This volume contains work from every phase of Judy Grahn's career, including poems from all of her major poetry collections, such as "The Common Woman,""A Woman is Talking to Death," and the previously unpublished "Mental"; a number of her groundbreaking essays ("Writing from a House of Women" and the newly revised "Ground Zero: The Rise of Lesbian Feminism," among others); as well selected fiction and the full-length play, The Queen of Swords. Gathering together the varying strands of Grahn's work together in this book makes visible the tremendous scope of her contribution as a feminist thinker, activist, and literary artist."Judy Grahn is the direct inheritor of that passion for life in the woman poet, that instinct for true power, not domination, which poets like Barrett Browning, Dickinson, H.D., were asserting in their own very different waysand voices."--Adrienne Rich, from On Lies, Secrets, and Silence"People always ask me about my favorite musicians but no one ever asks about my favorite poets. When I was nineteen I discovered the poetry of Judy Grahn, and I was so moved by A Woman Is Talking to Death, it's still one of my favorite poems ever, in the world."--Ani DiFranco"Judy Grahn has done more to create a women's literature than any other writer in the past half century." --Ron Silliman