Every time I read a new book by a gay poet I start to think that maybe I would get more exposure if I were gay. Last night I was reading Richard Silken's Crush. It is a really good book. Very intense and it deals with issues of homosexuality, love, abuse, sex. I highly reccomend it.
But after I put the book down, I started thinking of all the gay poets that publish and what their books are like. It often feels like gay poets get to have a different standard than straight poets. Like, if I were to pick up a book of poems that are page after page of straight sex poems, I'd probably be turned off by all the sex. But with gay poets, its totally okay to write poems about sex and romantic love. It seems to help if the romantic love is with an abusive person or somebody dying of AIDS. There are plenty of poems about poets loving people dying of cancer, but they just don't seem to pack the same wallop as a dying-of-AIDS poem.
I'm sure this is only a partial list of poets who deal with these issues, but these are the ones I can think of off the top of my head:
Walt Whitman
Shakespeare
Emily Dickenson
WH Auden
Murial Rukeyser (SP???)
Molly Peacock
Henri Cole
Mark Doty
Richard Silken
Spencer Reece
DA Powell
It may also help to be a little insane.
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Having had little luck placing my poems in print publications, I've decided to post my poems here as I write them. I also hope to tell people about poetry and help them find other good poets. This blog is for people like me who just can't get enough of words.
6 comments:
Gil:
I've really enjoyed your posts so far. It's refreshing to come across such an honest and sincere voice in this irony saturated age.
But i'm a little disturbed/confused by your post about gays. You really think they get more exposure, and can talk about sex more because they're gay?
What about the wonderful Sharon Olds, and all her sex/rape poems? She's not gay. You know her poem about the Pope's penis. She's using sex to really SAY somethign about contemporary Judeo-Christian culture.
So what I'm saying, Gil, is that it's not just gays that get better exposure. Gil, you seem like a nice guy, but I hate to think of you as a homophobe.
Spenser Reece is GREAT!!! The Clerk's Tale is such a beautiful poem, and book. Louise Glück did something truly wonderful when she selected The Clerk's Tale as the winner of the Bakeless Prize.
William, I'm so glad you think so. I too loved that book (and Gluck too for that matter). I love the fact that he worked at Brooks Brothers and then, voila, hello Bakeless. What a great story.
listen, girl, i mean, gil, i don't think you know what you talking about.
While being gay makes me fabulous, it doesn't get me any more attention as a poet, or at least not the kidn of attention I want.
How come when I write about sex it's special? I've got a million sex poems that have been rejected everywhere (but I'm working on an elegy for Willy Ninja that is going to be killa).
I think you better check yourself, sista!
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