Directed by Desire
The Collected Poems of June Jordan
Published on 28. December 2012
640 pages
978-1-61932-080-2 (ISBN)
Description
"Directed by Desire . . . is a powerful addition to the entire canon of American poetry."-Booklist
Now in paperback, Directed by Desire 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 Directed by Desire 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, and The Nation. After her death in 2002, a school in the San Francisco School District was renamed in her honor.
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Copper Canyon Press,U.S.
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Person
June Jordan was born in Harlem. Her twenty-eight books include poetry, essays, and children's books. A beloved teacher and exuberant activist, she founded Poetry For the People, and was a regular columnist for The Progressive and a prolific writer whose articles appeared in The Village Voice, The New York Times, Ms., and Essence. She died of breast cancer in 2002.
Content
- 9781556592348-frontcover
- 9781556592348-text
- Jordan_DirectedByDesire_e-frontmatter
- Jordan_DirectedbyDesire_e-backmatter
- CCPDonorEbook100112
- Title Page
- Note to the Reader
- Foreword
- Editors' Note
- These Poems
- Who Look at Me
- Who Look at Me
- Some Changes
- For My Mother
- In the Times of My Heart
- The New Pietà: For the Mothers and Children of Detroit
- The Wedding
- The Reception
- Nowadays the Heroes
- Not a Suicide Poem
- This Man
- Fibrous Ruin
- Abandoned Baby
- Uncle Bullboy
- Maybe the Birds
- In Memoriam: Martin Luther King, Jr.
- If You Saw a Negro Lady
- For Somebody to Start Singing
- And Who Are You?
- All the World Moved
- Juice of a Lemon on the Trail of Little Yellow
- I Live in Subtraction
- What Declaration
- My Sadness Sits Around Me
- Not Looking
- When I or Else
- Whereas
- Or
- Let Me Live with Marriage
- Toward a Personal Semantics
- Then It Was
- San Juan
- For Christopher
- Leaves Blow Backward
- Nobody Riding the Roads Today
- Firing Burst His Head
- In Love
- What Would I Do White?
- Okay "Negroes"
- For Beautiful Mary Brown:Chicago Rent Strike Leader
- Solidarity Day, 1968
- LBJ: Rejoinder
- Poem for My Family: Hazel Griffin andVictor Hernandez Cruz
- Uhuru in the O.R.
- New like Nagasaki Nice like Nicene
- Bus Window
- No Train of Thought
- Poem from the Empire State
- 47,000 Windows
- What Happens
- Clock on Hancock Street
- Exercise in Quits
- A Poem for All the Children
- Cameo No. 1
- Cameo No. 2
- I Celebrate the Sons of Malcolm
- In My Own Quietly Explosive Here
- Of Faith: Confessional
- Poem to the Mass Communications Media
- Last Poem for a Little While
- New Days
- Conditions for Leaving
- May 1, 1970
- On the Twenty-fifth Anniversary of the United Nations: 1970
- Memo to Daniel Pretty Moynihan
- Poems of Exile
- Roman Poem Number One
- Roman Poem Number Two
- Roman Poem Number Three
- Roman Poem Number Four
- Roman Poem Number Six
- Roman Poem Number Seven
- Roman Poem Number Eight
- Roman Poem Number Nine
- Roman Poem Number Ten
- Roman Poem Number Eleven
- Roman Poem Number Twelve
- Roman Poem Number Thirteen
- Roman Poem Number Fourteen
- Roman Poem Number Fifteen
- Roman Poem Number Sixteen: Sightseer
- Roman Poem Number Seventeen
- Roman Poem Number Five
- Poems of Return
- May 27, 1971: No Poem
- Realizing That Revolution Will Not Take Place by Telephone
- On the Spirit of Mildred Jordan
- After Reading the Number One Intellectual American Best Seller, Future Shock, All about Change Is Where We're At
- On Holidays in the Best Tradition
- For C.G., Because David Came in Hot and Cryingfrom the News
- On Your Love
- About Enrique's Drawing
- About Merry Christmas/Don't Believe the Daily News
- Poem about the Sweetwaters of the City
- West Coast Episode
- From an Uprooted Condition
- Poem for Angela
- On the Black Poet Reading His Poems in the Park
- On the Black Family
- For David: 1972
- On Declining Values
- It's about You: On the Beach
- On the Paradox in Rhyme
- About the Reunion
