Fire-Rimmed Eden: Selected Poems gathers poems from Lynn Lonidier’s rich and varied collections. Lonidier published five poetry collections Po Tree (1967), The Female Freeway (1970), A Lesbian Estate (1977), Woman Explorer (1979), Clitoris Lost: A Woman’s Version of the Creation Myth (1989), and a posthumous book, The Rhyme of the Ag-ed Mariness (2001). Her poetry links multiple poetic constellations of the 1970s and 1980s demonstrating linguistic innovations and radical reconfigurations sexuality and gender.

The poems of Fire-Rimmed Eden are in conversation with narrative impulses from the feminist and lesbian poetry movements of the 1970s and 1980s, including work by Judy Grahn, Audre Lorde, Adrienne Rich, and others, as well as experimental poetic impulses from the same period found in work by Robert Duncan (Duncan’s partner Jess gave the cover art for A Lesbian Estate), Lyn Hejinian, Carla Harryman, and Etel Adnan. Some of Lonidier’s work is concrete in the spirit of May Swenson’s Iconographs while other poems are performative like Bay area poets Pat Parker and Jerome Rothenberg.

Previously completely out of print, Lonidier’s poetry is ripe for a new generation of readers. Fire-Rimmed Eden assembles a robust selection of Lonidier’s work introduced by Sinister Wisdom editor and publisher Julie R. Enszer. Rich and diverse, visually and aurally exciting, boldly experimental and intellectually provocative, Lonidier’s poetry is imbued with wit, humor, originality, and play.

(Sinister Wisdom 129: Fire-Rimmed Eden published Summer 2023.)

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Sinister Wisdom presents Lesbian Death: Intergenerational Provocations with author Mairead Sullivan and panelists Joan Nestle, Ann Cvetkovich, Rachel Corbman, Olivia Polk, SaraEllen Strongman, and Jack Jen Gieseking. How can lesbians of the contemporary moment be in dynamic and vital conversations with lesbians in recent herstory? As lesbian and queer women's communities continue to evolve in light of the material conditions of our lives, how can we both honor our pasts and our presents and continue to imagine vital lesbian communities as a part of our futures? This panel takes up Mairead Sullivan's important book Lesbian Death: Desire and Danger between Feminist and Queer to begin to think about these questions and others as we continue to assert and affirm the significance of lesbian as identity, community, and labile and labial source for our lives.

Sinister Wisdom 129: Fire-Rimmed Eden Selected Poems of Lynn Lonidier

Sinister Wisdom celebrated the publication of Sinister Wisdom 129: Fire-Rimmed Eden Selected Poems by Lynn Lonidier. During this festive event, distinguished readers, including Kim Shuck, Judy Grahn, Stephanie Young, Rachel Levitsky, and editor Julie R. Enszer, shared poems by Lynn Lonidier and reflections on her work.

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