Love Speaks Its Name: Gay and Lesbian Love Poems [Hardcover]

This was the best money I've spent on a book this year, maybe ever, and although I'm not much of a poetry book-buyer, I read my share of books. (I've reviewed gay- and lesbian-themed books free-lance for over 15 years.) "Love Speaks Its Name" is simply an excellent anthology of gay- and lesbian-themed poetry with artists as diverse as Sappho, Shakespeare, Whitman, Cavafy, Cole Porter, and several Baby Boomers sounding off on AIDS as well as traditional themes of love.

Why do I like this little volume so much? For one thing, it's part of the well-regarded "Everyman" library, which is to Knopf what Modern Library is to Random House. This means you can purchase identically-sized volumes of literature, even erotic poetry, from the same line. The publishers of "Love Speaks Its Name" took a fairly traditional, quality-oriented approach to content (including recent poets, as I said); but although the binding is a conservative navy blue the bound-in bookmarker ribbon is lavender (cute, no?).

Most of the anthologies of gay or lesbian poetry I've reviewed over the past 15 years fall into one of two categories (1) the professor had some favors to pay off, so excellence took a back seat to other factors (though in many cases you might not know this from the impenetrable deconstructionist jargon that constitutes the introduction); or, (2) the regional "Let's assemble a book! All comers welcome!" Well meant, but not always successful. With its erudition, user-friendly language and delineation of Love into themes like "Longing" and "Ecstasy," "Love Speaks Its Name" is a class act all the way.

For a ridiculously small amount of money you can immerse yourself in this book and find out just why Cavafy is so highly regarded, even in translation, why Auden is still audacious today, why Amy Levy's young death was such a loss to the world of poetry, and discover the NON-bowdlerized lyrics to "Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered" (there are so many versions floating around it's hard to find the real deal).

All in all, very highly recommended.

**UPDATE** (March 2012): I just bought a new copy of this book and sadly, discovered that both the cover and the ribbon are now bright red, a slight loss in symbolism. But the contents are as wonderful as ever. - a. smalling

I don't think anyone needs to be gay or lesbian to love this book. There are so many wonderful poems and poets, and such a range of emotions, all of them conveying what J.D. McClatchy in his beautiful preface calls the "anxiety sewn into the lining of euphoria." Anxious for good reason, of course: such love was compelled to not to "speak its name" for fear of arrest, conviction, imprisonment and disgrace. The poems are helpfully arranged according to the journey of love (as is true of the recent anthology, Sonnets for Sinners: Everything One Needs to Know About Illicit Love), my most favorite recent acquisition. If you like either of these books you'll want both. My favorite among gay/lesbian poems is Richard Barnfield's "Glove"--such a beautiful sonnet, and to my surprise not very well known. It's worth buying this book just to get that poem. (My favorite in the Sonnets for Sinners book, is Princess Diana's "Hearts", a delight that John Wareham says he "tinkered" together from one of Diana's interviews.) The other book in same league, to my mind anyway, is the Everyman anthology, Erotic Poems (Everyman's Library Pocket Poets). But start with Love That Speaks Its Name-- it really is something very special