Author Description

This selection contains prize-winning lesbian love poetry that spans more than four decades of the feminist and queer liberation movements. As Schavrien reminds us in her Foreward "We lovers were liberating women one orgasm at a time." The poems are both sophisticated and passionate. There is even a cycle unfurling the drama of a menage a trois. Schavrien's vivid precision manifests not just in her virtuoso performance of complex poetic forms, like the sestina, but also in her microscopic portrayal of intimacy: "lavishly scroll her, reel her in/ roll her out to the tip of the tumult at the top till we spill/ long down/ o both o forever/ to the place beyond discord." Portraying so graphically the erotic highs and lows, she reminds us of our own. From the Nobel Laureate SAUL BELLOW she received this praise for her previous book: "Judy Schavrien makes these extraordinary poems come to life in English translating as only one poet can translate another." (Back cover, what rhymes with cancer?, New Rivers Press) You do not want to miss this body of work. It even contains a gorgeous full-color inset of her visual portraits of women to complement the verbal ones. It will be a great gift to yourself and to friends who love the arts, and, more so, who love love.