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A review by greeniezona
Why Things Burn by Daphne Gottlieb
4.0
A re-read prompted by my traipse through my poetry shelf to catalog for goodreads. An acquisition from the period when I was obsessed with Soft Skull Books. One of the few books I lent to Jessa that I demanded back before she moved to Germany.
This is a book for young feminists -- deeply entrenched in the war of the sexes. Raw from the evils of misogyny in the world -- street harassment, abuse, domestic violence, rape... and the way women fold themselves up to live within the narrow confines that will will them approval, or at least safety. Poetry for fans of Michelle Tea, of Cunt, of the fierce feminist warriors of spoken word...
Reading this again so many years later brought up a bewildering mess of emotions from when I , too, was raw from constantly being grated against the Global Accords on the Fair Use of the Sex Class. The shock of strange men showing me their dicks as they passed me on the interstate. Being overwhelmed by righteous grief each time I listened to Ani DiFranco's "Hide and Seek"... The rage of hearing stories like the disappearing women of Juarez. The ache of watching yet another friend redefine their entire life around an unexpected pregnancy that was never more than an inconvenience or a punchline to the man "responsible."
All of this shit is still in the world. I'm both grateful and horrified by the distance my current reality lets me put between my daily life and these horrors. Reading this poetry is like licking the wound and finding it still new, electric.
This is a book for young feminists -- deeply entrenched in the war of the sexes. Raw from the evils of misogyny in the world -- street harassment, abuse, domestic violence, rape... and the way women fold themselves up to live within the narrow confines that will will them approval, or at least safety. Poetry for fans of Michelle Tea, of Cunt, of the fierce feminist warriors of spoken word...
Reading this again so many years later brought up a bewildering mess of emotions from when I , too, was raw from constantly being grated against the Global Accords on the Fair Use of the Sex Class. The shock of strange men showing me their dicks as they passed me on the interstate. Being overwhelmed by righteous grief each time I listened to Ani DiFranco's "Hide and Seek"... The rage of hearing stories like the disappearing women of Juarez. The ache of watching yet another friend redefine their entire life around an unexpected pregnancy that was never more than an inconvenience or a punchline to the man "responsible."
All of this shit is still in the world. I'm both grateful and horrified by the distance my current reality lets me put between my daily life and these horrors. Reading this poetry is like licking the wound and finding it still new, electric.