Love Poems/ Haruko

So do we finally recover side by side what we have loved enough to keep in spite of passion or love's sorrow What is love, in the poems of June Jordan, trailblazing poet, essayist, teacher, and activist? It is a vision of revolutionary solidarity, crossing borders both emotional and literal with an outstretched hand. It is an open heart to the fleeting beauty of the world, both troublingly imperfect and yet endlessly surprising. It is desire, the speeding pulse and sleepless nights of lust and longing for a lover's touch. It is the sum of existence and yet it leaves us always wanting more. Haruko traces the faltering arc of a passionate love affair with another woman while Love Poems encompasses relationships with men and women, political resistance, the need for self-care in a demanding, uncaring world and apocalyptic visions of the eruption of Mount Vesuvius that destroyed Pompeii and Herculaneum. A contemporary of Alice Walker, Toni Morrison and Audre Lorde, June Jordan's spectacular poetry remains profoundly politically potent, lyrically inventive and breathtakingly romantic. First published in 1994, Love poems/ Haruko is a vitally important modern classic.