- Of Nightsong and Flight
- After All Is Said and Done
- Shortsong from My Heart
- Onesided Dialog
- Poem for My Love
- About Long Distances on Saturday
- On Divine Adaptation to an Age of Disbelief
- On My Happy/Matrimonial Condition
- Calling on All Silent Minorities
- No Poem Because Time Is Not a Name
- Fragments from a Parable
- On the Murder of Two Human Being Black Men, Denver A. Smith and His Unidentified Brother, at Southern University, Baton Rouge, Louisiana, 1972
- For My Brother
- Poem for My Pretty Man
- Poem to My Sister, Ethel Ennis, Who Sang "The Star-Spangled Banner" at the Second Inauguration of Richard Milhous Nixon, January 20, 1973
- On Moral Leadership as a Political Dilemma
- For Michael Angelo Thompson
- Getting Down to Get Over
- from Things that I Do in the Dark
- For My Own
- July 4, 1974
- For My Jamaican Sister a Little Bit Lost on the Island of Manhattan
- Poem for Granville Ivanhoe Jordan
- Ah, Momma
- From The Talking Back of Miss Valentine Jones: Poem # One
- Directed by Desire
- The Round of Grief
- Poem in Celebration of the Recovery ofMrs. R. Buckminster Fuller, June 1967
- One Minus One Minus One
- On a New Year's Eve
- Sunflower Sonnet Number One
- Sunflower Sonnet Number Two
- Lullaby
- For Ethelbert
- You Came with Shells
- On the Aluminum
- Minutes from the Meeting
- Queen Anne's Lace
- Wasted
- For Dave: 1976
- Meta-Rhetoric
- Against the Stillwaters
- On the Loss of Energy (and Other Things)
- From Inside the Continuum
- Poem Against the State (of Things): 1975
- I Must Become a Menace to My Enemies
- From The Talking Back of Miss Valentine Jones
- Towards a Personal Semantics
- I Am Untrue Yet I
- On a Monday Afternoon
- On a Thursday Evening
- Excerpts from a Verse Diary of Somebody Trying to Get into Gear
- For the Poet: Adrienne Rich
- Some People
- Ecology
- Passion
- Poem for Nana
- Poem for the Poet Alexis De Veaux
- Current Events
- Poem about The Head of a Negro
- The Morning on the Mountains
- The Rationale, or "She Drove Me Crazy"
- Case in Point
- Poem of Personal Greeting for Fidel
- Newport Jazz Festival: Saratoga Springs and Especially about George Benson and Everyone Who Was Listening
- Patricia's Poem
- "Hey, Baby: You married?"
- TV Is Easy Next to Life
- 1978
- An Explanation Always Follows
- Letter to the Local Police
- Found Poem
- Poem about a Night Out: Michael: Goodbye for a While
- Poem about Police Violence
- Sketching in the Transcendental
- A Poem about Intelligence for My Brothers and Sisters
- verse from a fragmentary marriage
- 1977: Poem for Mrs. Fannie Lou Hamer
- Poem for South African Women
- Notes on the Peanut
- Unemployment Monologue
- Toward a City That Sings
- A Song of Sojourner Truth
- Alla Tha's All Right, but
- Nightletters
- Evidently Looking at the Moon Requires a Clean Place to Stand
- Free Flight
- Letter to My Friend the Poet Ntozake Shange
- Legend of the Holy Night When the Police Finally Held Fire
- A Poem about Vieques, Puerto Rico
- Inaugural Rose
- En Passant
- For Li'l Bit
- Niagara Falls
- calling it quits
- Poem toward the Bottom Line
- Memoranda toward the Spring of Seventy-nine
- A Short Note to My Very Critical and Well-BelovedFriends and Comrades
- Rape Is Not a Poem
- Memo:
- What Is This in Reference To? or We Must Get Together Sometime Soon!
- Poem #2 for Inaugural Rose
- Poem about My Rights
- Grand Army Plaza
- Taking Care
- A Right-to-Lifer in Grand Forks, North Dakota
- From America: A Poem in Process
- Living Room
- From Sea to Shining Sea
- "in the february blizzard of 1983"
- Des Moines Iowa Rap
- A poem for Jonathan
- Poem for Nicaragua
- First poem from Nicaragua Libre: Teotecacinte
- Second poem from Nicaragua Libre: war zone
- Third poem from Nicaragua Libre: photograph of Managua
- Fourth poem from Nicaragua Libre: report from the frontier
- Safe
- Directions for Carrying Explosive Nuclear Wastes through Metropolitan New York
- Greensboro: North Carolina:
- Problems of Translation: Problems of Language
- Independence Day in the U.S.A.
