Love Is a Dangerous WordEssex Hemphill For three decades, the legacy of the revered writer, editor, performer, and activist Essex Hemphill has been lovingly sustained through xeroxed copies of his few published works. They are as potent now as they were in the 1980s. With tenderness and rage, Hemphills poems unflinchingly explore the complex, overlapping identities of sexuality, gender, and race; the American political landscape; and his own experiences as a black gay man