When I read a poet like Essex Hemphill, my heart just comes up in my mouth and does an African folk-dance on the back of my throat....He's making something that has never been made or said before. He gives me hope and strength.--Audre Lorde

If I'd met him I guess I'd have just said thank you.--Dev Hynes

"Hemphill was really the root for me."--Jericho Brown

"Reading Ceremonies, I learned a name for our rituals and ways, saw the experiences and magic that made us all unruly kin."--Danez Smith

I'm so eager to get this I'm salivating!--Reginald Harris

Love is a Dangerous Word is both a triumph and a testament to what queer individuals have had to endure... vigorous in its range and intimate in its approach to what it means to be a queer man of color fighting for the simple right to love.--Gabriel X. Hendrix "The Gay and Lesbian Review"

Love Is a Dangerous Word by Essex Hemphill is as comfortably chatty as it is heartbreaking reminding that "Even hope is a device"; each poem is somehow prescient and new at once, writing of desire and death and daylight.-- "Poetry Northwest"

'Hemphill was dangerous. Is dangerous. The danger he embodied saved lives, mine included. I am alive and somewhat sane because he wrote with such bravery and clarity, with every fibre of his being behind the pen.--Danaz Smith "Frieze"

Publisher: New Directions Publishing Corporation

Pub date: 2025-03-04

Length: 192 pages