and “For The Straight Folks Who Don’t Mind Gays
But Wish They Weren’t So BLATANT.”
She celebrated and valorized black women’s
lives, working-class lives, and lesbian lives. She
wrote unabashedly autobiographical poetry, and
with her words she invited those who had been
taught that their lives were not the stuff of poetry
to love themselves. In the process, she also encour-
aged many readers to love poetry, too.
The archetypal image of a woman as midwife at
her own birth finds its representation in the open-
ing poem of Parker’s Child of Myself (1972), which
blasts the Genesis myth of Eve being taken from
Adam’s rib. In no longer claiming “a mother of
flesh / a father of marrow,” Parker metaphorically
gives birth to herself, becomes a poet, a truthteller.
Such an image repudiates the biblical denial of
women’s procreative powers and heals the schism
between artistic and procreative conception. Writ-
ing about the murders of black children in Atlanta,
she titled a poem with the bitterest irony, “georgia,
georgia, georgia on my mind.” In the title poem
of Womanslaughter (1978), the poet describes the
murder of her sister, Shirley, at the hands of Shir-
ley’s ex-husband. Parker calls this a communal act
of male violence and announces her allegiance to
all women, warning that if one of her “sisters” is
hurt or killed:
I will come with my many sisters
and decorate the streets
with the innards of those
brothers in womanslaughter.Parker’s love, however, was as legendary as her
anger, as witnessed by the evocative poem about
her first meeting with poet AUDRE LORDE: “My
muse sang of you— / watch the sky for / an ebony
meteorite.” Lorde’s foreword to Parker’s Movement
in Black (1978) describes with admiration the pre-
cision of Parker’s images, the plain accuracy of her
visions, and calls her words “womanly and un-
compromising.”
Parker was the author of five volumes of po-
etry, including Pit Stop (1974) and Jonestown and
Other Madness (1985). She was married in the
early 1960s to playwright ED BULLINS but by the
late 1960s had embraced lesbian feminism. Her
collaborations with poet Judy Grahn, especially
the Olivia record albums Where Would I Be with-
out You? The Poetry of Pat Parker and Judy Grahn
(1976) and Lesbian Concentrate (1977), introduced
both poets to wider audiences. Parker’s political
activism nourished her poetry and took numer-
ous forms, including involvement with the Black
Panther Party, the Black Women’s Revolutionary
Council, and the Women’s Press Collective and
a nine-year tenure as medical coordinator at the
Oakland Feminist Women’s Health Center. Pat
Parker died at age 45 from breast cancer, survived
by her partner of many years, Marty Dunham, and
two daughters, Cassidy Brown and Anastasia Dun-
ham Parker.BIBLIOGRAPHY
Annas, Pamela. “A Poetry of Survival: Unnaming
and Renaming in the Poetry of Audre Lorde, Pat
Parker, Sylvia Plath and Adrienne Rich.” Colby Li-
brary Quarterly 18 (March 1982): 9–25.
Callaghan, Dympna. “Pat Parker: Feminism in Post-
modernity.” In Contemporary Poetry Meets Mod-
ern Theory, edited by Antony Easthope and John
O. Thompson, 128–138. Toronto: University of
Toronto Press, 1981.
Clarke, Cheryl. “Review of Movement in Black.” Con-
ditions Six 2 (Summer 1980): 217–225.
Garber, Linda. “Lesbian Identity Poetics: Judy Grahn,
Pat Parker, and the Rise of Queer Theory.” Dis-
sertation, Stanford University, 1995.
Smith, Barbara. “Naming the Unnamable: The Poetry
of Pat Parker.” Conditions Three 1 (Spring 1978):
99–103.
Lynda KoolishParks, Gordon (1912–2006)
Gordon Parks distinguished himself in numer-
ous artistic fields, winning an international
acclaim and stature. Parks has been an accom-
plished photographer, composer, and film direc-
tor. His literary achievements have been equally
outstanding, as he published autobiographies,
poetry, and novels.Parks, Gordon 405