The Highest Apple: Sappho and the Lesbian Poetic Tradition

In 1985, Judy Grahn boldly declared that lesbians have a poetic tradition and mapped it from Sappho to the present day in the groundbreaking book The Highest Apple. With her characteristic ferocious intellect, passion for historical research, careful close readings, and dynamic storytelling, Grahn situated poetry by Sappho, Emily Dickinson, Amy Lowell, H.D., Gertrude Stein, Adrienne Rich Paula Gunn Allen, Audre Lorde, Pat Parker, and Olga Bromas as central to lesbian culture-and more radically as central to society as a whole. In this new and updated edition of The Highest Apple: Sappho and the Lesbian Poetic Tradition, Grahn revisits the original text and amplifies it with a more in depth consideration of Pat Parker and in conversation with two younger lesbian poets, Alicia Mountain and Alyse Knorr, demonstrating the continued relevance and dynamism of The Highest Apple. A new introduction by Grahn and six responses by contemporary poets Donika Kelly, Kim Shuck, Serena Chopra, Zoe Tuck, Saretta Morgan, and Khadijah Queen highlight the ongoing significance of The Highest Apple to readers, writers, and thinkers.