Post by moira on May 16, 2008 20:17:19 GMT 2
like all we love
Kate Evans[/b]
Nominated for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and a Lambda Literary Award, like all we love is filled with intense, provocative and humorous poems that explore sexuality, mortality and desire.
Sample poem:
First
I have to die first, you say. When we met
we called in sick, ate in bed, let dishes and dust
collect. Blossoms confettied out-
side. We were like foals, newly testing
our skeletal limbs. I have to die first,
you say, the woman who stopped eating
when the dog died, as though feeling
your flesh wasn't yours, or didn't exist
anymore. So you think I'm the strong
one, the one who can stand being left.
Me, the one who, alone in the house, dusts
the furniture, the remainders of our long
departed skin. The one who wipes the ghost
of our fingerprints from the mirror, who
washes our scent from the sheets, who
rinses the sthingy that touched the moist-
ness of your tongue. When we were in bed
last night we imagined how we'd go. Our
favorite: I'm 100, you're 104.
Our hearts stop, just stop, gently, you said,
in our sleep. At exactly the same moment.
But we know there are likelier fates.
I have to die first, you say. And it's late,
it's late. We're drifting off, even as you say it.
Reviews for like all we love:
"Kate Evans' poems tell a love story: the devotion of two women making a life together and their family bond with aging parents. like all we love reminds us that love exists in a world of time and loss, that death is always near, and that we must cherish the simple joys 'between sorrows' because 'one of us will die first.'" --
-- Ellen Bass, author of Mules of Love and Free Your Mind
"The new voice of Kate Evans in this first volume of her poems speaks of an unfolding and enfolding love in all its incarnations--the love for ill or dying parents, for animals, for a mate--the love that shapes our fluid humanness."
-- Gabriele Rico, author of Writing the Natural Way
"Kate Evans' 'eyes are hearts.' Her poems spill from a painter's color-palette, creative sense-ridden portraits of domesticity and the inevitability of the end of our bodies. A luscious, moving read."
-- Dawn Trook, editor of Mom, I Need to be a Girl
About the author:
Kate Evans is the author of a poetry collection (like all we love) and a book about lesbian and gay teachers (Negotiating the Self). Her poems, essays and stories have appeared in the North American Review, Indiana Review, Seattle Review, ZYZZYVA, Santa Monica Review, Bellevue Literary Review, Harrington Lesbian Fiction Quarterly and others. She is working on a novel and a memoir about caregiving. A California native, she teaches at San Jose State University.
Website: www.kate-evans.com/about.html
Blog: www.beingandwriting.blogspot.com/
ISBN-10: 1893075311, 100 pages, $16.95
Q Press/Spirit Press, 2006
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