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Drug And Disease Free
Love is always complicated. In the poems of Drug and Disease Free, Michael Broder ponders the further complexities of love in the context of HIV and AIDS. These include the pleasures of cruising and anonymous sex, the challenges of marriage and erotic power exchange, and the realities of blood, cum and other "proud, shameful mysteries." Broder's narrator is intimate and plainspoken even when formalist; wary but romantic; self-mocking and elegiac; and utterly open--even with "no lube"--to loving and being loved, and all the complications those entail.
--Arielle Greenberg
[Michael Broder's] Drug and Disease Free makes an important intervention in the canon of contemporary gay poetry, in which so much writing about HIV/AIDS has remained in the realm of elegy. Even as many of these poems find Broder grieving, he is not confined by his status or the pains he has suffered. Ultimately, the triumphant possibility he realizes in this book is that freedom can take innumerably more forms than previously believed. The example of Broder's poetry proves that even in the face of inconceivable loss, we are free to conceive of a world in which we can keep loving, writing and remembering.
--Jameson Fitzpatrick (from the Foreword)
Michael Broder's poems are sexy, fun and daring. Drug and Disease Free is a frisky poetry collection that is audacious and revelatory in a way both refreshing and uninhibited.
--Emanuel Xavier, author of Radiance
Michael Broder is the author of This Life Now (A Midsummer Night's Press, 2014), a finalist for the 2015 Lambda Literary Award for Gay Poetry. His poems have appeared in numerous publications and anthologies. He holds a BA from Columbia University, an MFA from New York University, and a PhD in Classics from The Graduate Center of the City University of New York. He is the founding publisher of Indolent Books and the creator of the HIV Here & Now Project. Broder lives in Brooklyn with his husband, the poet Jason Schneiderman, and a backyard colony of stray and feral cats.
--Arielle Greenberg
[Michael Broder's] Drug and Disease Free makes an important intervention in the canon of contemporary gay poetry, in which so much writing about HIV/AIDS has remained in the realm of elegy. Even as many of these poems find Broder grieving, he is not confined by his status or the pains he has suffered. Ultimately, the triumphant possibility he realizes in this book is that freedom can take innumerably more forms than previously believed. The example of Broder's poetry proves that even in the face of inconceivable loss, we are free to conceive of a world in which we can keep loving, writing and remembering.
--Jameson Fitzpatrick (from the Foreword)
Michael Broder's poems are sexy, fun and daring. Drug and Disease Free is a frisky poetry collection that is audacious and revelatory in a way both refreshing and uninhibited.
--Emanuel Xavier, author of Radiance
Michael Broder is the author of This Life Now (A Midsummer Night's Press, 2014), a finalist for the 2015 Lambda Literary Award for Gay Poetry. His poems have appeared in numerous publications and anthologies. He holds a BA from Columbia University, an MFA from New York University, and a PhD in Classics from The Graduate Center of the City University of New York. He is the founding publisher of Indolent Books and the creator of the HIV Here & Now Project. Broder lives in Brooklyn with his husband, the poet Jason Schneiderman, and a backyard colony of stray and feral cats.
- GenresPoetry
54 pages, Paperback
Published April 15, 2016
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
July 20, 2016
Drug and Disease Free, or DDF, a common posted request in online listing services for hook ups, is this books title, bringing directly into the forefront the stigma attached to having the HIV virus. Michael Broder is working hard to expand consciousness with his HIV Here & Now project, his recent introduction of Indolent Books, his blogging on Facebook and through The Body. This is his second book, published by his new press and it includes a forward by Jameson Fitzpatrick that calls out how this book is outside the realm of much writing about AIDS, in that it is not a book of elegies. Fitzpatrick writes, "The examples of Broder's poetry proves that even in the face of inconceivable loss, we are free to conceive of a world in which we can keep loving, writing, and remembering."
There are many common themes from his first book, but no overlapping poems, and this book brings in more of his current personality where he explores daily details in his relationship and how blame plays out in his life as a Jewish man, he also has a poem that explores gender. This book, like his last, is divided into three sections with each section progressively longer:
Section I, Mad About a Boy: Here are relationship poems; a poem about the day he got his diagnosis, boldly titled with the date—October 18, 1990, that has an epigraph "God loves an expiration date." from his partner Jason Schneiderman, also a published poet. This poem interweaves the story of Eurydice, with his partner being the one looking back and losing him to the underworld. Brilliant.
