“
Directed by Desire
. . . is a powerful addition to the entire canon of American poetry.”—
Booklist
Now in paperback,
is the definitive overview of June Jordan’s -poetry. Collecting the finest work from Jordan’s ten volumes, as well as dozens of “last poems” that were never published in Jordan’s lifetime, these more than six hundred pages overflow with intimate lyricism, elegance, fury, meditative solos, and dazzling vernacular riffs.
As Adrienne Rich writes in her introduction, June Jordan “wanted her readers, listeners, students, to feel their own latent power—of the word, the deed, of their own beauty and intrinsic value.”
From “These Poems”:
These poems
they are things that I do
in the dark
reaching for you
whoever you are
and
are you ready?
The cloth edition of
was selected as a
Library Journal
Poetry Book of the Year and received the Lambda Book Award for Lesbian Poetry.
June Jordan
taught at UC Berkeley for many years and founded Poetry for the People. Her twenty-eight books include poetry, essays, fiction, and children’s books. She was a regular columnist for
The Progressive
and a prolific writer whose articles appeared in
The Village Voice, The New York Times, Ms. Magazine,
The Nation.
After her death in 2002, a school in the San Francisco School District was renamed in her honor.