The great big bad dissertation reading list

New year, big goal! I've decided I need to start a list of books and essays I want to read for my dissertation and/or use for its bibliography. I thought by posting it on my blog...

1) I'll enjoy it a little more because I will feel like I'm sharing with others who share my interests
2)  I'll get great suggestions for more of what to add (**hint hint**)
3) It will get let my visualize just what I have to accomplish and perhaps guide me toward how I want to shape this beast I'm supposed to be writing soon.

Of course, this is all very very provisional, folks, just me thinking out loud in some respects, so please, please don't freak out on me if you don't see something listed right away or you think, 'Why in the world is that listed?'  And as for the poets I say I'm considering, alas, that's likely to change as well...but it's where I'm starting.

I'm listing things as I come across them, often times including a link that reminded me of the text or in some cases introduced me to it.  Not all texts have links.

All that being said, please feel free to offer suggestions and/or links.  You can put in comments or email me at christopher dot hennessy at gmail dot com.  I'd also like to hear from anyone who thinks this is a bad idea. (e.g. a time-waster, procrastination, etc.--it has crossed my mind, or does it make me look bad, just not something that's done, I dunno!)

You'll note from what I've already listed that I'm open to anything, not just high falutin' literary theory/criticism. ;-)

I am sure this is going to be updated quite a bit.  But it's one of those things ya just got to start.  So here goes.


Major gay poets I am considering (list could go on and on!)
Hart Crane
Jack Spicer
John Weiners
James Schuyler
Robert Duncan???
W.H. Auden???
James L. White, Thomas James, Tim Dlugos

Major contemporary gay poets to consider (list could go on and on!)

Reginald Shepherd
Frank Bidart
Thom Gunn
Aaron Shurin
Carl Phillips
Henri Cole
Wayne Koestenbaum


Essential non-poetry texts from poets
Cleavage, Wayne Koestenbaum
The Queen's Throat, Koestenbaum
Orpheus in the Bronx, Reginald Shepherd
Coin of the Realm, Carl Phillips
Shelf Life and The Occasions of Poetry, Thom Gunnn
Your Body Figured, Douglas Martin

Major secondary texts
 A History of Gay Literature, Gregory Woods
Articulate Flesh, Gregory Woods
Gaiety Transfigured, David Bergman
Camp Grounds, David Bergman
The Homosexual Tradition, Robert K. Martin
Culture Clash, Michael Bronski
Gay Men's Literature in the Twentieth Century, Mark Lilly
Queer Optimism, Michael Snediker
Between Men, Eve K. Sedgwick
Episteomology of the Closet, Sedgwick
Against Interpretation, Susan Sontag
Homographesis, Lee Edelman
Young Robert Duncan: Portrait of the Poet as Homosexual in Society, Ekbert Faas
Walter Holland's dissertation
At the Barriers: On the Poetry of Thom Gunn, by Joshua Weiner
[I know I'm missing a lot here! Just tip of iceberg.]

Other primary poetry texts to consider

TIRESIAS: THE COLLECTED POEMS OF LELAND HICKMAN
Ceremonies, Essex Hemphill
Carnivorous Saints, Harold Norse
James Broughton

Jonathan Williams

Adjacent MUST-reads

Gloria Anazulda's Borderlands/La Frontera 

The Sexual Outlaw, John Rechy
Words to Our Now, Thomas Glave
Gay Sunshine Interviews, vol. 1 and 2, Winston Leyland
Gay Roots: Twenty Years of Gay Sunshine, Leyland

Classic must-reads and re-reads

Maurice
The Portrait of Dorian Gray
The Poetry of H.D.
The Poetry of Robin Blaser
Jean CocteauJean Genet
Marcel Proust
Andre Gide
Cavafy

Adjacent secondary texts
Gay Male Fiction Since Stonewall: Ideology, Conflict, and Aesthetics

Identity Poetics: Race, Class and the Lesbian-Feminist Roots of Queer Theory by Linda Garber



Stand-alone essays and interviews, etc. to consider

"Come Back to the Raft A'gin, Huck Honey," Leslie Fielder
"Gay Poet as Critic," Alfred Corn
"Writing Gay" by Edmund White
'Some Stars Aren't Like You and Me' : A Talk with Wayne Koestenbaum on Andy Warhol (Journal of Homosexuality)
Walt Whitman: Our Great Gay Poet?  (Journal of Homosexuality)
"The American Sublime: Living and Dying as an Artist” by Edmund White
 "Write Something on My Wall: Body, Identity, and Poetry" by Kazim Ali
Editorial statement on "Queering of Langauge Poetry," Jack Kimball
"The Elegiac in Howard and Merrill," (diss)
"The End of Sexual Idenity," Stacey D'Erasmo
"Sex, Drugs and Thom Gunn," Tom Sleigh


Undecided
The Golden Age of Gay Fiction
Lorca: A Dream of Life
Gentlemen Callers: Tennessee Williams, Homosexuality, And Mid-Twentieth-Century Drama 
Queering the Pitch: The New Gay and Lesbian Musicology 
  Bedford, Christopher, “Marcelino Gonçalves Reclaiming a Gay Male Aesthetic,” Angle: A Journal of Arts + Culture, Issue 16, September/ October, 2004.