Still thinking about the
mainstreaming of gay culture, and more specifically, gay poetry, and I am
struck by the fact that so many of the touchstone poets for younger poets today
happen to be gay men: Duncan,
Ginsberg, Spicer, Blaser, Wieners, Ashbery, O’Hara. This unbigoted interest and longing for influence is
wonderful. What this group of mid-
to late-20th century poets has in common, besides their sexuality,
is an iconoclastic, avant-garde bent (as it were). However (and I hope I don’t
sound like a curmudgeon), I worry a little when so much talk is about the
experimental aspects of these poets, usually without even a mention of their
gayness or queerness. I of course
don’t want to be reductive and proclaim that only gays should read gay poets,
or that all readings of these poets should be queered (although one could argue
that there might be a range of gay sensibilities that describe their individual
poetics). But a little more acknowledgment might be good. After all, Duncan went out on a very
dangerous limb for all of us in the midst of the homophobic climate of World
War II when he published the essay, “The Homosexual in Society,” in Politics. This
is said to be the first open essay on the subject. We can’t forget that Ginsberg’s work was prosecuted and
censored in large part for its gay content. And O’Hara wrote many overtly gay poems, such as
“Homosexuality,” “Joe’s Jacket,” and “You Are Gorgeous and I’m Coming,” as well
as fey-gay poems like “Lana Turner Has Collapsed.”
O’Hara’s mock-manifesto,
“Personism,” is a great example of the kind of crossover of avant-garde New
York School poetics to a gay sensibility, or rather the sensibility embedded in
the poetics. The more formal
concerns are pronounced with outrageousness: “I hate Vachel Lindsay, always have; I don’t even like
rhythm, assonance, all that stuff.
You just go on your nerve.”
These concerns are spliced together with campy passages: “It [Personism]
was founded by me after lunch with LeRoi Jones on August 27, 1959, a day in
which I was in love with someone (not Roi, by the way, a blond).” He ends with a wry brattiness or
insouciance: “The recent propagandists for technique on the one hand, and for
content on the other, had better watch out.”
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Thanks so much for all these posts this week--love the HD/HDTV & O'Hara when he dishes! I wonder what you think draws folks to HD--the use of myth, myth to talk about what isn't talked about, etc?
Posted by: Joelle Biele | June 25, 2010 at 10:57 AM
Very interesting post. It is conceivable that the campaign for Barbara Guest, the "left out" member of the NY School, has a homophobic element in it. Three of the four poets at the center of the NY School (Ashbery, O'Hara, and Schuyler) were gay, and in their work there is a quality of high camp ("homosexual aestheticism": Susan Sontag) missing from Guest's.
"Personism" is a masterpiece.
Posted by: DL | June 26, 2010 at 12:40 AM
Thanks both for your comments. I think you are right about why people might read H.D.--the mythic gets right to the psychic without the detritus of the present social world. Also, the sheer beauty of her free verse. She is a master of free verse rhythm.
Posted by: Gregory Hewett | June 26, 2010 at 02:02 PM
Very interesting comment on Barbara Guest. I agree!
Posted by: Gregory Hewett | June 26, 2010 at 02:03 PM