July-August 2022 Issue
Though Firebird is set 45 years ago, viewers will realize that the same repressive system is still destroying lives; little has changed. The film focuses less on politics than on how authoritarian regimes impact ordinary people’s lives, crushing love and inflicting pain and suffering on everyone it touches. And yet, …
MoreNow that “Don’t Say Gay” is law in Florida, DeSantis and his cronies are building on their sinister success by banning books. So far they’ve excluded over fifty textbooks that teach math in favor of books from just one company, Accelerated Learning.
MoreStarting out on uncannily similar footing, the two writers are separated by a categorical boundary that keeps them on separate shelves at your local library. Hemingway was a hardboiled novelist and Crane a rhapsodic poet, the former notoriously homophobic, the latter indisputably gay.
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The success of James Kirkwood’s novel, P. S. Your Cat Is Dead,was repeated in 1975 by his play of the same title, which quickly became a staple of regional theaters.
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I FIRST SAW José Villalobos’ work in Houston at a performance art festival, Experimental Action. His performance, in which he stained a solid white, western-style suit with the vibrant magenta juice of prickly pear cactus fruit, was spellbinding. I continue to be fascinated by his exploration of Southwestern culture, queerness, and masculinity.
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BEST KNOWN for her poetry, H.D. (Hilda Doolittle, 1886 –1961) was also a novelist, memoirist, essayist, translator, and famously the lover of one of the richest women in England, Annie Winifred Ellerman (1894–1983), better known as Bryher. H.D. and Bryher were true lovers for over forty years.
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WHEN I LECTURE on Herman Melville, I’m usually asked whether he was gay. I answer, probably not. Then I’m asked if he ever had sex with men. I answer, probably, but only when he was young, and only while at sea.
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