Section 2, More Plague Years: A poem addressing the first day he got his diagnosis titled "Dealing" that asks in the opening line, "How did I accomplish so much on the very first day?" Along with the classic line from a doctor so many have heard, "I have three years to live if I don't start taking AZT." And in his poem, "Standing Before the Ark" he uses the phrase "tagged blood", questions the virus and what it means, and finds his "God of Sodomites." The proud ending, "Hear, Oh Israel, I suck dick, I get fucked!" (in italics). In another poem, he casually thinks out his schedule while a phlebotomist takes his blood from "polluted veins." The title poem is in this section, "Drug and Disease Free Seeks Same for Safe, Sane Sex," it is a prose poem about a sero-discordant couple who have his sperm cells washed so she can have his baby, she had their first child after his death, and has enough sperm to try again. An educational poem about a subject that is not widely understood, one of the many issues that straight sero-discordant couples have had to grapple with.
Section 3, Other Boys: The poem heading this section, "Body Language," is a gender bending poem about unsuccessful sex with a woman, "...and you wanted me to be/more of a man, the kind of man//only a woman could be." Other poems include a sonnet about going into the Rambles, tip into a touch of S&M, men who've been hurt by their father, the age of the brain with MRIs where he takes a gander at how things might have been different if he had been attracted to women. And always the beach a constant thread in his work. The final ending poem, Fall 1981, brings us back in time to one of the early other boys that echoed through his last book, a quirky long narrative poem about a random phone booth call he picks up that leads to sex under the boardwalk. Memories that won't go away.
How our quirks and kinks are formed are a big part of us that drive the imagination and our sex life. This book is an intriguing look at someone who has synthesized this information and found his way to a place of self knowing. It is a good book for many to read.
There are many common themes from his first book, but no overlapping poems, and this book brings in more of his current personality where he explores daily details in his relationship and how blame plays out in his life as a Jewish man, he also has a poem that explores gender. This book, like his last, is divided into three sections with each section progressively longer:
Section I, Mad About a Boy: Here are relationship poems; a poem about the day he got his diagnosis, boldly titled with the date—October 18, 1990, that has an epigraph "God loves an expiration date." from his partner Jason Schneiderman, also a published poet. This poem interweaves the story of Eurydice, with his partner being the one looking back and losing him to the underworld. Brilliant.
Section 2, More Plague Years: A poem addressing the first day he got his diagnosis titled "Dealing" that asks in the opening line, "How did I accomplish so much on the very first day?" Along with the classic line from a doctor so many have heard, "I have three years to live if I don't start taking AZT." And in his poem, "Standing Before the Ark" he uses the phrase "tagged blood", questions the virus and what it means, and finds his "God of Sodomites." The proud ending, "Hear, Oh Israel, I suck dick, I get fucked!" (in italics). In another poem, he casually thinks out his schedule while a phlebotomist takes his blood from "polluted veins." The title poem is in this section, "Drug and Disease Free Seeks Same for Safe, Sane Sex," it is a prose poem about a sero-discordant couple who have his sperm cells washed so she can have his baby, she had their first child after his death, and has enough sperm to try again. An educational poem about a subject that is not widely understood, one of the many issues that straight sero-discordant couples have had to grapple with.
Section 3, Other Boys: The poem heading this section, "Body Language," is a gender bending poem about unsuccessful sex with a woman, "...and you wanted me to be/more of a man, the kind of man//only a woman could be." Other poems include a sonnet about going into the Rambles, tip into a touch of S&M, men who've been hurt by their father, the age of the brain with MRIs where he takes a gander at how things might have been different if he had been attracted to women. And always the beach a constant thread in his work. The final ending poem, Fall 1981, brings us back in time to one of the early other boys that echoed through his last book, a quirky long narrative poem about a random phone booth call he picks up that leads to sex under the boardwalk. Memories that won't go away.
How our quirks and kinks are formed are a big part of us that drive the imagination and our sex life. This book is an intriguing look at someone who has synthesized this information and found his way to a place of self knowing. It is a good book for many to read.
April 15, 2016
It's hard for me to write a review about a collection of poetry, because there are so many poems to discuss, and I never feel I can adequately put words to how I feel. But I'll try.
I loved this collection. Having met the poet at the Rainbow Book Fair, I was eager to read this collection. And it's brilliant, from the foreword to the last poem, these poems are ordered in such a way that readers go back in time. So many of them are haunting and I had to put down the book to think for a while after them.
My favorite lines come at the end of the poem "October 18, 1990" when Broder writes of his lover, comparing him to the Greek Eurydice and says: "But this time it was you who risked looking back, / took the chance you'd be the one / to emerge from love's underworld alone." Such beautiful writing.
I loved this collection. Having met the poet at the Rainbow Book Fair, I was eager to read this collection. And it's brilliant, from the foreword to the last poem, these poems are ordered in such a way that readers go back in time. So many of them are haunting and I had to put down the book to think for a while after them.
My favorite lines come at the end of the poem "October 18, 1990" when Broder writes of his lover, comparing him to the Greek Eurydice and says: "But this time it was you who risked looking back, / took the chance you'd be the one / to emerge from love's underworld alone." Such beautiful writing.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews