What do you think?
Rate this book
Life Sentences: Writers, Artists, And AIDS
Since antiquity, art has concerned itself with the central issues of mortality, sexuality, and the relationship of survival to the artistic imperative and to the larger concerns of living. Life Sentences develops these themes within the context of AIDS. In this collection of new and powerful memoirs, poems, and interviews, critically acclaimed writers and artists (most of whom are HIV positive) incorporate their intensely personal experiences with AIDS into their art. Included is the last work by Bo Huston, a memoir detailing the novelist's controversial AIDS treatments in Zurich. Here, the voyage becomes a powerful vehicle for confronting the shifting relationships among fear, desire, and attachment. "Vital Signs" is poet Essex Hemphill's remarkable narrative exploring the nature of desire, sexuality, and responsibility in the black gay male community during the plague years. In Thomas Avena's interview with Diamanda Galas, the composer and performer details the creation of the powerful Plague Mass; combined with Michael Flanagan's historical "Invoking Diamanda, " the selection creates a challenging portrait of the artist's vision and its fulfillment. Tony Kushner's poetic monologue, "The Second Month of Mourning, " is an impassioned effort to grasp the enormity of loss; Tory Dent's poems, elegiac in tone, are broken efforts at asserting the integrity of the damaged self; and Thom Gunn's poems detail the intrusion of ghosts upon the living. In "The New Eyes, " Adam Klein's irreverent and affecting portrait of artists Jerome Caja and Charles Sexton, human ashes are the materials of a memorializing art pact. The interview of filmmaker Marlon Riggs explores his relationship to the dynamics of sexuality, community, and race through the lens of his changing body. In "Last Time, " William Dickey has crafted an elegant yet intensely political and personal memoir of the difficult truths surrounding his confrontation with seropositivity. David Wojnarowicz's "Spiral" contra
- GenresNonfictionPoetry
304 pages, Paperback
First published April 1, 1994
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
April 13, 2022
“CONFRONTING THE PLAGUE”
In Life Sentences: Writers, Artists, and AIDS, Thomas Avena, the editor, magnificently fulfills his mission “to bring together a disparate group of writers and artists, having in common seropositivity for HIV or an extensive commitment to confronting the plague.” Life Sentences is a superlative collection of essays, poetry, memoirs, and interviews. In 1994, the year Life Sentences was published, an HIV-positive diagnosis was still tantamount to a death sentence. Over half of the fourteen contributors, and one subject of an essay, were lost to AIDS.
I was familiar with several of the authors included in Life Sentences: Bo Huston, David Wojnarowicz, Essex Hemphill, and Severo Sarduy. Other writers and artists were new to me, for instance, Diamanda Galás, William Dickey, Tory Dent, and Jerome Caja. My life has been enriched by the exposure to the various writers and artists that this book provides.
The first selection in Life Sentences is an essay titled “Last Time” by the poet William Dickey. Born in 1928, Dickey writes: “Certainly I cannot believe I am the oldest HIV-positive American or would or will be the oldest person to die of complications of the condition.” William Dickey died of AIDS on May 3, 1994 at the age of 65.
Bo Huston’s contribution to Life Sentences is an account of one of his journeys to Switzerland for experimental AIDS treatment. Huston was lost to AIDS on May 24, 1993. He was 33.
Essex Hemphill, who died of AIDS on November 4, 1995 at the age of 38, gives us a 37-page poem titled “Vital Signs.” As always, when I read Hemphill, the anger—and the love—he expresses overwhelm me. The following lines are from XXXVII in “Vital Signs”:
Now show me
the signs for love,
the practices,
the vital signs.
I have spent
all these years
trying to live
ways of being
I’ve seldom seen.
Avena includes two pieces by Severo Sarduy, a difficult and challenging writer. In the first piece, “Explosion of Emptiness,” Sarduy prepares for his death. According to Avena, “A Wart on My Foot,” the second piece, is the only known writing by Sarduy in which he refers to having AIDS. Sarduy died of AIDS on June 8, 1993. He was 56.
Did Thomas Avena have difficulty selecting something by David Wojnarowicz to include in Life Sentences? I imagine that he might have because so much written by Wojnarowicz is appropriate for this collection. Avena picked “Spiral,” an earlier version of which appeared in Wojnarowicz’s Memories That Smell like Gasoline (1992), which was accompanied in that book by more provocative drawings than the one included in Life Sentences. “Spiral” is nightmarish and full of rage. “THERE IS SOMETHING IN MY BLOOD AND IT’S TRYING TO FUCKING KILL ME,” Wojnarowicz screams. He died of AIDS on July 22, 1992 at the age of 37. The photograph of Wojnarowicz that appears on the cover of Life Sentences is by Nan Goldin, who is interviewed by Avena in the book.
Marlon Riggs, famous for his film Tongues Untied, is also interviewed by Avena. The bravery and affirmation that Riggs expresses in the interview are breathtaking. Stunning are Riggs’s concluding words: “[L]iving and dying is simultaneous . . . they depend upon one another for existence. That we are simultaneously diminished by what enlarges us in life—a seeming contradiction that defines the fundamental meaning of existence.” Riggs, who was ill at the time of the interview, died of AIDS on April 5, 1994. He was 37.
Tory Dent’s poetry describes her horrendous experiences living with HIV: “Now you riddle me permanently, bodily, a body tattoo, / internally ruinous, a virus and not just deadly / but deadening to all other poems and men.” Dent died on December 30, 2005 of complication from AIDS. She was 47.
