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hanelisil's review
3.5
I like June Jordan and I don’t do well with poetry. Some very cool lines and otherwise it was sort of in one ear out the other.
2000s's review against another edition
I love June Jordan but I'm just not in the headspace for love poems atm! Resolution 1003 has my life around its fingers tho
angieinbooks's review
5.0
Poetry is not, admittedly, a go-to genre of mine. It was painful enough in school for me, but occasionally there would be a poem that would really speak to me, so I can't write off the genre completely. Plus, I love the way poets play with language. Well, good poets anyway.
"In my opinion," Irenosen Okojie writes in their introduction to this collection of poems, "June Jordan is the greatest poet that ever lived. That she is not more widely recognized in the canon is because she was Black, female and bisexual." And, yeah, I have post-secondary literature degrees and I'd never heard of her until this collection of poems landed in my library's digital collection. And, after reading Haruko/Love Poems, I'm closer to siding with Okojie than not. (I'm not willing to declare anyone the greatest poet because, well, I haven't read nearly enough. But what I did read was on par or better than the canonical poets I'd read in school.)
Jordan writes unapologetically about her bisexuality, her blackness, her love, and her resistance to a world that stigmatizes her and people like her. Her poetry is powerful, evocative, brave. And I feel so lucky that I stumbled upon her work.
Some favourite poems form this collection (this is more for my future reference than yours):
* "12:01 A.M.":
- Then how should I / subsist / without the benediction of / our bodies / intertwined / or why?
- I am my soul adrift / the whole night sky denies / me light / without you
* "Poem for Haruko"
- How easily you held / my hand / beside the low tide / of the world
* Untitled: Why I became a pacifist / and then / How I became a warrior / again
* "Update":
- Still I am learning / unconditional and true / Still I am burning / unconditional for you
* "Resolution # 1,003
- I will feel nothing for / everyone oblivious to me
"In my opinion," Irenosen Okojie writes in their introduction to this collection of poems, "June Jordan is the greatest poet that ever lived. That she is not more widely recognized in the canon is because she was Black, female and bisexual." And, yeah, I have post-secondary literature degrees and I'd never heard of her until this collection of poems landed in my library's digital collection. And, after reading Haruko/Love Poems, I'm closer to siding with Okojie than not. (I'm not willing to declare anyone the greatest poet because, well, I haven't read nearly enough. But what I did read was on par or better than the canonical poets I'd read in school.)
Jordan writes unapologetically about her bisexuality, her blackness, her love, and her resistance to a world that stigmatizes her and people like her. Her poetry is powerful, evocative, brave. And I feel so lucky that I stumbled upon her work.
Some favourite poems form this collection (this is more for my future reference than yours):
* "12:01 A.M.":
- Then how should I / subsist / without the benediction of / our bodies / intertwined / or why?
- I am my soul adrift / the whole night sky denies / me light / without you
* "Poem for Haruko"
- How easily you held / my hand / beside the low tide / of the world
* Untitled: Why I became a pacifist / and then / How I became a warrior / again
* "Update":
- Still I am learning / unconditional and true / Still I am burning / unconditional for you
* "Resolution # 1,003
- I will feel nothing for / everyone oblivious to me