Love is a Dangerous Word: the Selected Poems of Essex Hemphill

by Essex Hemphill, Robert F. Reid-Pharr (editor), John Keene

The incendiary, sensual poems of Essex Hemphill, now in a new landmark selection


For three decades, the legacy of writer, editor, performer, and activist Essex Hemphill has been lovingly sustained through xeroxed copies of his few published works. They are as potent now as they were in the 1980s. With tenderness and rage, Hemphill's poems unflinchingly explore the complex, overlapping identities of sexuality, gender, and race, the American political landscape, and his own experiences as a black gay man during the HIV/AIDS crisis.


Edited by John Keene and Robert F. Reid-Pharr, Love is a Dangerous Word contains selections from Hemphill's only published full-length collection, Ceremonies—named one of the 25 most influential works of postwar queer literature by the New York Times—alongside rarely seen poems from magazines and chapbooks. It serves as both an introduction to Hemphill’s poetic prowess and a treasure trove for those who have long awaited his return to the literary spotlight.

Genres: Poetry, Queer, LGBT, Gay, African American

192 pages, Paperback

Published March 4, 2025

Reviews

[Raul · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm stunned at what Essex Hemphill, and other queer artists from his time, 1980s and 1990s, were able to accomplish artistically and in their activism despite all they were up against. The AIDS pandemic, a great swing to the right (Thatcher, Reagan, and co); a world where death and its trailing grief was a constant shadow with complete abandonment from the state institutions supposed to give remedy.

The poems here vary and unite in their thematic lines. They address the issues that faced the Black and queer communities Hemphill writes tenderly and expertly on and for. They're erotic, direct, vulgar, political, wonderful. I'd already read a good portion of these poems in Ceremonies, which is a collection of poems and prose by Hemphill, and they were just as good reading them the second time round. I was still just as moved by the poem “Commitments” as when I'd first read it:

I will always be there.
When the silence is exhumed.
When the photographs are examined
I will be pictured smiling
among siblings, parents,
nieces and nephews.

In the background of the photographs:
the hazy smoke of barbecue,
a checkered red and white tablecloth
laden with blackened chicken,
glistening ribs, paper plates,
bottles of beer and pop.

In the photos,
the smallest children
are always held by their parents.
My arms are always empty, or around
the shoulders of unsuspecting aunts
expecting to throw rice at me someday.

Or picture tinsel, candles,
ornamented imitation trees,
or another table, this one
set for Thanksgiving,
a turkey steaming the lens.

My arms are empty
in those photos, too,
so empty they would break
around a lover.

I am always there
for the critical emergencies,
graduations,
the middle of the night.

I am the invisible son.
In the family photographs
nothing appears out of character.
I smile as I serve my duty

Some of the other parts I really liked:

From Heavy Breathing:

I have been in the bathroom weeping
as silently as I could.
I don’t want to alarm
the other young men.
It wasn’t always this way.
I used to grin.
I used to dance.
The streets weren’t always
sick with blood,
sick with drugs.
My life seems to be
marked down
for quick removal
from the shelf.

From When My Brother Fell

When I stand
on the front lines now,
cussing the lack of truth,
the absence of willful change
and strategic coalitions,
I realize sewing quilts
will not bring you back
nor save us.

It’s too soon
to make monuments
for all we are losing,
for the lack of truth
as to why we are dying,
who wants us dead,
what purpose does it serve?

This striking line from Fixin’ Things:

Why is the world always easier to fix
than our own homes?

And this wonderful love poem called Thread:

Trying not to think of you
yet your face colors
every contour
of my mind.
And every way I turn
inside of a minute
I collide
with your laughter.
I am wind,
and you
are chimes.

It's a pity that Hemphill isn't as read or referenced as much as I think he should be. It's mostly academics who bring him up from my experience, which is fine and wonderful, he certainly would be more forgotten if they didn't. But given how these poems were clearly written for the people, they should go beyond academia. Very grateful for John Keene and everyone else who made this collection possible. Hoping that more and more people encounter Hemphill's work.

[Jonathan David Pope · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Im dying twice as fast / as any other American. / So I pour myself as glass of champagne, / I cut it with a drop of orange juice.”

Hemphill was a master of language, and a vessel of knowledge. Putting pen to paper in order to convey the raw truth of what it is to be Black & queer, and still have love, joy, and desires in a world that says everything about you is wrong. I felt at home in this collection.

[Read By RodKelly · Rating 5 out of 5]

Love is a Dangerous Word: The Selected Poems of Essex Hemphill is such a stunning and meaningful collection that I’m deeply grateful to own. I adore Hemphill’s unflinching clarity, his stark imagery, and his ability to carve beauty from the debris of longing, grief, and rage.