Thom Gunn, a poet known for The Man with Night Sweats, died on April 25, 2004 of heart failure at the age of 74. In “Post Script: The Panel,” Gunn writes: “Their story, being part of mine, refuses to reach an end. They present me with new problems, surprise me, contradict me, my dear, my everpresent dead.”
Thomas Avena includes his own essay titled “Marinol.” Marinol is a drug used to treat nausea and vomiting caused by cancer chemotherapy. Avena died of AIDS on August 3, 2005 at the age of 46.
The order in which Avena places the pieces in Life Sentences is perfect. In their essays, poems, and interviews, the writers and artists included in Life Sentences powerfully bear witness to the effects of AIDS on their lives and creativity.
In Life Sentences: Writers, Artists, and AIDS, Thomas Avena, the editor, magnificently fulfills his mission “to bring together a disparate group of writers and artists, having in common seropositivity for HIV or an extensive commitment to confronting the plague.” Life Sentences is a superlative collection of essays, poetry, memoirs, and interviews. In 1994, the year Life Sentences was published, an HIV-positive diagnosis was still tantamount to a death sentence. Over half of the fourteen contributors, and one subject of an essay, were lost to AIDS.
I was familiar with several of the authors included in Life Sentences: Bo Huston, David Wojnarowicz, Essex Hemphill, and Severo Sarduy. Other writers and artists were new to me, for instance, Diamanda Galás, William Dickey, Tory Dent, and Jerome Caja. My life has been enriched by the exposure to the various writers and artists that this book provides.
The first selection in Life Sentences is an essay titled “Last Time” by the poet William Dickey. Born in 1928, Dickey writes: “Certainly I cannot believe I am the oldest HIV-positive American or would or will be the oldest person to die of complications of the condition.” William Dickey died of AIDS on May 3, 1994 at the age of 65.
Bo Huston’s contribution to Life Sentences is an account of one of his journeys to Switzerland for experimental AIDS treatment. Huston was lost to AIDS on May 24, 1993. He was 33.
Essex Hemphill, who died of AIDS on November 4, 1995 at the age of 38, gives us a 37-page poem titled “Vital Signs.” As always, when I read Hemphill, the anger—and the love—he expresses overwhelm me. The following lines are from XXXVII in “Vital Signs”:
Now show me
the signs for love,
the practices,
the vital signs.
I have spent
all these years
trying to live
ways of being
I’ve seldom seen.
Avena includes two pieces by Severo Sarduy, a difficult and challenging writer. In the first piece, “Explosion of Emptiness,” Sarduy prepares for his death. According to Avena, “A Wart on My Foot,” the second piece, is the only known writing by Sarduy in which he refers to having AIDS. Sarduy died of AIDS on June 8, 1993. He was 56.
Did Thomas Avena have difficulty selecting something by David Wojnarowicz to include in Life Sentences? I imagine that he might have because so much written by Wojnarowicz is appropriate for this collection. Avena picked “Spiral,” an earlier version of which appeared in Wojnarowicz’s Memories That Smell like Gasoline (1992), which was accompanied in that book by more provocative drawings than the one included in Life Sentences. “Spiral” is nightmarish and full of rage. “THERE IS SOMETHING IN MY BLOOD AND IT’S TRYING TO FUCKING KILL ME,” Wojnarowicz screams. He died of AIDS on July 22, 1992 at the age of 37. The photograph of Wojnarowicz that appears on the cover of Life Sentences is by Nan Goldin, who is interviewed by Avena in the book.
Marlon Riggs, famous for his film Tongues Untied, is also interviewed by Avena. The bravery and affirmation that Riggs expresses in the interview are breathtaking. Stunning are Riggs’s concluding words: “[L]iving and dying is simultaneous . . . they depend upon one another for existence. That we are simultaneously diminished by what enlarges us in life—a seeming contradiction that defines the fundamental meaning of existence.” Riggs, who was ill at the time of the interview, died of AIDS on April 5, 1994. He was 37.
Tory Dent’s poetry describes her horrendous experiences living with HIV: “Now you riddle me permanently, bodily, a body tattoo, / internally ruinous, a virus and not just deadly / but deadening to all other poems and men.” Dent died on December 30, 2005 of complication from AIDS. She was 47.
Thom Gunn, a poet known for The Man with Night Sweats, died on April 25, 2004 of heart failure at the age of 74. In “Post Script: The Panel,” Gunn writes: “Their story, being part of mine, refuses to reach an end. They present me with new problems, surprise me, contradict me, my dear, my everpresent dead.”
Thomas Avena includes his own essay titled “Marinol.” Marinol is a drug used to treat nausea and vomiting caused by cancer chemotherapy. Avena died of AIDS on August 3, 2005 at the age of 46.
The order in which Avena places the pieces in Life Sentences is perfect. In their essays, poems, and interviews, the writers and artists included in Life Sentences powerfully bear witness to the effects of AIDS on their lives and creativity.
September 2, 2019
Lot of great perspectives about living through AIDS.
November 7, 2009
A collection of poetry, essays and interviews by people living with HIV. The book was published in 1994, before combination therapy became available, and it is a fascinating and heartbreaking look at the epidemic in an earlier time. Many of the artists state how their HIV status drives their compulsion to produce work.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews