Reviewer Sought

This is a bit awkward for me, but people have responded so positively to the “My Daughter’s Vagina” series–which I will get back to as soon as my work schedule permits–that I hope what I want to ask will not seem unjustifiably self-serving.  I have a book of poems out called The Silence Of Men. (The link will take you to the publications page on my web site, from which you can click to read the Foreword to the book by Yusef Komunyakaa and some sample poems.) The poems in the book take on questions of gender, sexuality, sex and masculinity–or at least I think they do–similar to the ones raised in “My Daughter’s Vagina.” In response to this, Elizabeth Wood, the woman who blogs at Sex In The Public Square and who founded the community web site by the same name has offered to feature a review of The Silence Of Men on the Sex In The Public Square web site. It needs to be, however, a review that explicitly takes on the gender and sexuality aspects of the poems, and since those are issues central to this blog, I thought I would put out a call here to see if anyone might be interested in writing this review. I am not looking for a puff-piece about how wonderful the book is; Alas seems to me a place where there might be a reviewer who would be sympathetic to the questions, etc. that I am dealing with, while also giving the book a rigorous and critical read. If anyone is interested, please go to the contact page on my web site and fill out the form so I can send you a copy of the book. (I don’t mind sending out one or two review copies, but please understand that I can’t afford send more than that. The copies come from me, not the publisher.) By way of introducing the book, and perhaps whetting some appetites, I’d like to share with you the title poem. If you’d like to buy the book, it is available on Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble and other online bookselling sites, though–if you can afford the extra couple of bucks it’ll cost to pay full price for the book ($16), I would urge you to buy it from the distributor, UPNE, which not only helps promote small, university and other independent presses, but also helps my publisher, CavanKerry Press, a small, New Jersey-based press that is working very hard to publish really beautifully produced and important books of poetry. Anyway, here’s the title poem:

The Silence Of Men

A man I’ve never dreamed before walks
into my apartment and sits in the green
chair where I do my writing. He carries
in his left hand a large erect penis
which he places silently on the floor.
The phallus begins to waltz to music
I cannot hear, its scrotum a skirt;
its testicles, legs cut off at the knees.

I want to know why this disfigured
manhood has been brought to me. I look up,
but my guest is gone. His organ, deflating
in short spasms like an old man coughing,
spreads itself in a pool of shallow blood.
The silence between us is the silence of men.