On a Grey Thread

By Elsa Gidlow and Mint Editions

On a Grey Thread is the groundbreaking poetry collection of Elsa Gidlow – the first in North American history to openly express lesbian desire.

Both personal and political, Gidlow’s poems express the poet’s complex feelings as a young woman whose political ideology and sexual identity ran counter to the traditional values of her time.

Opening her collection with “The Grey Thread,” Gidlow expresses herself with ornamental imagery, decorating her drab existence with the colorful beads of her personal identity. Employing the double meaning of “gay,” offering a brief erotic “moan” on the precipice of enjambment, Gidlow stretches her stanza to its sinful conclusion, recalling Eve’s temptation in the Garden of Eden.

This edition of Elsa Gidlow’s On a Grey Thread is a classic work of lesbian literature reimagined for modern readers.

Since our inception in 2020, Mint Editions has kept sustainability and innovation at the forefront of our mission. Each and every Mint Edition title gets a fresh, professionally typeset manuscript and a dazzling new cover, all while maintaining the integrity of the original book.

With thousands of titles in our collection, we aim to spotlight diverse public domain works to help them find modern audiences. Mint Editions celebrates a breadth of literary works, curated from both canonical and overlooked classics from writers around the globe.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Mint Editions
• Release date: Sep 3, 2022
• ISBN: 9781513288475

Elsa Gidlow

Elsa Gidlow (1898-1986) was a Canadian American poet, journalist, and philosopher. Born in Yorkshire, England, Gidlow moved with her family to Canada in 1905, settling in Montreal. At seventeen, she began pursuing amateur journalism full time, working with Roswell George Mills to publish Les Mouche fantastique, a pioneering magazine that was the first in North America dedicated to gay and lesbian content. Gidlow left for New York at 21, finding work as a poetry editor of Pearson’s and befriending influential poet Kenneth Rexroth, whom she would follow to San Francisco in 1926. A lesbian and anarchist, Gidlow was involved in some of California’s most influential radical political and artistic circles, befriending Dizzy Gillespie, Louis Armstrong, Robert Duncan, Ram Dass, Allen Ginsberg, and Maya Angelou throughout her life. At her ranch Druid Heights, purchased in 1954 and shared with her partner Isabel Grenfell Quallo and carpenter Roger Somers, she established a bohemian community that was home to such figures as Alan Watts, Gary Snyder, and Catherine MacKinnon. Persecuted by the United States government’s House Un-American Activities Committee for her beliefs, Gidlow was a tireless artist and activist whose autobiographical works, philosophical texts on lesbianism, and poetry collections—including her debut On a Grey Thread (1923)—remain essential, groundbreaking works of queer literature.

Book preview

THE GREY THREAD

THE GREY THREAD

My life is a grey thread,

A thin grey stretched out thread,

And when I trace its course, I moan:

How dull! How dead!

But I have gay beads.

A pale one to begin,

A blue one for my painted dreams,

And one for sin,

Gold with coiled marks,

Like a snake’s skin.

For love an odd bead

With a deep purple glow;

A green bead for a secret thing

That few shall know;

And yellow for my thoughts

That melt like snow.

A red bead for my strength,

And crimson for my hate;

Silver for the songs I sing

When I am desolate;

And white for my laughter

That mocks dull fate.

My life is a grey thread

Stretching through Time’s day;

But I have slipped gay beads on it

To hide the grey.

YOUTH

YOUTH

I must go down,

Down, down,

Below the crusts of things,

Under the shadows,

Into thought-haunted places

Where few go;

Where the road is broken

And travelled by monsters,

Truths with hard sphinx-faces.

I must go down

Into the caves of life,

Into the darknesses,

Deep, deep,

Below the good of things,

Below the evil of things,

Where the calm roots of wisdom creep.

I must tunnel

Under the bloom of dreams,

Under the frame-work of fancies,

Tunnel alone.

What if I shatter frail things,

Break delicate flowers of myth

Timorous dreamers have sown?

I must go down

Below narrow roads men have made,

Below bridging lies men have built,

Into the caverns of truth.

I know pain is waiting there

Eager to break me,

But I am strong.

I have faith in my youth.

Living is crusted with lies.

I want life naked,

Laughing and young.

Not fettered, not tamed,

But life unashamed,

With the cry of Desire on her tongue.

WORLD CRY

There are gods in the market place.

Did you know there were gods there?

All, yes. Gods, gods,

Reviews for On a Grey Thread

[phoenixterran · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Offered for review through the LibraryThing Early Reviewers program, Mint Editions' description of Elsa Gidlow's On a Grey Thread as the first collection of lesbian love poetry to be released in North America immediately caught my attention. More specifically, when it was first published in 1923, it was the first such collection to not be released anonymously or under a pseudonym. I wasn't previously familiar with Elsa Gidlow or her work, but after reading On a Grey Thread I am very curious to learn more about her. (Serendipitously, Gidlow has connections to other authors whose works I've recently started exploring, such as Allen Ginsberg and Alan Watts.) As a volume, On a Grey Thread collects more than lesbian love poems. But while it ranges in theme, Gidlow's poetry is frequently feminist and philosophical. In addition to the queer content, I also particularly appreciated Gidlow's explorations of art as a concept and an act of creation. I am very glad to have had the opportunity to read On a Grey Thread and am happy that the collection is once again available in print.

[seongeona · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

As with any collection, I liked some entries better than others. This heart was full to overflowing with emotion: joy, longing, tenderness, lust. Gidlow's poems are rich with sensory experience - sight, sound, touch - full of color, texture, and movement so that we are almost in the scene as well. "Episode," "As Usual," and "To a Young Dancing Girl" are exquisitely vivid in this way. They are more like master paintings or stage plays than written words. We can smell the roses, hear the click of the beads, feel the weight of the shoes on our own feet. I kept thinking about the songs of Chavela Varga as I read, the depth of her feeling and her expression were similar. She and Gidlow are one of a kind. I must read more.Thank you to LibraryThing Early Reviewers and the publisher for providing me a copy of this work in exchange for my review.