The World in Us

Introduction

The Editors' Introduction

Poems:
  •  
  • "What the Body Told" by Rafael Campo
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  • "Mango Poem" by Regie Cabico
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  • "Marianne Faithfull's Cigarette" by Gerry Gomez Pearlberg
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  • "Louganis" by Eloise Klein Healy

    Letter From the Editor

    Editorial: Having Our Say

    New Releases

    Authors On Tour

    Feedback

    Ordering

    Gay/Lesbian/Feminist Bookstores Around the Country

    The Mostly Unfabulous Homepage of Ethan Green

     




    The World in Us The World in Us:
    Lesbian and Gay Poetry of the Next Wave

     
    Edited by Michael Lassell and Elena Georgiou



    In recent times poetry has enjoyed an unprecedented popularity both within the literary mainstream and the culture at large. It has now assumed a previously unimagined active role in the public consciousness and the developing culture — a role that is particularly exemplified by the dynamic, burgeoning world of queer poetry.

    In the first substantial collection of gay and lesbian poetry in over a decade, editors Georgiou and Lassell present significant work by forty-six women and men — all living, working poets — at the height of their creative powers. With selections from major, established poets (Marilyn Hacker, J. D. McClatchy, Olga Broumas, Mark Doty, among many others) to emerging artists (Letta Neely, Justin Chin, Cyrus Cassells, Regie Cabico, and more), The World in Us is poetry with its roots in the active voice.

    As the editors proclaim in the introduction, "The poets of The World in Us are shaping their lives and the lives of others with words; their collective modus operandi is to affect everyone who comes in contact with them as if each poem were a new sun that casts each reader an unfamiliar shadow. The strategies are diverse: the poems challenge and shock, they explain and assault, they entertain and amuse. It is strong work from a group of strong individuals. It is work that is not shy about its medium or its content. It is poetry that makes visible the world in us. It is poetry of the necessary word."

    Defining rather than definitive, active rather than merely observing, The World in Us is the written word at its most exhilarating and compelling — necessary bread for the mind.

    Michael Lassell is the author of three volumes of poetry, a collection of short stories, and a book of essays, stories, and poems, as well as the editor of four volumes of prose and verse. A professional editor and journalist, he is the winner of a Lambda Literary Award for poetry.

    Elena Georgiou has won numerous writing awards, including the New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship in Poetry and the Astraea Emerging Writers Award. She teaches poetry at Hunter and City colleges of the City University of New York. Mercy, Mercy Me, her first poetry collection, is forthcoming.

    They both live in New York City.

     

    Table of Contents:

    Introduction

    MARK BIBBINS
    Whitman on the Beach
    Bluebeard
    Geometry Class
    Mud
    Counting

    OLGA BROUMAS
    From Caritas
    1.Erik Satie
    2.With the clear
    Etymology
    Tryst
    The Masseuse
    Landscape with Next of Kin

    CHERYL BURKE
    Lizzie
    Motor Oil Queen

    REGIE CABICO
    Check One
    Mango Poem
    Gameboy
    Antonio Banderas in His Underwear
    Art in Architecture

    RAFAEL CAMPO
    Belonging
    From Song for My Lover
    VI. Our Country of Origin
    XI. A Medical Student Learns Love and Death
    From Ten Patients, And Another
    IV. Kelly
    VII. Manuel
    XI. Jane Doe #2
    What the Body Told

    CYRUS CASSELLS
    New Song of Solomon
    A Courtesy, a Trenchant Grace
    Marathon
    Beautiful Signor

    JUSTIN CHIN
    Why a Boy
    Cocksucker's Blues
    Undetectable
    Ex-boyfriends Named Michael

    CHRYSTOS
    I Suck
    I Bought a New Red
    You Know I Like to Be
    I Bring You Greetings: How
    The Okeydoekey Tribe

    CHERYL CLARKE
    Palm Leaf of Mary Magdalene
    Stuck
    Passing
    Make-up
    Vicki and Daphne
    A Poet's Death

    JEFFERY CONWAY
    Marlo Thomas in Seven Parts and Epilogue
    Modern English
    Hangover
    Weight Belt

    DENNIS COOPER
    After School, Street Football, Eighth Grade
    Teen Idols
    David Cassidy Then
    From Some Adventures of John Kennedy Jr.
    In School
    10 Dead Friends
    Poem for George Miles
    Dreamt Up

    ALFRED CORN
    To Hermes
    Kimchee in Worcester (mass.)
    A Marriage in the Nineties
    Long-distance Call to Gregg, Who Lived with AIDS as Long as He Could

    MARK DOTY
    My Tattoo
    Homo Will Not Inherit
    Lilacs in NYC
    From Atlantis
    3. Michael's Dream
    6. New Dog

