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gerhard's review
5.0
One of my New Year’s resolutions this year was to read more non-fiction, short stories and poetry (especially poetry by so-called ‘gay’ poets). I am an avid reader of gay literary fiction, so was curious to see how poets would tackle the same subject matter.
Dipping a toe into the unknown is quite daunting, so I was especially grateful to discover Christopher Hennessy’s collection of interviews with an array of contemporary gay poets (the notion of gay identity and how this impacts on a ‘queer poetics’ is one of the many fascinating interrogations here).
I bought Hennessy’s book quite a while ago, and only began reading it now after venturing with a colleague to a poetry-and-jazz evening in downtown Johannesburg. This reminded me of my resolution (rather guiltily as, with so many of its kind, unacted on) and the fact that I had Hennessy’s book on my Kindle.
The book begins with an especially penetrating introduction by the charming and erudite Christopher Bram, who contends that “sex is a special poetry of the body”. Indeed, a lot of the poets here ponder the mysteries of desire and the difficulties of writing about it, without reducing the ineffable to cliché or sentimentality.
Dennis Cooper waxes lyrical on the asshole as a sex organ, and how rimming is one of the most personally disarming sexual acts. As Edward Field says: “God created shit and shinola – everything is sacred.”
It is also Field who remarks that “a lot of gay men view the body as a minefield, because of what AIDS has meant.” How to reflect the extent of this devastation in the form of poetry, and the thin line between eulogy and voyeurism, is also explored here.
Of course, one cannot ignore gender or identity politics. Field again: “Being gay in our puritan culture makes our sexuality a political struggle.” Key to this is the question of what it means to be gay, or queer, or any other politically-correct (or convenient handle. As Aaron Shurin notes: “Gay is gay. It’s not queer, or it’s a subset of subset, but it’s very different. It’s not just about ‘otherness’, it has sex and love in it.”
It is remarkable how Hennessy manages to bring these disparate writers to life in his interviews. I was a bit dubious when I began reading the introduction, where he portentously tries to give intellectual heft to what are essentially a series of long-chat transcripts, claiming that the form is more organic and intuitive than more structured or formal textual criticism, in it being able to evoke (or provoke) unexpected ideas or insights from the subjects.
But as you begin reading the interviews themselves, the reader begins to comprehend the complex, and often beguiling, interplay at work here. This ranges from the polymorphous perversity of Wayne Koestenbaum (“Yes to fingerfucking the dialectic! Or to using the dialectic as a method of fingerfucking the binary!”) to the lyrical grace of Kazim Ali: “The whole world, as we’re coming to understand, is quivering in its place.”
Dipping a toe into the unknown is quite daunting, so I was especially grateful to discover Christopher Hennessy’s collection of interviews with an array of contemporary gay poets (the notion of gay identity and how this impacts on a ‘queer poetics’ is one of the many fascinating interrogations here).
I bought Hennessy’s book quite a while ago, and only began reading it now after venturing with a colleague to a poetry-and-jazz evening in downtown Johannesburg. This reminded me of my resolution (rather guiltily as, with so many of its kind, unacted on) and the fact that I had Hennessy’s book on my Kindle.
The book begins with an especially penetrating introduction by the charming and erudite Christopher Bram, who contends that “sex is a special poetry of the body”. Indeed, a lot of the poets here ponder the mysteries of desire and the difficulties of writing about it, without reducing the ineffable to cliché or sentimentality.
Dennis Cooper waxes lyrical on the asshole as a sex organ, and how rimming is one of the most personally disarming sexual acts. As Edward Field says: “God created shit and shinola – everything is sacred.”
It is also Field who remarks that “a lot of gay men view the body as a minefield, because of what AIDS has meant.” How to reflect the extent of this devastation in the form of poetry, and the thin line between eulogy and voyeurism, is also explored here.
Of course, one cannot ignore gender or identity politics. Field again: “Being gay in our puritan culture makes our sexuality a political struggle.” Key to this is the question of what it means to be gay, or queer, or any other politically-correct (or convenient handle. As Aaron Shurin notes: “Gay is gay. It’s not queer, or it’s a subset of subset, but it’s very different. It’s not just about ‘otherness’, it has sex and love in it.”
It is remarkable how Hennessy manages to bring these disparate writers to life in his interviews. I was a bit dubious when I began reading the introduction, where he portentously tries to give intellectual heft to what are essentially a series of long-chat transcripts, claiming that the form is more organic and intuitive than more structured or formal textual criticism, in it being able to evoke (or provoke) unexpected ideas or insights from the subjects.
But as you begin reading the interviews themselves, the reader begins to comprehend the complex, and often beguiling, interplay at work here. This ranges from the polymorphous perversity of Wayne Koestenbaum (“Yes to fingerfucking the dialectic! Or to using the dialectic as a method of fingerfucking the binary!”) to the lyrical grace of Kazim Ali: “The whole world, as we’re coming to understand, is quivering in its place.”
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