The Queen of Swords

Judy Grahn

Beacon Press, 1987 - Fiction - 178 pages

"A wise and witty collection of poetry and drama, The Queen of Swords is a magnificent re-creation of an ancient myth. Based on the five-thousand-year-old Sumerian story of the perilous descent of Inanna, Queen of Heaven and Earth, to the underworld to expand her worldly powers, the book retells Inanna's story in a poetic drama and two long poems. The play 'The Queen of Swords' is set in a modern context, an underground lesbian bar where Nothing is the bartender and seven Crow Dykes confound definition. Helen, the modern-day Inanna, a goddess of beauty, life, and light, descends to this underworld bar and confronts the midnight queen of creative violence and transformation, Ereshkigal. The relationship that develops between these two female mythic characters is a powerful metaphor for the struggles that attend all human transformations. The two long poems in the second half of The Queen of Swords are also about descent and struggle. In 'Descent to the Roses of the Family' a contemporary American woman speaks to her brother about their parents, asking him to help her avoid teh same descent to misery that her parents endured--violence, alcoholism, madness. The final poem, 'Talkers in a Dream Doorway,' is a passionate tribute to the powers women have developed and a testimony to the delicate balancing these powers require."--Jacket.

Contents

• looked everywhere for you: 74
• A woman among motorcycles: 87
• Admit Admit Admit Admit: 100

About the author

Grahn is a lesbian feminist poet, fiction writer, publisher, and cultural critic of note. Born in Chicago, she grew up in New Mexico and at age 21 was expelled from the Air Force for being a lesbian. Over the years she attended six colleges, where she studied poetry, and she completed her B.A. at San Francisco State University in 1984. She has taught lesbian and gay studies and women's writing, co-founded a women's press (The Women's Press Collective of Oakland), and was at the forefront of a West Coast poetry "renaissance" of the 1970s, along with Susan Griffin, Pat Parker, and Alta. In her work, Grahn seeks to link various oppressions in order to facilitate the emergence of coalitions of the oppressed. She draws her themes and images from ancient myths, Western literary and philosophical traditions, and historical and social trends, defining---or redefining---them as expressing feminine and homoerotic desire and then appropriating them for their subversive potential. For example, she invents a new, more expressive "American sonnet" for "The Common Woman" sequence in Edward the Dyke and Other Poems (1971), which celebrates both women's differences and commonalities. In She, Who (1977), she rewrites scripture as feminist experimental verse. Although she first came to critical attention with her poetry, Grahn is now also known for her cultural and literary criticism. Her two editions of Another Mother Tongue (1979, 1984) offer a wealth of information about gay identities throughout history, which Grahn links to a number of myth systems and languages in a form that blends poetry, legend, autobiography, and etymology. In effect, she imaginatively retrieves and invents gay cultural history, mythology, and language (the "other mother tongue" of the title).

Bibliographic information

• Title: The Queen of Swords
• Author: Judy Grahn
• Publisher: Beacon Press, 1987
• Original from: the University of California
• Digitized: Jun 11, 2008
• ISBN: 0807068020, 9780807068021
• Length: 178 pages
• Subjects: Fiction / General; Poetry / General