Poetry:

The End of New York by Marc Almond
A new collection of poetry and prose inspired by New York City, with a series of extraordinary photomontages and a CD on which the author reads his work, The End of New York will appeal to all Marc's fans and to anyone interested in the city's sexual subcultures. With a cast list of addicts, hustlers, go-go dancers, and locations in the clubs and lounges of the city, this is at once a violent, sleazy and glamorous world. A necessary publication for Marc Almond fans. Spoken-word CD available only with this book. Eight color photomontages specially commissioned for this publication.

What The Body Told by Rafael Campo
Rafael Campo skillfully plays the rules of formal poetry against themselves in his second book of poetry, the Lambda Award-winning What the Body Told. In these intense poems, the body tells its story of loneliness and perseverance in an unwavering voice. One might expect the confessional poetry of a gay Cuban American poet to strike out in an expansive, perhaps enthusiastic mode, but Campo discovers in the sonnet plenty of room to explore questions of sexual, cultural, and professional identity. Five sonnet sequences--"Canciones de la Vida," "Canciones de la Muerte," and "Ten Patients, and Another"--form the heart of the book. These recall and try to answer each other's agonizing investigations into AIDS, desire, and the ironic distance between doctor and patient. Although the speaker is generally involved in the dramatic situation, he tends to speak as an observer, limning the assumptions below the surface and exploding them with fury.

Bite Hard by Justin Chin
Bite Hard, a collection of poetry, fiction, and performance pieces by Justin Chin, weaves together a vision of otherness that is unique in gay writing. Chin, who was born in Malaysia, raised in Singapore, and is now living in San Francisco, writes from queer pan-Asian experience: outsiderness times two. Whether describing a series of bad ex-boyfriends (he has had seven named Michael, each worse than the one before) or being pursued by "rice queens" (white men interested only in Asian lovers), Chin's authorial power resides in his ability to articulate humor as well as rage in the reality of what it means to be an Asian American homosexual in a country that valorizes Caucasian heterosexuality. Witty, smart, and sexy, Bite Hard is the work of a young artist finding his voice with passion and intelligence.

Attack of the Man-Eating Lotus Blossoms by Justin Chin
As a performance artist, Justin Chin has created eight full-length solo performance works and several shorter works, which have been presented nationally and abroad. This is a collection of those performance art texts, documents, and scripts from 1993-2001. More author than actor, and informed by punk, queer, camp, pop, Asian, Diasporic, and avant garde sensibilities, these works are by turns coolly ironic, or bratty and comic, or poignant and mournful, or unbelievably borderline psychotic. Whether playing native, tourist, or other, Chin questions assumptions, prejudices, and consumption.
Read an Excerpt, "Go, or, The Approximate Infinite Universe of Mrs. Robert Lomax"

Heterophobia by Ragan Fox
Ragan Fox is among the leading queer performance poets in the nation. He lives in Phoenix where he is a doctoral student and an instructor at Arizona State University. His literary debut includes subtle and nuanced exercises that interrogate gender, violence, sexuality, and heteronormativity. Heterophobia is accessible, riotously funny, heart-breaking, and undeniably real.

Sweet Son of Pan by Trebor Healey
Sweet Son of Pan is a collection of erotic poems, born of crushes, love affairs, fantasies, dreams and real experiences with men from around the world. And with Sweet Son of Pan, Trebor Healey joins the cloven-footed ranks of other men-loving bards who "sing the body electric": Whitman, Ginsberg, Broughton, and Antler. Healey’s poems offer praise and wonder at the joys of male love, a comic and picaresque account of one wannabe satyr’s fumbling attempts to frolic with the gods; merge with beauty; die into bliss and oblivion. The poems are a reaffirmation of sexual freedom and the wisdom that can be gained from the journey along that path--glimpses of paradise, our oneness and timelessness--and if we are lucky, of a small horned creature with cloven hooves who reminds us we came here only to share, and to share joyfully.
Read an Excerpt from Sweet Son of Pan
Read an Interview with Trebor Healey

Better to Travel by Collin Kelley
Collin Kelley’s debut, Better To Travel, is a haunting cycle of poetry dispatched from the teeming streets of London and New York to the decadence of Paris and New Orleans. From these far-flung outposts, Kelley deftly and unblinkingly conveys the end of a relationship and the need to escape to “sights unseen.” Readers have compared Kelley’s poetry to the emotional work of Anne Sexton and Sharon Olds. This is confessional poetry in its truest form: raw, uninhibited and unflinching.

The Christmas Poems by Krandall Krause
Native California writer and Lambda Literary Award Winner Krandall Kraus' new book spans poems written and sent to friends every Christmas since 1976. The poems encapsulate the life of the poet and the difficult times he lived through. The poems deal with faith, love, loss, AIDS, birth, death and survival. Most of the poems center around the search of the Magi and carry out the theme of "the human journey". His work has been compared to that of Mary Oliver, since animals are an important part of life for Kraus and play a major role in his work.
Kraus writes about searching for the answers to the great questions of life the way the Magi searched for the Christ child. A few of the poems delve into the deaths of friends, the death of his long-time companion, and his own battle with HIV. When it comes to endurance and survival, he turns to observing animals.

Gay Love Poetry edited by Neil Powell
This wide-ranging and superbly entertaining anthology of poetry stretches from Catullus and Ovid through Marlowe and Michelangelo, on to Walt Whitman and Oscar Wilde, and finally to such moderns as Thom Gunn, J.R. Ackerley, Francis King, and C.F. Cavafy. This one-of-a-kind collection makes a convincing case for the central place of gay poetry in our literary culture.

Bullets and Butterflies: edited by Emanuel Xavier
Emanuel Xavier has edited an extraordinary anthology collecting work from America’s hottest queer spoken word performers and slam-poets. Bullets and Butterflies features luscious, vibrant, and wicked new poetry focused on sexuality, gender, class, race, religion, and politics by Cheryl Boyce-Taylor, Regio Cabico, Staceyann Chin, Celena Glenn, Daphne Gottlieb, Maurice Jamal, Shane Luitjens, Marty McConnell, Travis Montez, Alix Olsen, Shailja Patel, horehound stillpoint, and Emanuel Xavier.
Read an excerpt, poetry by horehound stillpoint

Americano by Emanuel Xavier
In 1996, Emanuel Xavier took the New York City spoken word scene by storm, quickly becoming one of the most significant voices to emerge from the neo-Nuyorican poetry movement. Following in the tradition of writers/performers like Miguel Piñero, Xavier captivated audiences with a fresh and poignant brand of art that celebrated sexuality, Latino heritage, and the often-brutal streets of New York. Today, six years after he first graced the stages of smoky cafes and independent theaters that made up New York’s underground poetry scene, Emanuel Xavier is poised to release his second collection of work, Americano. - Travis Montez

 

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