Julie R. Enszer is a scholar and poet. She's currently the editor of Sinister Wisdom, a multicultural lesbian literary and art journal, and a regular book reviewer for the Lambda Book Report and Calyx. Julie's research has appeared or is forthcoming in Southern Cultures, Journal of Lesbian Studies, American Periodicals, WSQ, Frontiers and other journals; she is the author of the poetry collections Avowed, Lilith’s Demons, Sisterhood and Handmade Love and the editor of The Complete Works of Pat Parker and Milk & Honey: A Celebration of Jewish Lesbian Poetry.
Learning is a reciprocal, life-long process. Elders learn from young people who bring new experiences and new knowledges to us all. Learning is multifaceted and continuous; all of us at every different age learn together and from one another.
Sinister Wisdom’s newest Sapphic Classic, A Generous Spirit: Selected Work by Beth Brant, releases into the world today. All of the Sapphic Classics are special to me, but this one repays an important debt from my youth.
In some ways, publishing a paper wall calendar and a blank book journal feels anachronistic in our digital world. At the same time, these new print documents connect me to a long lesbian history and herstory.
The title is perhaps melodramatic—but publishing a quarterly periodical means that occasionally there is scrambling to pull together an issue. This is particularly true when the journal, like Sinister Wisdom, is an all-volunteer enterprise.
Nine is a magical number. In Greek mythology, there were nine muses; cats have nine lives; there are nine circles of hell in Dante’s Inferno. 2019 also marks the beginning of my ninth year editing and publishing “Sinister Wisdom.”
The regime remains malleable—patriarchy, misogyny, white supremacy, heterosexual supremacy, neoliberalism, capitalism—but boisterous resistance is our legacy, and the spirit that invites us to engage another day.
Born in 1825 to free African American parents, Frances Ellen Watkins Harper was a prolific journalist and poet as well as an abolitionist and suffragist. In “Songs for the People,” she imagines poetry filling “the world with peace.”
“The Letter” is playful and fanciful, celebrating the beloved through letter writing—although in the final stanza, Amy Lowell reveals the complexity of her emotions.