LGBTQIA Studies : Poetry

Eduardo C. Corral is the 2011 recipient of the Yale Series of Younger Poets award, joining such distinguished previous winners as Adrienne Rich, W. S. Merwin, and John Ashbery. Corral is the first Latino poet to win the competition. He employs a range of forms and phrasing, bringing the vivid particulars of his experiences as a Chicano and gay man to the page.

Doubters and Dreamers opens with a question from a young girl faced with the spectacle of Indian effigies lynched and burned "in jest" before UC Berkeley's annual Big Game against Stanford: "What's a debacle, Mom?" This innocent but telling question marks the girl's entrée into the complicated knowledge of her heritage as a mixed-blood Native American of Koyangk'auwi (Concow) Maidu descent. One poem and vignette at a time, Doubters and Dreamers explores what it means to be a mixed-blood Native American who grew up urban, lesbian, and middle class in the West.

In Sight Map Brian Teare blends the speculative poetics of the San Francisco Renaissance with a postconfessional candor to embody the "open field" tradition of such poets as Robin Blaser and Robert Duncan. Teare provides us with poems that insist on the simultaneous physical embodiment of tactile pleasure--that which is found in the textures of thought and language--as well as the action of syntax. Partly informed by an ecological imagination that leads him back to Emerson and Thoreau, Teare's method and fragmented style are nevertheless up to the moment. Remarkable in its range,Sight Mapserves at once as a cross-country travelogue, a pilgrim's gnostic progress, an improvised field guide, and a postmodern "pillowbook," recording the erotic conflation of lover and beloved, deity and doubter.

“It’s rare in contemporary poetry to find a book as boldly celebratory as Peter Pereira’s new collection.”—Chase Twichell InWhat’s Written on the Body, physician Peter Pereira explores the body, medicine, wordplay, gardening, family, and domestic gay life, often drawing from his experience as a community clinic doctor in Seattle. An avid Scrabble player, anagrammer, and cruciverbalist, Pereira opens the collection with a delightful selection of wordplay poems, as a counterpoint to poems recounting the day-to-day practice of a family physician, from suturing a wound in the ER to extracting an eraser from a child’s nose. From “Body Talk”: Do you hear how the scalp claps? How the heart contains the earth, yet is also a hater? How saliva is lava, while testicles sit elect for their slice test . . . Peter Pereira is a family physician in Seattle, where he cares for an urban, underserved population of immigrants, refugees, housing project residents, and the elderly. His first book won the Hayden Carruth Award, and his individual poems have appeared in a wide range of publications, includingPoetry,USA Weekend, andThe Journal of the American Medical Association.

Impossible to resist, this hilariously sassy and sweet collection of haiku turns the perilous sport of gay dating into pure poetry. For hundreds of years, the Japanese haiku has been equated with peaceful contemplation and spiritual enlightenment. A delicate balance of rhythm and line, the haiku has provided countless readers with an appreciation of the changing of the seasons and the miracles of nature. Now, inGay Haiku,readers can finally appreciate more important things—like the changing of boyfriends and the miracles of shopping. Irresistible and irreverent, this collection of one hundred and ten witty and wicked short poems captures the many dating disasters of first-time author Joel Derfner. In a wonderfully fresh and original voice, Derfner shamelessly mines his personal life to send up such broad-ranging topics as gay pop culture, politics, family, sex, and, of course, home decorating. Gay, straight, or undecided, readers will delight in Derfner’s dry sense of humor and unmistakable charm as he tackles the big questions of life.

Lambda Literary Awards, 1992.
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A groundbreaking, comprehensive anthology of Canadian gay male poetry, the first of its kind, that reveals a national queer poetic that is equal parts eloquent, subversive, and moving.

Telephone Ringing in the Labyrinth is one of Adrienne Rich's most unpredictable and evocative collections. In the folk/blues tradition behind "Rhyme," in the incantatory pattern of "Behind the Motel," in the voices from past and present in "Letters Censored, Shredded, Returned to Sender or Judged Unfit to Send," in the dystopic scenes and intimate encounters of "Draft # 2006," in the mysterious negotiations of the title poem, the tempos and moods of this book constantly vary. Here, Rich draws on the artistic means of a lifetime.

In Later Poems: Selected and New 1971-2012, the strong trajectory of the work of one of the most important artists of American letters is on display. This volume brings together a remarkable body of work. Included are Adrienne Rich's own selections from twelve volumes of published works, including the National Book Award-winning Diving Into the Wreck, An Atlas of the Difficult World, and her most recent volume, Tonight No Poetry Will Serve, along with ten powerful new poems, previously uncollected. Among these, "From Strata" is a kind of archaeology of the present day; "Itinerary" searches for an "indefinite future" in a menaced landscape; "For the Young Anarchists" offers a trope of skilled labor for political action; and the haunting voice of "Teethsucking Bird" reminds us of what we have been told to forget. This collection testifies to a monumental career that distinguished American literature in the late twentieth century and will continue to inspire readers for years to come.

- Volume-specific introductions discuss the individual writer's life highlighting some of their struggles as well as their legacy - Informative sidebars pinpoint critical moments in the writer's life as well as provide anecdotal information on the writer