Love's Instruments - by Melvin Dixon (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

One of two collections of poetry by poet, novelist, and educator Melvin Dixon, whose worked chronicled the lives of black gay men. He died of HIV-related illnesses in 1992.

Review Quotes

"Eloquent, cosmopolitan, acute, at home in Harlem or Dakar, Paris of Provincetown, or on a back porch 'down home, ' Melvin Dixon wrote poems of a lyrical complexity, an intellectual forthrightness, imbued with a love of language(s) which mirrored his love of the physical world, of cities, of music, of bodies. He was as adept at the erotics of compassion. We are fortunate to have this last book--even as we mourn its author." --Marilyn Hacker

"The book's exhortation to active humanity and remembrance is as haunting and healing as death-will-not-part-us gospel." --Cyrus Cassells

About the Author

Scholar, novelist, and poet MELVIN DIXON penned, in addition to Love's Instruments, the poetry collection Change of Territory and the novels Trouble the Water (1989), which won a Nilon Award for Excellence in Minority Fiction, and Vanishing Rooms (1991). Influenced by James Baldwin, Dixon wrote extensively about the complexities of being a gay black man. A recipient of a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, he taught at Wesleyan University, the City University of New York, Fordham University, Columbia University, and Williams College. He died from complications related to AIDS at age 42 in 1992.

ELIZABETH ALEXANDER is a chancellor of the Academy of American Poets, the inaugural Frederick Iseman Professor of Poetry at Yale University, and a founding member of Cave Canem. Her poetry collections include The Venus Hottentot, Body of Life, Antebellum Dream Book, and Crave Radiance.