Poetry - General & Miscellaneous, American Poetry, Peoples & Cultures - American Anthologies, Gay & Lesbian Literature Anthologies, Love Poetry
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Overview
This anthology gathers together more than eighty contemporary lesbian poets - women, both young and old, of African, Asian, European, Latina, Native, and South Seas heritage. Well-known poets such as Gloria Anzaldua, Chrystos, Judy Grahn, Marilyn Hacker, Audre Lorde, Pat Parker, Adrienne Rich, and Muriel Rukeyser, and a new generation of poets such as Mi Ok Song Bruining, Ana Bantigue Fajardo, Melinda Goodman, and Melanie Hope, are featured in this energizing gift of imagination and heart, vision and community. Coss, a writer, activist, and psychotherapist with twenty years' experience working with individuals and couples, has selected poems that tell the story of love with eloquence, humor, grace, and passion. The poetry collected here is a generous sustaining resource for understanding attractions, loneliness, lust, hate, sexual play, power games, monogamy, fantasy, commitment, the search for meaning and direction in our daily lives.The broadest, most erotic, most sophisticated collection of lesbian love poetry exploring all aspects of women loving women, this book includes contributors ranging from Sappho to Audre Lorde, Joy Harjo, June Jordan, and a new generation of Latina and Asian-American, African-American, and Native American poets.
Editorials
Publishers Weekly -
This predominantly contemporary collection, although beginning and ending with poems by Sappho, includes the work of such expected writers as Adrienne Rich, Audre Lorde, Robin Morgan, Marilyn Hacker, Olga Broumas and Muriel Rukeyser. Less familiar standouts are Margaret Randall, Melanie Hope and Joan Larkin, who recalls her father spanking her as a child: "his hands, his strong/ voice telling me I was loved" (``Beatings''). Less laudable is the editor's contribution. Coss, a psychotherapist, neatly quarters material into sections that follow the letters of the word love (light, order, vexation, and endurance/evolution/ecstasy). Coupled with simplistic introductions to each section, her "arc" resembles a 12-step program in which weaker poems are included because their sentiments fit the pattern. Many of the 87 contributors, however, surpass such utility. (Jan.)Book Details
Published
January 29, 1996
Publisher
New York : Scribner, c1996.
Pages
240
Format
Hardcover
ISBN
9780684814469