- I am the fallen/I am the cliff
- To Sing a Song of Palestine
- Poem on the Road
- for Alice Walker
- July 4, 1984: For Buck
- Poem for Dana
- A Song for Soweto
- Atlantic Coast Reggae
- Poem for Etel Adnan Who Writes:
- Richard Wright Was Wrong
- Easter Comes to the East Coast: 1981
- Song of the Law Abiding Citizen
- October 23, 1983
- "look at the blackbird fall"
- March Song
- Menu
- Addenda to the Papal Bull
- Poem for the Poet Sara Miles
- Poem for Guatemala
- On the Real World: Meditation #1
- "the snow"
- Who Would Be Free, Themselves Must Strike the Blow
- A Runaway Li'l Bit Poem
- DeLiza Spend the Day in the City
- DeLiza Questioning Perplexities:
- November
- Verse after Listening to Bartók Play Bartók a Second Time, or Different Ways of Tingling All Over
- Poem towards a Final Solution
- 1981: On Call
- 3 for Kimako
- A Reagan Era Poem in Memory of Scarlett O'Hara
- Apologies to All the People in Lebanon
- Tornado Watch
- Another Poem about the Man
- Story for Tuesday
- War Verse
- Poem Written to the Heavy Rain through the Trees,or An Update on the Moonlight Sonata
- I Am No More and I Am No Less
- 1980: Note to the League of Women Voters
- On Life After Life
- Adrienne's Poem: On the Dialectics of the Diatonic Scale
- Grace
- Poor Form
- The Test of Atlanta 1979-
- Notes towards Home
- Relativity
- Roots for a.b.t.
- Home: January 29, 1984
- The Cedar Trees of Lebanon
- Nightline: September 20, 1982
- The Beirut Jokebook
- Here
- Moving towards Home
- from Naming Our Destiny
- North Star
- Famine
- Intifada
- Ghazal at Full Moon
- Poem from Taped Testimony in the Tradition of Bernhard Goetz
- Aftermath
- To Free Nelson Mandela
- Dance: Nicaragua
- Verse for Ronald Slapjack Who Publicly Declared, "I, Too, Am a Contra!"
- Poem Instead of a Columbus Day Parade
- An Always Lei of Ginger Blossoms for the First Lady of Hawai'i: Queen Lili'uokalani
- Something like a Sonnet for Phillis Miracle Wheatley
- Poem for Benjamin Franklin
- The Torn Sky: Lesson #1
- Take Them Out!
- Poem for Jan
- Solidarity
- In Paris
- Poem on the Second Consecutive Day of Rain
- Out in the Country of My Country (Peterborough, New Hampshire)
- A Richland County Lyric for Elizabeth Asleep
- The Madison Experience
- A Sonnet from the Stony Brook
- A Sonnet for a.b.t.
- Poem on Bell's Theorem, or Haying the Field by Quantum Mechanics
- Poem Number Two on Bell's Theorem, or The New Physicality of Long Distance Love
- Last Poem on Bell's Theorem, or Overriding the Local Common Sense of Causes to Effect
- Romance in Irony
- Trying to Capture Rapture
- Winter Honey
- At Some Moment the Confidence Snaps
- Double Standard Lifestyle Studies: #1
- Poem for Joy
- Poem at the Midnight of My Life
- The Female and the Silence of a Man
- Poem for Buddy
- Smash the Church
- Don't Estimate!
- Financial Planning
- Poem for Mark
- DeLiza Come to London Town
- DeLiza and the TV News
- Sometimes DeLiza
- War and Memory
- from Haruko/Love Poems
- New Year
- For Haruko
- Poem for Haruko
- 12:01 A.M.
- "Why I became a pacifist"
- Update
- Poem about Process and Progress
- Resolution #1,003
- A Poem for Haruko 10/29
- "Admittedly"
- "Boats afloat"
- Taiko Do¯jo¯
- Poem about Heartbreak That Go On and On
- Speculations on the Present Through the Prism ofthe Past
- Poem for Haruko
- Ichiban
- Phoenix Mystery #1
- Phoenix Mystery #2
- Postscript for Haruko: On War and Peace
- "Haruko:"
- Big City Happening
- Poem on the Quantum Mechanics of Breakfast with Haruko
- Mendocino Memory
- Letter to Haruko from Decorah, Iowa, U.S.A.
