Love, H

"Love, H is a very tender correspondence, augmented by Jones’s running commentary between two deeply loyal 'no nonsense' friends, both strong women, artists, mothers. This delicate weave runs adjacent to the lives and dynamics of the New American Poetry and its inspired players. The affinities create a jazz track of quotidian life, literary and visual art talk, heartbreak, survival, politics, social justice, and illuminating details from place: traveling from Colchester (UK) and Gloucester to the Lower East Side. This is a wonderful addition to Hettie Jones’s memoir How I Became Hettie Jones. This is one for the Archive." - Anne Waldman, Poet, Artistic Director of the Kerouac School Summer Writing Program

"Love, H, a lucid compendium of epistles, postcards, and e-mails, depicts an intimate account of the lives and minds of two artists. The straightforward acumen of Beat poet Hettie Jones (New York City) and sculptor Helene Dorn (Gloucester) cumulate into a poignant dialogue that critiques and probes a unique body of shared feelings during the post-Beat movement and its legacy. Love, H is life on the page. The day to day, with gaps and silences, portrays a psychological and spiritual map of these two speakers who aptly refer to the post-Beat landscape as Boyland. These pages of joy and pain add up to more than two full hearts and minds caught at a turning point in America. Two friends sort out the fray. Their playful certainty embodies wisdom. Lively, and at times even taciturn, the two give us a shared truth as witnesses. This correspondence of more than forty years is personal and political, and without trying creates a collage of experience that grows into an American portrait." - Yusef Komunyakaa, author of The Emperor of Water Clocks: Poems

"Love, H reveals the struggles and contradictions of being an aspiring female artist, a wife, and a mother during the tumultuous sixties. Here are two cool 'chicks'—in this case writer Hettie Jones and painter Helene Dorn—running in the highly competitive, male-dominated, bohemian circles of New York/San Francisco/& Beyond. It’s a gritty and seductive world, referred to by Jones as 'Boyland,' where smart, creative women are expected to be seen but not heard. These candid letters—framed by Hettie Jones’s own eloquent and insightful recollections—are a deeply moving ode to friendship, as well as a window to an incredible time of conflict, social change, and artistic flourishing in America." - Jessica Hagedorn

"This moving portrait of a friendship has much to offer those with an interest in the lives of women writers and artists." - Publishers Weekly

"What does emerge is an inkling of the friendship, understanding, and empathy between the two women who saw themselves as 'Babes in Boyland.'... A fertile trove...." - Kirkus Reviews

"[T]his book makes an important contribution to the growing literature on women in the Beat Generation." - William Gargan, Library Journal

"This captivating chronicle of a free wheeling dialogue between two phenomenal women resonates with depth, support and mature self-awareness. More then a fascinating record of contemporary friendship, Hettie Jones and Helene Dorn personify brave, full artistic lives enriched by their enduring platonic love."
  - Ilka Scobie, American Book Review