A night of celebration for Super Gay Poems, an anthology of LGBTQIA+ poetry edited by Stephanie Burt. With a reading by Dr. Tonee Mae Moll.
About the book:
A major poet and literary critic leads an aesthetic adventure through poems about queer experience, by writers who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, queer, trans, nonbinary, gender fluid, and more.
A groundbreaking anthology edited by acclaimed poet, critic, and scholar Stephanie Burt, Super Gay Poems brings together fifty-one works encompassing the wide range of queer and trans verse after the Stonewall uprising of 1969. Since that galvanizing moment, poetry has served as both a vehicle for queer liberation and a witness to its sometimes fragile, sometimes ebullient flourishing, across the world.
The poems in this anthology represent the great variety of queer and trans life itself. They include near-sonnets, iambic couplets, and rhymed quatrains; skinny dimeters and shaped poems; chatty free verse and intentionally inaccurate translations; the demotic and the rococo. Arranged in chronological order, the selections trace queer culture’s recent evolutions. Frank O’Hara, Audre Lorde, Judy Grahn, James Merrill, Thom Gunn, Jackie Kay, Adrienne Rich, Chen Chen, essa ranapiri, and The Cyborg Jillian Weise—poets widely known and poets who deserve to be—share their alienation, their euphoria, and their encounters with a protean community as it discovers new solidarities and new selves.
Each piece is paired with a concise, eye-opening essay in Burt’s trademark style, with verve and an inimitable literary ear. A treasury of aesthetic experience and insight, Super Gay Poems points protestors, political organizers, poetry lovers, and LGBTQIA+ readers toward many beautiful tomorrows.
Stephanie Burt is the author of fourteen books of poetry and literary criticism, including Don’t Read Poetry and The Poem Is You. A past judge for the Pulitzer Prize for poetry, she serves as a board member of the National Book Critics Circle, is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, and writes regularly for the New York Times Book Review, the New Yorker, London Review of Books, the New York Review of Books, Raritan, and other publications. She is the Donald and Katherine Loker Professor of English at Harvard University.
Dr. Tonee Mae Moll is a queer & trans writer & educator in Baltimore. Her debut memoir, Out of Step, won the 2018 Lambda Literary Award and the 2017 Non/Fiction Prize. The following year, that book was featured on the American Library Association’s annual list of notable LGBTQ+ books. Her latest poetry collection, You Cannot Save Here, won the Jean Feldman Poetry Prize from Washington Writers’ Publishing House. Tonee Mae’s poetry has also received the Adele V. Holden award for creative excellence and the Bill Knott Poetry Prize. She has been a finalist for the Baker Award, and her work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of Net.
After readings from Stephanie Burt and Dr. Tonee Mae Moll, Daria Lane will moderate a discussion about the book.
Daria Lane is a library student and writer interested in trans fiction. She has made her home in DC for 15 years and is at her happiest creating gathering spaces for trans friends at book clubs, movie screenings, and backyard bonfires. As a kiddo she was equally happy attending Cincinnati Reds games and dancing with the Cincinnati Ballet Company. There were signs she was different, no matter what her parents say.
Accessibility note: This event is up two flights of stairs and Lost City Books does not have an elevator. Please contact events@lostcitybookstore.com with questions.
Dato de accesibilidad: Este evento toma lugar en el segundo piso y Lost City Books no tiene ascensor. Favor de contactar events@lostcitybookstore.com con cualquiera duda.