1) That we're still (still!!) talking about the difference between being a gay writer and a writer who happens to be gay
and
2) That the discussion of said topic engenders the heights of passion in some.
Recently I posted about a column in a Canadian gay magazine about where we stand in terms of gay culture. The post got some spirited comments about the difficulties of finding gay texts without a 'gay' writer or 'gay literature' category and the places of said categories. Some of the commments were:
"...Not only have gay magazines virtually ceased even to mention books, but gay authors have herded themselves wholesale back into the 'I don't want to be categorized' closet....If I can't find you on Amazon or B&N, then no number of reviews will help."
"I honestly think that part of the problem is that books/writing is 'off the radar screen; of many young gays (and the idiotic magazines that cater to them), and as a rule we are not taught about the incredible heritage -- i.e., that some significant percentage of the world's all-time greatest novelists have been gay -- which is really ours to (re)possess.'
"It's beyond literary ghettoization, it's practically literary invisibility. I don't think poetry is faring much better, to be honest.... The real problem is and always has been the shortsightedness of mainstream literary criticism."
"I am not sure it has ever been easy to find good gay writing. Most people don't even look, so it may not matter. And I kinda doubt that everyone who says this has read everything that's out there -- I certainly haven't."
"My publisher is going to promote my novel as literary fiction, which happens to have gay characters. No one calls Michael Cunningham a writer of "gay literature," but of literary fiction. I'd like to follow in those footsteps if at all possible. I plan to do a small tour for the book in the fall and mix gay bookstores with indie stores. Fiction is going to be a whole new world, but I'm ready to jump in and see what happens."
And then just recently a long time reader of this blog sent me the following email:
About every 4-6 months I check Amazon for forthcoming books I might be interested in, and generally that includes noodling around for gay poetry. Given the little debate on your blog a few weeks back, I thought you might be interested in what I turned up in my recent search. As part of this little exercise, I try to imagine myself as a person who doesn't have a lot of background in gay history or literature but rather some budding queer poetry lover in East Podunk who's looking for something a little more recent than old Walt or Oscar and so turns to Amazon.
Sadly, looking for gay poetry published after Jan 2009 turns up only Brian Teare's Site Map and what appear to be two self-published collections: David J. Gluck's Life Pages and Blaque Lyric's I'm Afraid of the Dark. Oh, and a new translation of Sappho. That's really sad news for our queer bud. By the way that includes searching under "Gay", "Gay Poetry", "Homosexuality", "Queer", "Homoerotic", "Same Sex", "Sexuality Literature". ... [O]f course, there's the usual collection of history, politics, religion books that you might except. Though, there seems to be little in the "queer criticism" category for 2009, which is a bit surprising. The whole queer theory thing seems to be petering out (pun intended?) Though if persistent our little bud might stumble across a new analysis of Genet. So things don't look to good for our bud unless he looked back to collections like Best Gay Poetry of 2008 or your book, for example. Does make you wonder just who our gay/queer poets are writing for?
Things are just getting started.
Things are just getting started.
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3 comments:
What is "gay poetry" exactly? Is it poetry about having gay sex? Coming out as gay? Living gay? Or is just written by a poet who happens to be gay? The labels do get tedious sometimes.
That is a good question, Collin, and it has been asked for a long time. There's always Robert Patrick's quip that a gay play is a play that has sex with other plays of the same sex, and I suppose that could apply. That we're still struggling with these questions, and hearing the same old bullshit after so many years, is depressing and dispiriting.
I'd say that "gay poetry" could be poetry about gay sex or gay love (whatever those are), usually but not necessarily written by a gay poet. Straight, or ostensibly straight, writers have written about love and sex between people of the same sex; women, gay and straight, have written about gay male characters and situations. It could as easily be poetry "written by a poet who happens to be gay," even if he chooses for whatever reason never to write about same-sex eros. I'm not big on really narrow definitions of these labels, since the territory they cover is so large and messy, like art and like life itself.
The labels do get tedious, because people misuse them. I don't know what to do about that either. But I'm pretty sure that it is important for writers and other artists to be out as gay/les/bi, and to produce art about gay/les/bi experiences, because there is, as always, so much pressure on us to shut up, closet ourselves, or go away.
I can live with the "gay poet" title, because it's true, but "gay poetry" falls in line with all those idiots who thin "slam poetry" is a genre.
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