Things Shaped in Passing: More "Poets for Life" Writing from the AIDS Panemic

by Michael Klein (Editor), Richard J. McCann (Editor)

This important and passionate collection presents the work of forty-two American poets whose vision and language bear the impress of the AIDS pandemic, now almost in its third decade. It complements Poets for Life (Persea), the classic anthology of poetry on AIDS, and is also an update, presenting a poetry different from what has gone before, in which the elegist leaves the bedside to look at the whole fractured world, the world as it is, with AIDS in it. With its generous selections of the poets' works, as well as their brief personal remarks on the relationship of their poetry to their experiences of AIDS, Things Shaped in Passing bears witness to the extremity of our moment.

Genres: Poetry, LGBT

212 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 1996

Reviews

[Sarah Pascarella · Rating 4 out of 5]

2020 review: I picked this up again at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, figuring it would be instructive and possibly a comfort. I read one poem each day and it became a powerful ritual during our fraught moment. I do not regularly read poetry, so I do not feel I am the best critic here. I will simply say that I deeply appreciated what each poet shared with this reader, and that the range of emotions on these pages at times gave me a language to channel my own.

Original review (first read in 1998): A time capsule from the late eighties to mid nineties, with some fine essays and poetry.

[Nina · Rating 5 out of 5]

A remarkably diverse selection of poetry dealing with HIV/AIDS

[Ron Mohring · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'll always be grateful to Michael and Richard for including one of my poems in this anthology. What company.