Our Deep Gossip: Conversations
with Gay Writers on Poetry and Desire
by Christopher Hennessy
University of Wisconsin Press. 288 pages, $26.95
“I’VE NEVER UNDERSTOOD why more people don’t love poetry.” These are the very first words in Christopher Hennessy’s collection of interviews with gay male writers, Our Deep Gossip, and they belong to novelist Christopher Bram, who provided the book’s foreword. Bram’s conundrum is not an issue that Hennessy or any of the eight writers he interviews explores at length here. Bram himself does so only briefly, asserting that the very nature of good poetry—as “short, succinct, highly quotable, and very portable”—should ensure its popularity.
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Jim Nawrocki, a writer based in San Francisco, is a frequent contributor to this magazine.
