TO WOMAN, FROM MAN

Harper pays homage to women in this sonorous collection of verse and prose.

The author celebrates everyone from obscure mentors—he salutes his English teacher, Mrs. Bland, for throwing him against a wall and threatening to kill him if he didn’t make honor roll—to icons who embody various kinds of female excellence. The latter group includes Red Cross founder Clara Barton, Nobel laureate Marie Curie, Supreme Court justice and feminist pioneer Ruth Bader Ginsburg (“You protected your chin from chauvinistic and / Misogynistic men. / May your legacy persist through eons”), and screen siren Marilyn Monroe (“You could turn on sensual energy at will / And draw wanton heat from men’s loins / And unfettered jealousy from a woman’s heart”). Some poems address women collectively as a protective force of nature (“Woman, you created life as God’s gift / …Now, you must protect human life / From premature extinction”) or long-suffering victims of male misbehavior (“Please accept our humble and sincere apology on bended / Knees and palms of hands”). The concluding pages contain miscellaneous aphorisms—everything from mystical pensées (“We are no better than our footprints”) to diet tips to Nietzschean misanthropy (“most people are like cattle or wildebeests. They can be herded and directed”). Harper’s adulatory feminism sometimes leads him into stilted effusions; “I present you with the highest possible honor that can be bestowed upon a human being, ‘The Supreme Medal of Humanity,’” he gushes in a tribute to Helen Keller. But at his best, he explores intimate connections between men and women in deeply evocative scenes infused with a quiet lyricism, as in “I’m a Mother,” a portrait of his wife in the maternity ward: “A new woman she was with a face of / Joy and pride never to be forgotten. / She said to the father of her new baby, / ‘I’m a mother.’” The book is an uneven ramble, but Harper’s heartfelt devotion to women and flashes of insight yield many captivating passages.

A sometimes clunky, sometimes luminous meditation on womanhood through the eyes of an admiring man.