Member News: These Several Women – A New Poetry Collection

cristina white

Cristina White’s new book is These Several Women: Love Poems, a collection of poetry about love, desire, and memory. All those who have been in love, who have known passion and heartbreak, will find an echo of their own memories here. And if you are a woman in love with another woman, somewhere in these poems, you will recognize yourself.

Print and eBook editions are available at Amazon. The print edition can be ordered through your local bookstore and is also available at Barnes & Noble.

“‘As long as language lasts…’ Cristina White’s poems…are hymns of honest gratitude for the memories of loves lost and the persistence of longing. In them, women who love women will surely recognize the sweet paradox of evanescent hope amidst her celebration of shining, small details. Remembrance is a thorny thing to capture, but Cristina has done so admirably in her poems, neatly entwining erotic passion with elegiac devotion.”
Claire Goodman
Professor Media Arts
Long Island University

Published by Letter Pen Press, These Several Women captures both the wonder and beauty experienced when we fall in love, and the ache that comes when love takes a turn we didn’t expect and everything falls to pieces. The collection is born out of a belief that love is the lifeblood of our existence here on earth. These poems sing that anthem.

IF EVER
If ever my thumb should heal
and I can hold a pen again,
I will write poems
and next to them,
drawings in brown ink.

I will draw everything I see
and all my poems
will be about you.

The collection is divided into sections titled for cities I have lived in and the love discovered in those cities. A poem titled “I Knew” records the suppression of love felt for another woman in the era before Stonewall. “The Mighty Pen” reflects how much had changed when, one evening at a café, I cared not at all if everyone could see that I was wildly in love with the woman across the table from me—the woman I would share my life with and eventually marry. “Strawberries” is a playful bit of erotica and ironic humor. And “After Midnight” is about the persistence of longing for a remembered love, a grand passion. 

“A beautifully written collection of poems, pulsing with an overarching lyrical rhythm…these poems reflect the universal heartbeat of what it is to love and, in loving, discover ourselves. Whoever you love and share your life with, these poems will touch you with their honesty and beauty.”
Terri Thomas,
Performer, Voice Actor, Writer

Find out more here and here