Lesbian Poetry Retrospective Part 1

June Jordan (1936-2002)

Born in Harlem, June Jordan is one of the most published African-American writers, with 28 books, including essays, memoir, plays, novels, children’s books and poetry. The daughter of Jamaican immigrants, Jordan was, Alice Walker said, “among the bravest of us, the most outraged. She feels for all. She is the universal poet.”

Jordan founded Poetry for the People out of UC–Berkeley, a program that defines itself as teaching "empowerment through the artistic expression of writing and reading poetry.”

Her own work consistently and passionately concerns itself with the idea of freedom, both in her art and her life, and she is famous for defining her bisexuality according to those standards: "Bisexuality means I am free and I am as likely to want to love a woman as I am likely to want to love a man, and what about that? Isn’t that what freedom implies?"

“A Short Note to My Very Critical and Well-Beloved Friends and Comrades”

First they said I was too light
Then they said I was too dark
Then they said I was too different
Then they said I was too much the same
Then they said I was too young
Then they said I was too old
Then they said I was too interracial
Then they said I was too much a nationalist
Then they said I was too silly
Then they said I was too angry
Then they said I was too idealistic
Then they said I was too confusing altogether:
Make up your mind! They said. Are you militant
or sweet? Are you vegetarian or meat? Are you straight
or are you gay?

And I said, Hey! It’s not about? Are you vegetarian or meat? Are you straight
or are you gay?

And I said, Hey! It’s not about my mind.

Marilyn Hacker (b. 1942)

One of the most respected formal poets, Marilyn Hacker has published several collections of poetry, including Winter Numbers and Presentation Piece, which won the National Book Award.

Her brilliant collection Love, Death, and the Changing of the Seasons is a book of sonnets that records an affair with a younger woman. The following poem comes from the middle of the narrative:

After eight nights of sleeping with you, one
without you, and, O damn it, I miss you.
I’d have to say how much and where I’d kiss you
into your answering machine. It’s on;
you’re out. I’d like to brag that I have done
my donkey work, cleared my desk. In a daze,
I walked four miles enumerating ways
you make my laugh, take care of business, moan
your name out loud and…There’s the telephone!
Midnight, your good friend/roommate’s sick, maybe, gone
Off without telling you. I saw Chip and Iva.
You got in trouble in your sailor bar.
I drank wine, talked France, and you, with Nadja.
We wished we were together. Well, we are.