Reviews for Confronting AIDS Through Literature: The Responsibilities of Representation

The average rating for Confronting AIDS Through Literature: The Responsibilities of Representation based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2012-05-27 00:00:00 Christopher Prillwitz Some of the poems are delightful, some would be even more delightful should one know the references. I am sad that this book was withdrawn from our library. Perhaps there was a fear of "bardolatry" or hero worship. Sad to think that "Poems for Shakespeare" issued as a chapbook anthology series in the 1970's and 80's is now difficult to find. I found it refreshing to have an alternative to West Side Story, or yet another film version of star-crossed lovers, or Hamlet... and enjoyed the introduction which mentions 21st century America meets Elizabethan England -- with an amount of Ophelia poems ("O. fills the heart with tenderness" -- Samuel Johnson) that would have "drowned this entire book". The theory is that She seems to possess a passion and an intellect bottled up and squandered... disregarded, marginalized, hemmed in by a host of manipulative men... she has become a potent and tragic, modern, feminist symbol. Perhaps someone will add to the meagre use of "A Midsummer Night's Dream" and "Much Ado About Nothing" . Poems of hommage, poems that interact directly with the text (I particularly enjoyed Harryette Mullen's "Dim Lady"), parody, talk-backs (How Mother Courage Saves Desdemona) or exploration of a given character. Prologue: Shakespeare's Wages: Marvin Bell Part I: The Sonnets Interlude: My Students, Ron Koertge Part II: The Comedies Interlude: Shakespeare as a Waiter: BJ Ward Part II : The Tragedies (and Histories) Interlude: As If: Jim Peterson Part IV: Hamlet Interlude: Shakespeare's Eyebrows: Sylvia Adams Part V: The Romances Epilogue: Whatever Light, Stephen Corey

Review # 2 was written on 2013-08-13 00:00:00 Joseph Czajkowski It is a commonplace that poetry anthologies are uneven, and so do I find this book. However, I am well aware that the poems I like the least are likely to be the poems that others like the most. I find the work very strong, overall, and mostly well focused on the subject. I think having such a strong subject helps the poets keep their poems on something that interests me, and no doubt that contributes to my warm feeling towards this book. Some barely mention the response figure, and most of those are the poems I like the least. Too many are really about a certain painting of Ophelia, and not about Shakespeare's Ophelia - I'm on to you. But on balance, this is a very nice collection.