He writes love poems that double as war reports, where the battlefield is the body, the bedroom, the street, the family home. This collection is a rich, urgent confession of what it means to live as a Black gay man in America.

Hemphill doesn’t dilute his Blackness to make his queerness legible, nor mute his eroticism to render his politics palatable. His binaries coalesce into something jagged and beautifully complex.

I love his line, “I am a revolution without bloodshed.” He’s not begging for inclusion; he claims space, fully aware of the danger of simply existing. “Sometimes I don’t give a damn,” he writes, even though the poems reveal a terribly big heart that does, in fact, give a damn.

I also admire the way Hemphill writes to the Black community. He writes about the violence we inherit and enact, about the harm passed down and the hope we desperately attempt to hold on to.

His critiques of masculinity—“this perpetual black suit I have outgrown”—and of internalized racism and homophobia express both deep sorrow and love. These poems read like letters to people he refuses to abandon. Love, for Hemphill, is dangerous, but truly unconditional.

[Ipsa · Rating 4 out of 5]

incidentally while I was finishing this book today, I was listening to R.A.P. Ferreira's newest album, The Night Green Side of It. it turned out to be a very precise companion piece for Hemphill's poetry. two men who are absolutely themselves playing with language that's edifying, non-neurotic, fresh. self-exploration without it tipping into narcissistic obsession or weird navel-gazing. they use their skin to engage with the world (using their bodies for what they were truly intended to be --- signposts). they look at themselves by looking at the world.

absolute flesh, absolute breathing, absolute articulation! absolute, absolute, absolute..!!!

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

Just got this wonderful new book, and read the foreword and the afterword, both excellent. As for the poems themselves, I will enjoy reading them again, as I have read them many times before. In some cases, I heard the poet perform them himself in person, when he was still alive (I never missed a chance to hear him if I could help it, and we are fortunate that some of these performances are immortalized in films). I also have the chapbooks of Earthlife and Conditions, and more than one edition of Ceremonies, the book of his collected works. I'm so glad that folks are keeping this work in front of new generations of readers. Highly recommended!

[jane bro]

i found my THIRD poetry soulmate. essex writes with such sensuality and romantic language that does not neglect the political. his living is political, thus his life is full of fanfare and desire. he lives in his poems unabashedly and with no shame. he is speaking to me across the years. all the stars, every one of them.

[Charlie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Searing, beautiful, hot, funny, and devastating in turns. Hemphill's one of the best to ever do it.

[Gregory Duke · Rating 5 out of 5]

My only exposure to Essex Hemphill was his performance/presence in Marlon Riggs' Tongues Untied. A brilliant voice. Adept at formal variety, social critique, and honest and earnest love/sex poetry. His work FEELS like a liberation, even when so many poems describe contemporary American life as being akin to a war zone. Cruising, bath houses, fighting against assimilationist tendencies, all the while finding love, temporary or permanent, in the face of disaster (racism, homophobia, the HIV/AIDs crisis). Another essential artist lost to the 80s. A revolutionary love poetry among the rubble.

[Lou Corn · Rating 5 out of 5]

For years I’d search used bookstores for a copy of Ceremonies, knowing despite my looking that whoever had a copy probably held to it tightly. Without knowing it was coming, I’ve been waiting for this collection for years. And what a gift it is. Poems I’d heard before and longer scathing ones I hadn't. What range! Essex Hemphill thought about everything from the dark corners of gay desire to the machinations of social and imperial war— and felt it too. The introduction and afterword by the editors were excellent in turn, alternating personal and pedagogic material, building the context and bibliography but making it alive. I will still look for Ceremonies but grateful I’ll have this by my bedside.

[angela · Rating 5 out of 5]

was i trying to savor this book? read it indefinitely, never coming to the final poem? possibly.

i’m glad it has journeyed with me for months now, and that journey isn’t a reflection of it not being deeply resonant or impactful. i’m grateful for the last few months, i would look over knowing that a juicy, impactful, new poem was waiting to share its truths with me. and im honored to be receptive and open to its offerings.

[Melissa · Rating 4 out of 5]

What a beautiful, visceral collection of poetry that illuminates Black queer existence. I (sadly) was not familiar with Essex’s work prior to coming across this anthology, but am so grateful for the unflinching commitment to chronicling the beauty and ugliness of the time.

[Cindy Neighbors · Rating 5 out of 5]

I feel lucky that I discovered this book. The other reviews are far superior to what I could write and I'm still in awe of the power, language and life of this brave human. I can feel his soul translated through this work and I'm grateful to have found it.

[Inverted · Rating 5 out of 5]

American Wedding is sacred. I fucking love this book.

