Reviews for Harmless medicine

The average rating for Harmless medicine based on 2 reviews is 4.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2016-04-08 00:00:00 Kathleen Summers I would put this as part of the 21st century poetry canon. Though it came out in the 1990's, Chin's work is an important documentation of queer poetry at the turn of the millenium, and it is unlike any other collection of its era. While many of the poems focus on the AIDS crisis and the gulf of culture between Asian and Polynesian Queer men, and Queer White men, they run a gamnit of styles: satirical, sentimental, hilariously flippant, brutally personal, historical journalism. Each poem seems to present a different angle on the same overall story. But those angles are so sharp and unexpected that, at first reaf, they might not seem related to the rest of the narrative. I first read this book when I was 21, having picked it up in a queer bookstore that mainly sold porn DVDs. I loved it then. Even though I didn't pick up on the satirical element of poems like "Surrealist Bookmark". I understood it was satire, but didn't grasp the subject matter. If you're looking for a poetry collection that can entertain you and show you world outside of the Dead White Guy Club, please pick this up. It works for people just getting into poetry, as well as people who've been engrossed in the culture of reading poetry for decades.

Review # 2 was written on 2018-04-06 00:00:00 Todd Cannan Very interesting.