Poets for Life: Seventy-Six Poets Respond to AIDS

by Michael Klein (Editor)

Seventy-six of the best poets writing today - gay and straight, male and female, black and white - respond to AIDS in all its manifestations, with anger, grief, and transcendence. They David Craig Austin, Wendy Barker, Robin Behn, Marvin Bell, David Bergman, Michael Blumenthal, Phillip Booth, Walta Borawski, Olga Broumas, Michael Burkard, Michael Cadnum, Kevin Jeffery Clarke, Henri Cole, Robert Cording, Alfred Corn, Robert Creeley, William Dickey, Deborah Digges, Melvin Dixon, Tim Dlugos, Mark Doty, Carol Ebbecke, Eve Ensler, Edward Field, Gary Fincke, Allen Ginsberg, Brad Gooch, David Groff, Thom Gunn, Marilyn Hacker, Rachel Hadas, Joseph Hansen, Richard Harteis, Christopher Hewitt, Daryl Hine, Edward Hirsch, Walter Holland, Lynda Hull, Greg Johnson, June Jordan, Arnie Kantrowitz, X.J. Kennedy, Michael Klein, Wayne Koestenbaum, Steve Kowit, Michael Lassell, Phillis Levin, Robert Louthan, Paul Mariah, Richard McCann, J.D. McClatchy, Heather McHugh, James Merrill, Paul Monette, Honor Moore, Carol Muske, Eileen Myles, Frankie Paino, Molly Peacock, Felice Picano, Stanley Plumly, James Purdy, J.M. Regan, Adrienne Rich, Mark Rudman, Stephen Sandy, Ron Schreiber, Maureen Seaton, Charlie Smith, William Jay Smith, Laurel Speer, Elizabeth Sullam, David Trinidad, Jean Valentine, Chester Wienerman, and Miller Williams.

Genres: Poetry, LGBT, Anthologies

244 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1989

Reviews

[Sarah Pascarella · Rating 4 out of 5]

Raw and visceral writing from the earliest days of the AIDS pandemic. I was especially moved by the poets who were writing during their last days, tackling fear and death and prejudice head on, knowing their contributions could be both testimony and legacy.

[Adrian Shanker]

This book is a time capsule — reading it three decades after it was written provides a lens into the real-time emotions of poets at the height of the AIDS epidemic.

[behsforensics]

Cutting is for How to Watch Your Brother
Die
By Michael Lassell

[Robert Vazquez-Pacheco · Rating 5 out of 5]

I remember reading this when it first came out. I thought a copy but it disappeared. This is a beautiful collection of poets writing about AIDS. My favorite is Mark Doty's. It's a poem I cannot read without choking. All of that loss and all of that beauty!

[quail · Rating 5 out of 5]

This anthology of AIDS poems outlives many of its contributors. Published in 1992, the 116 poems that make up Poets for Life shine with accuracy, courage, honesty, and relevance. Though with hindsight I might not agree with Carol Muske's assertion that the elegy has been reshaped, the content here is new and unmistakably true.

If you're looking for authors, see Mark Doty, Jean Valentine, the one and only Ginsberg, the late Paul Monette, and many others. The volume contains a variety of styles, although it doesn't seek to offer comprehensive coverage of form circa 1992. However, you'll be shaken by Edward Hirsch's flaming lament for the Black Death as much as this offering by James Purdy:

I have seen your hands asleep
the veins are talking to me as you lie
your hands are white as salt
they invite the lips and even the teeth
the salt-white hands that lie on the quilt
command a terrible kiss.

If you come across a copy, snatch it up.