The LIterary Closet (if there is one)

Continunted from previous post....

I think what really got the ball rolling in terms of having some of us think about (again) the topic of gay writer vs. writer who is gay what the recent piece by Brad Gooch I blogged about here and Band of Thebes blogged here and Karl blogged eloquently about here.

Then comes along C Dale and his wonderful ability to start an awesome discussion in his comments section. I urge you all to check out his original post, which contains this question:

Are poets who consider themselves "poets who happen to be gay" merely gay poets in the Literary Closet? This is a serious question I have. This is not a leading question. I don't really know if I believe this or not, but it is something I have heard come up now a number of times. I always hear it and believe it but the minute I start to think about it, I don't believe it at all.

Seriously, you must check out the full comments to really get a true sense of the conversation (and to see Steve Felner's funny aside about the literary closet) but here's a taste of the responses he got. Any apologies that are necessary for citing so much but it's a great conversation and I wanted to save it for posterity. Who do you agree with? David Groff is my hero. (Note how the conversation is among both gay and straight writers -- WE NEED MORE OF THIS!)

At 2:41 PM, Steve Fellner said...

...I think it all has to do with context in terms of how a gay poet may identify him/herself. When I lived in Utah, Justin, for five years, teaching and going to school as I did in Alabama. I ALWAYS identified as a gay poet. I wanted students in my creative writing classes to know there were openly gay poets and especially in what could be a difficult climate for queers, I think they needed that. Being a gay poet was a necessary thing for me to be. Any sort of definite, unyielding visibility in those places are better than none.
...

But now I'm in Upstate New York and no one really cares so I don't think of myself as a gay poet or a poet who happens to be gay. just a poet who needs a new schtick to feel special since gay isn't going to cut it. Again next context, a new vocalization of identity. I miss the label though.

At 5:14 PM, Steven D. Schroeder said...

Steve, doesn't it seem like the initial argument C. Dale postulates, "poets who consider themselves 'poets who happen to be gay' [are] merely gay poets in the Literary Closet," (not an argument I've actually heard, by the way) should write about a certain subject matter or in a certain style in order to avoid this Literary Closet?

At 5:55 PM, C. Dale said...

...at AWP, I again heard this distinction...[and] I heard folks talk about the fact that as a gay man who is a poet one must find and appropriate "radical content" (a term from Reginald Shepherd). But see, I still don't fully understand the differences between poets who happen to be gay and gay poets. Maybe I am just a bad gay.

No one has come out and said it, but the implication seems to be that poets who just happen to be gay are somehow closeting themselves. This notion of gay poets and poets who happen to be gay confuses the F out of me, much the way that term "gay sensibility" does.

At 5:24 AM, Justin Evans said...

Steven F:

I think you have hit it. It's the need to feel special. Some people feel that need more than others, according to personality or circumstance, or both.

Identifying one's self is what we do. We feel more comfortable by telling each other where and who we are. We feel more comfortable saying good things about ourselves, implying we are better because we do ____________ or identify as ______________.

I think it isn't manufactured, either. Why else would so many people insist on putting a name to who they are and what they do.

At 8:44 AM, David Groff said...

C. Dale,

As the guy who talked at AWP about gay poets as opposed to poets who happen to be gay, I wasn’t saying that every writer has to be out and about, waving rainbow flags in their poems—we should write about whatever we damn well please. But I do feel that if we examine our queer identities with care and rigor, figuring out what they mean to us and what possibilities they offer, we can then write more fearlessly and authentically. That’s true for whatever identities we embrace or have thrust on us.

Being queer poets also, I believe, offers us the heady opportunity for radical content (my term, not Reginald’s). No matter our identities, being open to radical content can recharge our poetry by leading us to write about subjects for which poetry so often has lacked language. Radical content can include anything from Bette Midler to astrophysics, Barack Obama, medicine, and sexily absurd photos that just beg for captions. For queer poets, radical content can embrace all of that—plus sexuality, sex, Proposition 8, and same-sex relationships (which aren’t yet enough explored in our literature). All are resonant and adventurous subjects for our poems.

At 9:18 AM, C. Dale said...

David,

Thanks for your comments. Yes, you did talk about gay poets and poets who happen to be gay, but you did not discuss this in terms of the Literary Closet, something others did after your panel. As I said in my original note, I wonder what all of that means. The whole issue of what we write about came up in the discussion, not in my original note.

As one who started out in the closet because of medicine and in the Literary Closet for other reasons, I wonder about this. Now, it doesn't matter what I write about because most folks know I am gay. But I wonder what effects are buried in that identification regarding gay poets vs. poets who happen to be gay.