Mr. Bluebird
Gerry Gomez Pearlberg
Winner of the 2002 Audre Lorde Award for Lesbian Poetry from the Publishing Triangle
"Pearlberg is a generous poet, and the best of these poems locate the reader in the natural world she adores, mourns, and hopes for."
—Publishers Weekly
From the spewing smokestacks of corporate culture run amok to charting the course of an oncoming dusk, the poems in Mr. Bluebird bring eco-poetry and urban pastoral to exciting new places. Mr. Bluebird, the second collection of poetry from award-winning author Gerry Gomez Pearlberg, explores the intersections between ecology, the imagination, urban nature, lesbian nature, and the nature of the human heart. The book is as much a cry of sorrow in the face of the biological holocaust as a celebration of the wild creatures and places that remind us of what sanity looks and feels like. These wide-ranging poems feature a cast of characters that includes St. Francis of Assisi, St. Augustine, Bart Simpson, Sal Mineo, Paul Bowles, Gertrude Stein, Mr. Eggroll, Mr. Chips, and a tough blue rose named Mr. Bluebird.
"Playful, contemplative, brash, quiet, and sure, these poems use sumptuous language and form to transcend conventional notions of queerness, identity, devotion, and place. The power of Mr. Bluebird is its undertow of raw verve that hits hard and hits true, illuminating the stuff our culture overlooks even as it lies in plain sight."—Justin Chin, author of Harmless Medicine and Burden of Ashes
Gerry Gomez Pearlberg is the author of Marianne Faithfull's Cigarette, which received a Lambda Literary Award and was a Firecracker Book Award finalist. She has also edited three poetry anthologies, the most recent of which is Queer Dog: Homo/Pup/Poetry, winner of the 1998 Firecracker Book Award for Poetry. Pearlberg teaches creative writing at the AIDS Service Center NYC and is the poetry editor at Bark: The Modern Dog Culture Magazine. A native New Yorker, she lives in Brooklyn.
Media & bookseller inquiries regarding review copies, events, and interviews can be directed to the publicity department at publicity@uwpress.wisc.edu or (608) 263-0734. (If you want to examine a book for possible course use, please see our Course Books page. If you want to examine a book for possible rights licensing, please see Rights & Permissions.) |
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BACK IN PRINT
October 2003
LC: 2003045833 PS
112 pp. 6 x 9
"Read Mr. Bluebird under a tree in the park, with your dog's head in your lap, and remember what it's like to be human again."
—Rafael Campo, author of What the Body Told and Diva
"A fierce and fabulous volume . . . that cements Pearlberg's reputation as one of the most exciting poets on the scene today."
—Lambda Book Report |
