What Can I Ask: New and Selected Poems 1975-2014 - Paperback

by Elana Dykewomon (Author)

Elana Dykewomon's poetry bears witness to the lives of lesbians. She asks and demands that we be responsible and responsive to one another; that we bring care, compassion, accountability, and love in the proper proportions. These poems help us understand the contours of sexism, homophobia, racism, and antisemitism. They are poems that illuminate what we can ask from and offer one another. Drawing on Dykewomon's impressive body of poetry, What Can I Ask: New and Selected Poems 1975-2015 assembles into a single volume poems from Dykewomon's three published collections, They Will Know Me By My Teeth (Megaera Press, 1976), Fragments from Lesbos (Diaspora Distribution, 1981), and Nothing Will Be As Sweet as the Taste (Onlywomen Press, 1995), as well as a selection of newer, uncollected poems. Dykewomon continues asking questions and reaching for answers, demonstrating the power of poetry to comfort and enrage, inspire and arouse.

Author Biography

Elana Dykewomon (1949-2022) was a Jewish lesbian-feminist activist, award-winning author, editor, and teacher. Her first novel, Riverfinger Women (published in 1974), was chosen for The Publishing Triangle's list of 100 best lesbian and gay novels. Best known for her Lambda award-winning historical novel, Beyond the Pale, Dykewomon also received the 2009 Duggins Outstanding Mid-Career Novelist's prize. The editor of Sinister Wisdom from 1987-1994, she lived in Oakland, CA until her death in 2022.