A Woman Is Talking to Death

Author: Judy Grahn

Illustrator: Karen Sjöholm

Publisher: The Women's Press Collective (1974)

“we are the fat of the land, and

we all have our lists of casualties”

This ambitious, arresting work is Judy Grahn's most celebrated poem, a piece about meaning and futility, callousness and tenderness, queer love and, of course, death. The poem is a factual account of a fatal motorcycle accident on the Bay Bridge—the bridge that connects San Francisco to Oakland—that expands into a meditation on the differences between love and death. Grahn said of the poem that it was “a redefinition for myself of the subject of love.”

This rare edition is a touch worn on the covers.