[Andrew H · Rating 3 out of 5]

Taking its title from "Under Certain Circumstances", Love is a Dangerous Word places the poetry of Essex Hemphill before a wider readership. Adding this Selected Poems to the New Directions catalogue recognises Hemphill's worth as a poet. Both of these are positives. The book is flawed, however, and includes some really unfortunate confusions. Both Robert F Reid-Pharr and John Keene are highly respected critics, so there should be agreement over simple things like the dates of Hemphill's poems. Reid-Phar identifies Earth Life as Hemphill's first collection (1985) and John Keene claims Conditions as he dates Earth Life as 1988. According to my original editions, Reid-Pharr is correct. Conditions was published in 1986 andEarth Life in 1985. Also, there are regrettable typos, for example, "Silence continues/dismantling chromosomes" ought to read "Science continues" . This book was an opportunity to provide a critical introduction to Hemphill's work. Instead, the book does nothing more than set Hemphill in general relation to the Harlem Renaissance. Really, Hemphill needs to be discussed in relation to other black gay poets, including UK poets--his reach extended beyond the USA. The book also combines Hemphill's poems in a puzzling way. The first seventy pages reproduce Hemphill's Ceremonies (1992), then five poems are inserted before Ceremonies resumes. After "In the Life", poems are added from other collections. Usually, a Selected Poems contains poems in order so that a sense of development can be studied. This is not available in Love is a Dangerous Word

All in all, this is a serviceable and affordable edition that includes Hemphill's spoken word pieces and it brings unknown work into print. But a reader needs to be aware that the concluding poem, "Vital Signs", is far from complete. A thirty-seven page poem is reduced to six-pages in Love is a Dangerous Word. As Hemphill's final work, one that overstands his life, AIDS, his African heritage, this ought to have been included in full.

[marcus ghee · Rating 5 out of 5]

there really is no review that i can write to express how deeply moved, impressed, and emotionally satiated this collection made me feel. i’ll talk about it for the rest of my life. it makes me love poetry in a cellular way, like it’s something our dna is hard wired to seek out and digest. sometimes you just read something that makes you feel split open. I’m viewing life through the lens of Octavia Buter’s Xenogenesis series/the way the Oaankali communicate & transfer information and feelings and have moments where I feel I’m experiencing sensations in the same way, like I’m laid up next to the very essence of something. Reading this felt like that. I can’t quite remember when exactly last year i was gifted this book and I took months to read it, picking it up here and there. it made a solid companion to the mental roller coaster of 2025.

[Talia · Rating 4 out of 5]

A book of poems which breaks your heart then promises to mend it back together backwards, scatter pieces around your neighborhood, make you run after it in the dark of night after waking up in a cold sweat. Lust and love bound their way through each page, one always available the other constantly just out of reach. Hemphill's best when abstract, his more straightforward political poems fell flat for me.

[Arya Harsono · Rating 3 out of 5]

Picked up this anthology of Essex Hemphill's poetry after admiring "U.S. Planning to Wage War in Space" projected onto the wall at an exhibition of his work at the Phillips Collection in June – the perfect month to engage with this subject. It has taken me most of the summer to digest Hemphill's careful verses. Yet I felt a lack of intentionality and seriousness in this particular selection of poems –with its lack of timestamp to indicate the stage of life Hemphill was in when the inspiration struck, the myriad typos (confirmed by cross-referencing with online archives), and the absence of any thematic structure beyond the subject of Hemphill's observations and feelings. It's as if the editor is informing the readers that the words themselves are what's critical, and not the context in which they exist. Whether intentional or not, Hemphill's poetry generally seems difficult to source, so any presentation of his work is welcome.

[Michael · Rating 5 out of 5]

The perfect book to end Pride Month with. Hemphill’s poetry remains sadly so relevant and not enough has changed since the 80s but his passion and energy help us to continue the fight

[Karla Lopes · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hemphill shared his heart without shame. The rawness and beauty of his words amazed me from beginning to the end of the reading. I got so inspired reading every single poem.

[Ronald Steinhoff · Rating 3 out of 5]

A thought-provoking and insightful view into the work of Essex Hemphill.

[Bunnie Girl · Rating 5 out of 5]

Essex Hemphill declares his voice – not unchallenged, but unyieldingly and unashamedly. Navigating the social landscape of the late Seventies through the early Nineties as a Black gay man, Hemphill channels personal experience through the medium of his voice, employing his ever-charming form to produce the contents in this posthumous collection of his poetry. It is a seductive, and unarguably authoritative, anthology of his cross-marked circumstance.

His work speaking for itself, Hemphill successfully delineates himself as an artist, aesthetically distinguished from his predecessors and successors, and impressively positioned within a distinct locality of his own.

In another sense, and without contradiction, it requires the faintest effort to trace Hemphill as a collectively functional artist – one not merely in touch with but inseparable from the small cadre of likeminded writers of his time. He contributes emphatically to a modern canon – his efforts imbued with those of fellow writers entrenched in similar struggles; their messaging, complimenting one another; and their work, appraised together, comprising the bulwark of a new, queer, and radical black poetic.

