For three decades, the legacy of the revered writer, editor, performer, and activist Essex Hemphill has been lovingly sustained through xeroxed copies of his few published works. They are as potent now as they were in the 1980s. With tenderness and rage, Hemphill’s poems unflinchingly explore the complex, overlapping identities of sexuality, gender, and race; the American political landscape; and his own experiences as a black gay man during the AIDS crisis.

Edited by John Keene and Robert F. Reid-Pharr, Love Is a Dangerous Word contains selections from Hemphill’s only published full-length collection, Ceremonies—named one of the 25 most influential works of postwar queer literature by the New York Times—alongside rarely seen poems from magazines and chapbooks. It serves as both an introduction to Hemphill’s poetic prowess and a treasure trove for those who have long awaited his return to the literary spotlight.

BIO

Essex Hemphill was born in Chicago and grew up in Southeast Washington, DC. A poet and performer known for his political edge, he openly addressed race, identity, sexuality, HIV/AIDS, and the family in his work, voicing issues central to the African American gay community. His first collections of poems were the self-published chapbooks Earth Life (1985) and Conditions (1986). His first full-length collection, Ceremonies: Prose and Poetry (1992), won the National Library Association’s Gay, Lesbian, and Bisexual New Author Award. His work is included in the anthologies Gay and Lesbian Poetry in Our Time (1986) and Life Sentences: Writers, Artists, and AIDS (1993).

Hemphill studied English at the University of Maryland; in 1978, with a fellow student, he helped found and run the Nethula Journal of Contemporary Literature. His later editing credits include the anthology Brother to Brother: New Writing by Black Gay Men (1991), which won the Lambda Literary Award.

Poet and novelist John Keene grew up in St. Louis, Missouri. He earned a BA at Harvard University and an MFA at New York University. He is the author of the novella and story collection Counternarratives (2015), the poetry collection Seismosis (2006, with art by Christopher Stackhouse), and the novel Annotations (1995). 

A member of the Dark Room Collective, Keene’s honors include a Whiting Award and fellowships from Cave Canem, the New Jersey State Council on the Arts, the New York Times Foundation, Yaddo, the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, and the Pan-African Literary Forum. He has taught at Northwestern University and served as the managing editor of Callaloo. He is an associate professor of English, African American Studies, and African Studies at Rutgers University–Newark.

Robert F. Reid-Pharr is a Professor of Social and Cultural Analysis at New York University. He holds a Ph.D. in American Studies and an M.A. in African American Studies from Yale University as well as a B.A. in Political Science from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.  He has been the Jess and Sara Cloud Distinguished Visiting Professor of English at the College of William and Mary, the Edward Said Visiting Chair of American Studies at the American University of Beirut, the Drue Heinz Visiting Professor of English at the University of Oxford, the Carlisle and Barbara Moore Distinguished Visiting Professor of English at the University of Oregon, and the F.O. Matthiessen Visiting Professor of Gender and Sexuality at Harvard University. A prominent scholar in the field of race and sexuality studies, he is the author of four books and numerous essays.

His research and writing have been supported by grants from the Mellon Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Studies, and the American Academy in Berlin.  His work has been honored by the Publishing Triangle, the Modern Language Association and the American Literature Association. In 2015 he was inducted into the Johns Hopkins Society of Scholars and he is the recipient of a 2016 John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship.  

REVIEWS

"A necessary and long-awaited book. In his best work—and there are at least half-a-dozen poems here that are modern classics—Hemphill is at once confessional and secretive, vulnerable and tough. At one point he states: ‘Consider hatred / to be this: / the absence of everything’. Love, then, would be fullness, presence, the condition Hemphill’s work struggles towards in a world hostile to his existence." -- Luke Roberts, New Left Review

"When I read a poet like Essex Hemphill, my heart just comes up in my mouth and does an African folk-dance on the back of my throat…. He’s making something that has never been made or said before. He gives me hope and strength." -- Audre Lorde

"If I’d met him I guess I’d have just said thank you." -- Dev Hynes

"A master of frank desire." -- Vinson Cunningham, New Yorker

[P]  New Directions Publishing Corporation  /  March 04, 2025

0.49" H x 7.99" L x 5.34" W (0.37 lbs) 192 pages