This Assignment Is So Gay: LGBTQI Poets on the Art of Teaching

by Megan Volpert (Editor)

Poetry. LGBT Studies. "About 'it gets better,' they were never wrong, the path-forgers, the ground-breakers. How it gets better is another question, for a new century has brought changing minds, but also new hardships. That is why this extraordinary book matters. Teaching is such a sacred office, and we who teach today know the attentiveness that must be brought to the profession. These poems track, record, memorialize, and meditate on that office. There are poems of the student one lost, the student who reached out at last, of the daily commitment that teaching who you are requires, of why it matters. There is nothing like this thoughtful collection of trenchant, witty, poignant, blunt, and luminous poems on the art of teaching by LGBTIQ poets assembled with judicious vision by Megan Volpert. THIS ASSIGNMENT IS SO GAY is a beautiful and necessary book, not just for teaching, but for us all."--Cynthia Hogue

Genres: Poetry, LGBT, Queer

226 pages, Paperback

First published August 6, 2013

About the author

Megan Volpert is author or editor of over a dozen books on popular culture, including two Lambda Literary Award finalists and an American Library Association honoree. She won Georgia Author of the Year for her newest work, Boss Broad (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2019). Volpert is a part-time Assistant Professor of Interdisciplinary Studies at Kennesaw State University, has been teaching public high school English in Atlanta for almost two decades and was 2014 Teacher of the Year. She writes for PopMatters and has edited anthologies of philosophical essays on the music of Tom Petty and the television series RuPaul’s Drag Race.

Reviews

[BookChampions · Rating 4 out of 5]

Typically I try to steer clear of poetry anthologies anymore, but this one was just too promising to ignore. When you find part of your tribe, you join the party.

Not all the poems here are about LGBTQ+ issues, but all of them are reflections on the art of teaching—the promise, the failures, the hope we carry. The majority of the poems here are very good, and a few were outstanding. But most of all, it gave me a chance to reflect on teaching myself, in only the way poetry can lead me.

[Kevin Orth · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wonderful read. I would recommend this highly to anyone in the school system, both student and teacher. There is something about writing in prose that conveys a deeper truth and a more nuanced message that works like this genuinely capture.

[World Literature Today]

"This collection of LGBTIQ poetry does not disappoint from the first to the last page, offering up not only personal pedagogical anecdotes but also the most beautiful yet painful, heart-wrenchingly honest poetry I can recall reading in recent memory." - Shellie McCullough, University of Texas, Dallas

This book was reviewed in the September 2013 issue of World Literature Today. Read the full review by visiting our website: http://bit.ly/1aiEdbn

[Karli · Rating 3 out of 5]

I like poetry, but a lot of it goes over my head. I don't think it's fair to say that any poem is a bad poem. There are good poems, and there are poems you just don't understand. There were a lot of poems compiled in this book, but only I only really liked 17 of them. The others I just didn't get. But those 17 were really good. It's hard to review a book like this because it's a bunch of separate pieces and not one cohesive narrative.