    BEATRIX GATES
    Triptych

    ELENA GEORGIOU
    A Week in the Life of the Ethnically Indeterminate
    The Space Between
    Talkin' Trash
    Intimate Mixture
    From Where I Stand

    ROBERT GLUCK
    Invaders from Mars
    Pasolini
    Burroughs
    From The Visit
    2. Odd to close
    10. A famous monk
    11. This image

    MELINDA GOODMAN
    Cobwebs
    February Ice Years
    Lullabye for a Butch
    New Comers
    Open Poem

    MARILYN HACKER
    Going Back to the River
    The Boy
    Invocation
    Year's End
    Squares and Courtyards

    ELOISE KLEIN HEALY
    Changing What We Mean
    Changing the Oil
    Louganis
    What It Was Like the Night Cary Grant Died
    From Los Angeles Looking South

    MELANIE HOPE
    Sixth Grade
    Bare Floors
    Only Days
    INRI
    Sacrifice

    MICHAEL KLEIN
    The Range of It
    The Tides
    Letters from the Front
    Guardian Life
    Scenes for an Elegy

    WAYNE KOESTENBAUM
    Tea Dance
    From Erotic Collectibles
    1977
    1980
    1992

    JOAN LARKIN
    Housework
    Origins
    Beatings
    Good-bye
    Inventory
    My Body
    Legacy
    Cold River

    MICHAEL LASSELL
    Kissing Ramon
    How to Watch Your Brother Die
    Brady Street, San Francisco
    Sunset Stripping: Visiting LA
    Three Poems
    1.For Anthony
    2.Photo
    3.Ramon
    Going to Europe

    TIMOTHY LIU
    Vox Angelica
    Mama
    The Size of It
    Reading Whitman in a Toilet Stall
    Strange Fruit

    JAIME MANRIQUE
    Tarzan
    My Night with Federico Garcia Lorca
    (as told by Edouard Roditi)
    Baudelaire's Spleen
    Barcelona Days

    J.D. McClatchy
    My Mammogram
    Late Night Ode
    First Steps

    HONOR MOORE
    Poem for the End
    A Window at Key West
    Edward
    Girl in a Fur-Trimmed Dress

    EILEEN MYLES
    An American Poem
    Maxfield Parrish
    Merk
    Sleepless
    School of Fish

    LETTA NEELY
    Multiple Assaults
    Rhonda, Age 15, Emergency Room
    8 Ways of Looking at Pussy

    ACHY OBEJAS
    Lifes
    The Public Place
    Dancing in Paradise
    Sunday

    GERRY GOMEZ PEARLBERG
    Think Back
    Marianne Faithfull's Cigarette
    Sailor
    Loop-the-Loop in Prospect Park (1905)
    Dog Star

    ROBERT E. PENN
    Morning Songs
    Hand

    CARL PHILLIPS
    Cotillion
    The Kill
    As from a Quiver of Arrows
    In the Blood, Winnowing
    Undressing for Li Po

    D.A. POWELL
    [triptych]
    [studs and rings: favors of the piercing party]
    [always returning: holidays and burials, not every week]
    [my father and me making dresses: together]
    [you're thin again handsome: in our last]
    [the minotaur at supper: spare the noritake and the spode]

    MINNIE BRUCE PRATT
    Elbows
    Poem for My Sons
    Crime Against Nature
    Red String
    The Other Side

    MARIANA ROMO-CARMONA
    Crows
    Signs
    Fish
    Daylight

    RUTH L. SCHWARTZ
    Possible
    Flamenco Guitar
    Can Pigeons Be Heroes?
    Edgewater Park

    ROBYN SELMAN
    21 East 10th, 2BR, WBF, EIK
    Exodus

    REGINALD SHEPHERD
    The Gods at Three A.M.
    Narcissus Learning the Words to This Song
    Three A.M. Eternal
    Eros in His Striped Blue Shirt
    That Man

    LINDA SMUKLER
    Days Inn
    Trash
    Sign
    Marry
    Home in Three Days, Don't Wash

    CHERYL BOYCE TAYLOR
    Forever Arima
    'Round Irving High School
    Plenty Time Pass Fast, Fas Dey So

    RICHARD TAYSON
    First Sex
    Nightsweats
    Phone Sex

    DAVID TRINIDAD
    Things to Do in Valley of the Dolls (The Movie)
    Answer Song
    From Eighteen to Twenty-One
    I. He said his name
    III. More than anything
    V. Tom used spit
    VII. As one young guy
    Moonstones
    (Doll Not Included)
    For Joe Brainard

    TERRY WOLVERTON
    The Dead Stepfather
    Tubes
    Black Slip
    In China

    MARK WUNDERLICH
    Take Good Care of Yourself
    Given in Person Only
    The Trick
    Aubade
    Continent's Edge
    East Seventh Street

     

    Copyright © 2000 St. Martin's Press.


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