Book Review	Book Reviews Archive

Michael Lassell has been one of the best kept secrets of contemporary gay poetry. His books Poems for Lost and Un-lost Boys and Decade Dance are treasured by those who know them. Now, in A Flame for the Touch that Matters (Painted Leaf Press, paper, 113 pages, $12), Lassell demonstrates again his ability to move, startle, and enchant us. Like all of Lassell's work, the themes here concern not simply gay sex, but gay desire, not only gay love, but gay passion.

View our poll archive

Yet Lassell's world is also a material one where moments of intense living are punctuated by the mundane and boring. In "How to Spend a Holiday Alone," he writes "You Lover will be away on vacation./ It will be hotter than/ hell,/ hotter than it's ever been in/ California. Sleep late./ Masturbate./ Sit at your desk and catch up on your correspondence. Take a nap./ Shower./ Cut your beard back to nothing./ He will hate it on Monday;/ You will hate it already." But in these words and images he manages to expose the sexual undercurrents of the everyday, to explicate the erotic underpinnings of routine and time-filler. But whether he is mourning friends who have died, the problems of finding erotic love as an older gay man, fantasizing sex with a young naked man, or being tattooed by a rough-looking biker, Lassell understands how deeply sex and eroticism runs in all of our lives. With vibrant language and images that disturb as much as they console, Lassell's poetry works its way into our consciousness and our dreams like memories and visions over which we have little control.

Author Profile:  Michael Bronski
	Michael Bronski is the author of Culture Clash: The Making of Gay Sensibility and The Pleasure Principle: Sex, Backlash, and the Struggle for Gay Freedom. He writes frequently on sex, books, movies, and culture, and lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
	Email:	mabronski@aol.com