- "plum blossom plum jam"
- "First full moon of a new and final decade"
- "I train my eyes to see"
- Kissing God Goodbye
- Poem for a Young Poet
- November Poem for Alegría: 1996
- What Great Grief Has Made the Empress Mute
- Argument with the Buddha
- merry-go-round poetry
- Lebanon Lebanon
- Short Takes
- Sometimes Clarity Comes in the Dark
- Poem After Receiving Voicemail from You After (I Don't Even Know Anymore) How Long!
- Tanka Trio
- Ghaflah
- Haiku for the Would-Be Killers of a Teacher
- Bridget Song #1
- Study #1
- The Eclipse of 1996
- Message from Belfast
- Letter to Mrs. Virginia Thomas, Wife of Whatzhisname Lamentably Appointed to theSupreme Court, U.S.A.
- First Poem after Serious Surgery
- The Bombing of Baghdad
- October Snowpea Poem
- Campsite #21
- Bosnia Bosnia
- Focus in Real Time
- Poem in Memory of Alan Schindler, 22 Years Old
- Poem Because the 1996 U.S. Poet Laureate Told the San Francisco Chronicle There Are "Obvious" Poets-All of Them White-and Then There Are"Representative" Poets-None of Them White
- poem to continue a conversation
- Christmas Poem
- Poem at the End of the Third Year
- Birthday in Paris
- Study #2 for b.b.L.
- Poem #1 for b.b.L.
- Poem #3 for b.b.L.
- Fact Sheets for b.b.L.
- Poem #4 for b.b.L.
- Poem for Laura
- Poem #6 for b.b.L.
- Poem #7 for b.b.L.
- Intifada Incantation: Poem #8 for b.b.L.
- Tanka Metaphors or Not for b.b.L.
- Haiku for b.b.L.
- Poem #9 for b.b.L.
- Kissing God Goodbye
- Last Poems
- 1997 birthday poem for b.b.L.
- Poem on the Death of Princess Diana
- For Alice Walker (a summertime tanka)
- Poem Against the Temptations of Ambivalence
- Poem towards the End of a Winter Evening
- T'ang Poem #2
- 1998 Mid-Day Philadelphia Haiku
- T'ang Poem #3
- First Anniversary T'ang Poem
- Poem of Commitment
- The End of Kindness: Poem for Dr. Elizabeth Ann Karlin
- Poem for Annie Topham, Partner of Dr. Elizabeth Ann Karlin
- I guess it was my destiny to live so long
- Bridget Running
- Pleasures of Love
- Shakespeare's 116th Sonnet in Black English Translation
- Poem to Take Back the Night
- Kosovo Fugue in Seven Parts
- T'ang Poem
- New Year Poem
- As the sun sets all the water lets the sky slip away
- 2/27/01
- Scenario Revision #1
- Buzz Off: Romantic Poem #1
- Interim Mystery Poem for Haruko
- Lo que tengo que decir
- Ode #2 Written during Chemotherapy at UCSF, or Ode to I'd Really Rather Be Sailing
- Poem at the End of the Third Week
- A Couple of Questions
- "Drizzle spills soft air"
- (Thoughts of ) A Teenage African Girl Standing on the Auction Block
- "Bay waters rolling"
- "Trumpet vine sneaks in"
- For Mohammed al-Direh
- My Victim Poem
- Snowpea
- T'ang Poem for Amadou Diallo
- December Snowpea Poem
- Love Song about Choosing Your Booze
- Racial Profile #1
- Racial Profile #2
- Racial Profile #3
- Poem for Black English
- Owed to Eminem
- Democracy Poem #1
- Owed to Eminem #2
- Poem for The New York Times Dedicated to Dr. Elizabeth Ann Karlin
- Ode to the Gun Lobby
- It's Hard to Keep a Clean Shirt Clean
- To Be Continued:
- Poem for Siddhartha Gautama of the Shakyas: The Original Buddha
- About the Author
- About the Editors
- Index of Titles
- Books by June Jordan
- Link
- Copyright
- Pressmark
- Special Thanks