This collection delivers a poetic that is not just “good” – it is necessary; dangerous. The romantic and seductive invocations engender a very real spice: one that inoculates, convinces, arouses. When the somber or lachrymose is invoked, it reads organically - not cartoonishly. The messaging is palpable; heavy hearted. The reader is, in no small sense, challenged to feel permeable.

The poems do not read, as one could imagine, like some exaggerated, obtuse chronology detailing an, at one point, underdeveloped author’s hungry pursuit of voice; crescendoing, at last, in discovery. On the contrary, the collection translates as Hemphill ritualistically developing his precedential and unique voice across the span of his work. This distinction appears self-evident with a cursory exploration of these tragic cases – tragic; nevertheless, consistently affixed to an ethos of survival, with considerable attention to erotic agency.

The language does not try to overcomplicate an already highly political, deadly, and complex material reality – It meets these phenomena on a streetwise, eye-level. Capturing a realistic nuance: the conspicuous, elaborate, and often testimonial scars of oppression, secrecy, political awareness, and self awareness do show clearly throughout the collection. Likewise, the author’s ultimate efforts to sow a unifying, more hopeful solidarity rooted in care are clever, persistently evident, and – despite the collection’s often morose or explicit content – enjoyable to read.

[aïs · Rating 5 out of 5]

i have been in the bathroom weeping
as silently as i could.
i don’t want to alarm
the other young men.
it wasn’t always this way.
i used to grin.
i used to dance.
the streets weren’t always
sick with blood,
sick with drugs.
my life seems to be
marked down
for quick removal
from the shelf.
when i fuck
the salt tastes sweet.

page 11

***

but tonight,
evening of the third day,
i call the police
and tell them
not about faces
rising like balloons.
i will tell them instead
about music,
about petals from black roses
falling softly to the ground.
perhaps they will understand.
maybe they will
come to my street
and knock at the door
of the gray house,
where lives this man
i have not seen
for three days,
whose face is beginning to rise
in my dreams
like balloons.

page 87

[Henrique Almeida · Rating 5 out of 5]

não dá para descrever a força incisiva das palavras do poeta e ativista Essex Hemphill, que décadas depois continuam a representar a realidade da experiência queer e negra, remando contra as correntes que a querem apagar.

alguns versos favoritos:

"They don't know
we are becoming powerful.
Every time we kiss
we confirm the new world is coming."

"what do they fear?
if the men hold hands and dance
the world will not end."

"I want to start and organization
to save my life.
If whales, snails
dogs, cats,
Chrysler, and NIxon
can be saved,
the lives of Black men
are priceless
and can be saved."

[Niko Feliciano · Rating 4 out of 5]

“I waste the meaning of foolishness like seed.”

In so far as any book can save you, I read this exactly when I needed to. One of the themes throughout this selection of poetry is the notion of spreading seeds. This can be interpreted in many ways, most strikingly in the context of a gay black man. I feel lucky that the seed of Hemphill’s work has spread to reach a generation of readers like me… who knows what countless ideas might spring up as a result.

[Kudzai Mhangwa · Rating 4 out of 5]

I received this book as a gift, and I loved it so much. The poetry is so vivid, and Hemphill is able to create these powerful images and scenarios in his verses. Some the poems were a little graphic and edged on a little violent but that is the honest truth of what he has witnessed in his community. I would recommend this book to anyone who loves raw and piercing poetry, this is a great collection and alone these poems stand on their own legs!

[Alyssa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hard to say much about this sharp and complicated collection because I can't remember what made me pick it up and I went in with zero knowledge of Essex Hemphill or his work. But I'm glad I did pick it up. The introduction added very good and much-needed context that allowed me to understand the poems more.

[Fari Cannon · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Be careful with your life even when risk is minimal/Be careful with your trust even when love is being claimed/Be careful to speak exactly what you mean, lucidness is the first step in becoming/Honor your every loyalty/the first being to yourself”

[amanieyes · Rating 5 out of 5]

Massive shout-out to my dear friend who works at a publishing company that so happened to have an uncorrected proof of this literary gem. I am deeply grateful and touched by Hemphill’s art and his continued ancestral presence in this archival work. He gave so much…I will always think about him

[Justin Chan · Rating 5 out of 5]

moves me, trembling between pathos and seduction there is a tenderness, hope, clarity; my grieving is too common to arouse the glance of angels. there are bullets in heads, you know how i love those. please read, please love, please Be Careful.

[Iso · Rating 5 out of 5]

wanted to read hemphill after watching looking for langston, and wow. truly a master of language. it's raw, unapologetic, beautiful, black, queer, real just– aaaah! i adore this collection !!!

shoutout catherine for letting me borrow the book <3