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kasper_au's review
4.0
Queer Women Book Club read
What a beautiful little collection.
Some of my favourites include:
No Obligation - Vita Sackville-West
"What's in your Mind, My Dove" - W. H. Arden
Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered - Lorenz Hart
At a Dinner Party - Amy Levy
Rosa Rosarum - A. Mary F. Robinson
Tree Marriage - William Meredith
Neither Wanting More - May Swenson
Love Poem - Audre Lorde
from The Autumn Sonnets - May Sarton
Funeral Blues - W. H. Arden
What a beautiful little collection.
Some of my favourites include:
No Obligation - Vita Sackville-West
"What's in your Mind, My Dove" - W. H. Arden
Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered - Lorenz Hart
At a Dinner Party - Amy Levy
Rosa Rosarum - A. Mary F. Robinson
Tree Marriage - William Meredith
Neither Wanting More - May Swenson
Love Poem - Audre Lorde
from The Autumn Sonnets - May Sarton
Funeral Blues - W. H. Arden
ken_bookhermit's review
4.0
i can't help but think that there is a gay male bias with these poems but i forgive it because of how much frank o'hara is in this collection.
anoraborealis's review
5.0
favorites from this collection:
-bewitched, bothered and bewildered by lorenz hart
-i get a kick out of you by cole porter
-black beans by essex hemphill
-bewitched, bothered and bewildered by lorenz hart
-i get a kick out of you by cole porter
-black beans by essex hemphill
theyoungveronica's review
4.0
Not quoting individual authors here out of inertia, forgive me:
"Dapple-throned Aphrodite,
eternal daughter of God,
snare-knitter!"
"Who, Sappho, is
unfair to you?"
"The dawning day has clouds in store;
Desire her cloudy moods;
And sunlit woods of morning may
By noon be darkened woods."
"I scald alone, here, under the fire
Of the great moon."
"Distant like a dark and wounded doe
Sweet like sobbing during the fall of snow.
Distant and sweet, and caught in the marrow!"
"Time will find us wasted."
"Starkly I returned
To stare upon the ash of all I burned."
"Rise with the wind, my great big serpent;
Silence the birds and darken the air;
Change me with terror, alive in a moment;
Strike for the heart and have me there."
"It is a terrible thing,...to fall into the hands of the living God."
"The streets, I observe,
are wintry.
It feels like snow.
Starlings circle in the sky,
conspiring,
together, and alone,
unspeakable journeys,
into and out of the light."
"This dream that pains me
And enchains me."
"Are you sprinting
from the shadows of the past
to overtake me?"
"Longing, of course,
becomes its own object, the way
that desire can make anything into a god."
"O madness; not for a single day
Could I leave her!
I stayed behind."
"As the demure
Flame of our candle, no more plied
By tempest outside
Than those deep ocean weeds unrecking
What winds, what wrecking
What wrath of wild our dangerous peace
Waits to release."
"And the Platonic order of the morning, chaste,
Spontaneous, with a hot cool sun
The satin cups of the crocus, the hyacinth
Not Greek, not 'ensanguined with woe,'
Already the loose knot of violets
Lead me. And I cannot go."
"The rainy Pleiads wester,
Orion plunges prone,
The stroke of midnight ceases
And I lie down alone.
The rainy Pleiads wester
And seek beyond the sea
The head that I shall dream of
That will not dream of me."
"For Time is
nothing if not amenable."
"Dapple-throned Aphrodite,
eternal daughter of God,
snare-knitter!"
"Who, Sappho, is
unfair to you?"
"The dawning day has clouds in store;
Desire her cloudy moods;
And sunlit woods of morning may
By noon be darkened woods."
"I scald alone, here, under the fire
Of the great moon."
"Distant like a dark and wounded doe
Sweet like sobbing during the fall of snow.
Distant and sweet, and caught in the marrow!"
"Time will find us wasted."
"Starkly I returned
To stare upon the ash of all I burned."
"Rise with the wind, my great big serpent;
Silence the birds and darken the air;
Change me with terror, alive in a moment;
Strike for the heart and have me there."
"It is a terrible thing,...to fall into the hands of the living God."
"The streets, I observe,
are wintry.
It feels like snow.
Starlings circle in the sky,
conspiring,
together, and alone,
unspeakable journeys,
into and out of the light."
"This dream that pains me
And enchains me."
"Are you sprinting
from the shadows of the past
to overtake me?"
"Longing, of course,
becomes its own object, the way
that desire can make anything into a god."
"O madness; not for a single day
Could I leave her!
I stayed behind."
"As the demure
Flame of our candle, no more plied
By tempest outside
Than those deep ocean weeds unrecking
What winds, what wrecking
What wrath of wild our dangerous peace
Waits to release."
"And the Platonic order of the morning, chaste,
Spontaneous, with a hot cool sun
The satin cups of the crocus, the hyacinth
Not Greek, not 'ensanguined with woe,'
Already the loose knot of violets
Lead me. And I cannot go."
"The rainy Pleiads wester,
Orion plunges prone,
The stroke of midnight ceases
And I lie down alone.
The rainy Pleiads wester
And seek beyond the sea
The head that I shall dream of
That will not dream of me."
"For Time is
nothing if not amenable."
charitza's review
5.0
picked this up a queer bookshop in NYC called 'blue stockings' during the first year of me being openly out of the closet and on a date, it felt like a sign.
it is so affirming to see that gay love has existed for ages and still prevails!
it is so affirming to see that gay love has existed for ages and still prevails!
bloodscout's review
5.0
A selection of stunning poems placed into five evocative and relatable sections.