Writer and activist Larry Kramer once said that his memory of the Reagan era was funeral after funeral after funeral. Now viewed with rosy-tinted nostalgia, the '80s were notable, among other things, for the mounting AIDS crisis in the face of the utter indifference of the Reagan administration.

A book that captures that time is Sarah Schulman's Rat Bohemia, first published in 1995 and just reprinted in a new edition by Arsenal Pulp. It's set in a New York City of outcasts, gay men and lesbians shunned by mainstream society.

These characters struggle for recognition from their families as they confront another death, and another memorial service. It's an angry book, as circumstances create a victim mentality. Schulman depicts a community fighting to survive.

The author adds a fascinating introduction to this edition. She notes that the city's recent gentrification occurred after gay people died in huge numbers in places such as the East Village. Their newly-vacant rental apartments flooded the market, prompting a massive demographic shift. Meanwhile, marginalized New Yorkers can no longer afford to live in Manhattan.

Rat Bohemia, then, is not only a memorial to the 75,000 New Yorkers who died of AIDS, (the number is Schulman's), but also to a kind of city life.

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If you didn't manage to get away this summer and you wish you had, you might want to take a look at Away by Andrea MacPherson (Signature Editions). The poems travel across Europe, from Ireland and Scotland to France and Greece as MacPherson combines ancestral connections with delicate observations of the different blues of the Aegean.

Jordan Scott stutters, and his book Blert (Coach House Books) isn't just a look at his condition. It attempts, through complex juxtapositions, to replicate the stuttering experience, in which vocalizing every syllable, every vowel and consonant, can be the result of sheer physical effort. A book made to be read aloud.

One of my favourite Greek myths (yes, I do have favourites) is the story of Pentheus and Bacchus, a tale of sibling rivalry, cross-dressing, orgiastic excess, and murder. Really, if you don't know it, you should look it up.

This myth is the centrepiece of Daughters of Men by Brenda Leifso (Brick Books), as she retells the story as a play in verse. Thrilling stuff. She picks up the theme of violence interwoven with family in other surprising, sometimes shocking, poems in the collection.