Ceremonies: Prose and Poetry
As a gay African American acutely aware that he straddles two beleaguered subcultures all too frequently themselves at odds, Hemphill--author of two previous volumes of poetry and editor of the anthology Brother to Brother --strives to bridge the gap in this collection of strongly felt, surely drafted poems and essays. Often explicit, the poems range from hauntingly erotic lyricism--"I am lonely for past kisses, for wild lips certain streets breed for pleasure"--to the belyingly dulled cadences of a dramatic monolog in the voice of a "Colored nurse" complicit in the notorious Tuskegee Institute syphilis experiments. The essays also roam wide and deep. Whether Hemphill is persuasively comparing the reasoning of a psychiatrist's antihomosexual polemic to the soon-hollow rush of cocaine or describing his grandmother's reaction to his poems--"Essex, do the au thorities know what you're writing about?"--he makes passionate common sense. This is urgent, fiercely telling work.-Thomas Tavis, San Francisco P.L.Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.