Unending dialogue Book

I am so lucky to live in a city with an ivy league university. Why, you ask? Our used bookstore's selection is particularly good. Lots of older books, specialty books, academic books. I feel like I couldn't find such a good used bookstore anywhere. When I came across this book for $2.95, I knew I had to have it.

The book looked like it was either going to be very good, or very bad. As a queer, the topic is very close to my heart. AIDS changed our nation's views and emotions on sex, and ruined a whole generation. As a poet and someone who loves poetry, I understand that poetry can be cathartic for the writer and informational for the reader, but not necessarily good poetry.

This collection turned out to be very good! The second section of the book contains 57 poems about men with AIDS who attended Hadas' poetry workshop. I was surprised with how good the poetry was! Since it wasn't written by professional poets, my standards weren't very high. But these poems were good! Some of them went beyond good, the quality represented was stunning. Seriously, great poetry, great writing skills. I also felt like they explored AIDS well - a variety of moods and opinions were explored, and gently repeated over and over. This section was gut wrenching.

But, this book is unique in that it contains more than these poems. There are two other sections. In the first section, Rachel Hadas gives us some background information about the class and why she chose to teach it. Hadas was in her 40s when she volunteered to teach the class, but she came off as really immature. She told a group of AIDS patients, "I would be angry if I were you." How can you even begin to conceive what this group of dying, gay men are going through (you are not a gay, dying man with AIDS?) I just find this type of talk so condescending. Why not ask the group of people how they feel, not tell them how they feel when you have no experience with people with AIDS and just met them? No wonder so few people attended her workshop!

The third section of the book is a sort of combination of the first and second. It includes some poems Hadas wrote during this time period of her life. She felt the poems could stand alone, but truly wanted to portray her experiences during this time period, so she includes brief essays between each poem. Hadas is clearly academically intelligent, and it shows in these sections. She breaks down her poems easily and draws parallels between the famous poems and the poems of the men she is working with.

Now, on to her poems. They were fine, technically. None of the writing really blew me away, but they weren't bad. She has published several collections but was easily outshone by the men in the collection. They were too abstract for my style; I really wanted to learn about what working with these men was like for her in rich detail. Instead, we're given a lot of abstract images that portray very little.

For $2.95, it was not bad. I am glad I own this collection so I can remember these men, and the many men we lost to AIDS at this time.