Edge (Southern Tier Editions)

Rating:
Summary: Traversing the edge with a fascinating guide
Review: Jeff Mann makes his living as a teacher and has published as a poet but is revealed in this book as a prose artist. The second essay in the collection, "Watching dark Shadows," should be required reading for everyone, gay or straight. For this straight woman, it was a beautifully painful experience: so exquisitely written, but so terrible to know in such detail what I have the luxury of not experiencing at all in my life. To arrive at the last sentence of this essay is worth the cost of the book.

Another essay, entitled "Drambuie," deals with Mann's longing for and envy of youth/youthfulness. In the midst of the essay, as we are involved with Mann's pain (which is that of every one of us as we age), a poem wells up that is simply breathtaking. Anyone who has ever tried to write either prose or poetry must think here "it's not fair to be so good at both!" The poem encapsulates what Mann has been saying to this point, and yet does not say all that is needed - so the essay goes forward and we go with it, for there is much of the edge yet to traverse.

This book should be read by anyone who loves good writing, and by all straight women, who will really take heart from Mann's tales of survival from all the lousy relationships he had before he finally found a good man.

Rating:
Summary: Boundaries
Review: Poet and teacher Jeff Mann shares his influences and memories in this collection of essays. Through travel to places such as Scotland and Key West, he connects the foreign to the personal and ruminates on family legacy, gay life and literature, and the trials of being a leather bear. Mann is an accomplished writer, and these essays are well written, but certain points are repeated over and over, creating tedium for the reader. And unfortunately, he doesn't elaborate much, so by the end of the book, the reader is not left with a clear picture of the whole man he has become, but rather is only briefly acquainted with the plethora of identity aspects Mann claims. Despite this, there is still much to enjoy here.