September-October 2005
… Although quite enjoyable, the books are a product of their time, and the reader is transported to the early 1970’s with references to hippies, love-ins, the fuzz (the police), phonograph records, bellbottom dungarees, young people whose motto was “never trust anybody over thirty,” and electric typewriters. …
MoreNEAR THE END of Gus Van Sant’s 1991 film My Own Private Idaho, Scott Favor, played by a young Keanu Reeves, looks out from a limousine window to see his friend Mike Waters, played by River Phoenix, asleep on a sidewalk. The scene represents a significant plot shift in the film: …
MoreRECENTLY, a first-of-its-kind book, Outside the Lines: Talking with Contemporary Gay Poets was published by the University of Michigan Press, a collection of interviews with some of the most prominent poets alive who also happen to be gay. On the occasion of the book’s release last June, The Gay & Lesbian Review asked interviewer Christopher Hennessy to invite all of the poets who appear in the book to write a paragraph about how their artistic sensibilities have been shaped by their identity as gay men. Their thought-provoking answers appear below, …
More“Caution: Extremely gross and disgusting.” Are these words of warning or enticement? When that’s the disclaimer on sexually explicit gay-related material posted on right-wing websites, it’s hard to know for sure.
More… That was the beginning of our friendship. Our conversations were few and never about poetry, but I was also reading his work and became intrigued by his use of meter and rhyme. In an era of beat poetry and language poetry and abstract poetry that I couldn’t grasp, Gunn both challenged and comforted me with his formalism. He also excited me with his imagination …
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MoreWHEN EILEEN MYLES speaks of “unwriting” herself, she means letting go of socially imposed elements of her identity and behavior in order to clear a space where she can live in the world on her own terms. Her work not only joyfully and unapologetically proclaims her own authenticity, but also strives to claim a place for this authentic being in the public sphere. She celebrates her unique perspective as a woman, a lesbian, and a child of the working class …
More… If poetry anthologies are any indication of what various segments of society are thinking about at a given moment in time, gay anthologies show not only the importance of rendering visible a love continually at risk. They also trace an arc of how our concept of gay love has changed over time. The first gay male poetry anthologies, which began appearing with the 1973 publication of The Male Muse followed by Angels of the Lyre (1975) and Orgasms of Light (1977), contain many poems that show gay men’s search for an identity. …
More… Despite the absence of relevant letters and notebooks, 1903 was actually a fertile writing period for [Gertrude] Stein, who appears to have coped with the grief following her breakup with Bookstaver. She either wrote or blocked out two novellas, Q.E.D. and Fernhurst, and also wrote extensive notes for what would eventually become her massive novel, The Making of Americans …
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