A review by shanviolinlove
Motherland Fatherland Homelandsexuals by Patricia Lockwood

5.0

Clever and creative, Patricia Lockwood summons a storehouse of ideas and images in each of her poems, calling into question topics of sexuality, family relationships, gender, our environment, to name a few. Each poem tells a story with a charged, yet conversational language that is as accessible as it is inviting. This collection includes her famous "Rape Joke" poem, along with poems that explore the birthing of American poetry by gender-exchanging Whitman and Dickinson, dolphin-girls whose overly sexualized bodies mature, a meta poem that explores women in war and ultimately a brother whose story hijacks the poem--"List of Cross Dressing Soldiers" was so arresting, so rich in word-play and imagery, that I stopped my husband in the middle of what he was doing and said, "You have to listen to this." Patricia Lockwood's poems are like that, grabbing the reader in the middle of what he or she is doing and saying, "You have to listen to this."