Lucía M. Polis The Poetry of

This book, divided into four parts, uses the An­cient Greek ta­xo­no­my of love as its guid­ing prin­ci­ple: The first part, “Lo­ving Men,” ventures into the realms of ἀγά­πη (bro­therly love), φιλία (friendship), ξε­νία (guest-friendship), and στοργή (familial af­fec­tion). The se­cond part, “Lov­ing a Man,” is devoted to ἔρως (intimate love) and contains the poems for which the author’s self-se­vering lover serves as a muse. The third part, “Loving Me,” is firm­ly entrenched in the do­main of φιλαυτία (self-love) and tra­ces the highest points of the author’s poetic self-de­fi­ni­tion and sexual awa­kening. The fourth part con­tains the eponymous, epic queer poem of 652 lines (give or take) that embodies an exuberant and un­holy union be­tween T. S. Eliot’s “Pruf­rock” and J. F. Shade’s “Pale Fire.”

While We Were Hateful Peo­ple, my pre­vi­ous po­etry col­lection, was a me­di­ta­tion on neu­ro­di­ver­gence, queer­ness, and he­te­ro­nor­ma­ti­vi­ty, The Love of a Good Man evinces an examination of the other side of this coin—the vagaries of homo­social affinity and homo­sexual desire, their seem­ing impossibility, their historio­gra­phy, and their erasure—prompt­ed by the author’s abrupt dis­affection by a man.

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