The Guides is  this: “Where should those without a  homeland go?” Another, related, in this we hear: author become orphan,  protector become predator, tourist  become terrorist, place become replace,  antiquity become alibi. This feels like  necessary music to fortify against the  current dangers of language deployed in  the service of “nationhood.” Especially  so in the face of another haunting  question this extraordinary work pushes  us to ask and ask again: “Who is not  there?” The Guides is our guide for the  present as past, the past as presence, and  I don’t think we can do without it.

— Adrian Lürssen


With an irreconcilable eye, The Guides investigates how what we read and what  we’re told can misshape who we are.  The exigencies of Gevirtz’s personal  histories remain unchanged, but reading  this text shifts, perhaps uncomfortably,  the perspectives of its readers, pointing return is to rhyme, which  rhymes might we listen for in a made  landscape ‘passed as true’ by language,  memory, constellations of the absent?  Through Susan’s listening eye (“a  figment broken off from the flock”), us to the questions: What do school  and schooling in general bury, distort,  delete? And how do we, knowingly and  unknowingly, train ourselves to look away?  

— Justin Robinson 



Susan Gevirtz’s recent books of poetry  include Burns (Pamenar), Hotel abc (Nightboat) and Aerodrome Orion &  Starry Messenger (Kelsey Street). Her  critical books are Narrative’s Journey:  The Fiction and Film Writing of  Dorothy Richardson (Peter Lang) and  Coming Events (Collected Writings),  (Nightboat). “Sun Worship,” a section  excerpt from her manuscript Guide  School, is a recent chapbook from YoYo Labs (2024). “Doctor Shaman,” another  section from Guide School is a chapbook  from above/ground Press (2025), and  “The Guides,” another section from  Guide School, is a chapbook from  Antiphony Press (2025). She is based in  San Francisco.