I've been thinking a lot recently about connection--all the many ways we form community. And how that community can span space and time, language and symbols. How we are seen in the marginalia left in the creases of a thrifted book. The name of a local queer bookstore (permanently closed). A sticker on a helmet. The mortifying ordeal of being known, being percieved. So that in the future others can feel at ease doing the same.

And I think that might be Adrienne Rich's central thesis in her poetry. "The drive / to connect. The dream of a common language."

But the thing about language is that it's more than words. In our internet-fueled age it's also memes, emojis, gifs, quotes. Tidbits of pop culture that signal who we are, what we care about. Our priorities and our identities.

This isn't so much a book review as a contemplation on how communities are built. Especially queer communities. How we've been historically marginalized. Erased. Burned. And yet persist--because we have invented new languages (if you've heard of Polari, you know I mean that both literally and figuratively). The meaning of flowers, hanky codes, flags of many stripes.

Really it's a timeless concept. Poems from the 1970s informing the 2020s. If you can't speak plainly, speak in poetry. Dream up a common language.