Gay Poems - Morn Award-wng Gay Poetry : All Poetry

Contents:

• POEMS / GAY POEMS - THE BT POETRY ON THE WEBNEWTEMERE   FOLLOWON AUG 19 2023 06:26 PM PST  PLEADG TO KNOW
• THE GAY GOSPEL OF AARON SMH
• POEMS / GAY LOVE POEMS - THE BT POETRY ON THE WEBNEWTJOSHUA KENRYU   FOLLOWON FEB 16 2023 05:38 PM PST  BEE I WANTED YOU TO KNOW
• POEMS / GAY MAN POEMS - THE BT POETRY ON THE WEB

POEMS / GAY POEMS - THE BT POETRY ON THE WEBNEWTEMERE   FOLLOWON AUG 19 2023 06:26 PM PST  PLEADG TO KNOW

Explore the rich tradn of gay, lbian, bisexual, transgenr, and queer poets and poetry by browsg a selectn of poems & d. When I was a 17-year-old sufferg the suburbs of Hartford, Connecticut, Aaron Smh’s poems helped me image my future, both as a gay person and as a poet.

The few gay male poets I’d read at that pot were eher ad (Frank O’Hara, for stance, whom I loved) or stuffy, which ma them feel even further away. The famo one who was equently remend to me seemed ncerned, the poems I’d read, wh dignifyg the subject of gay life so that might be palatable to a typil poetry-readg dience—somethg I was not terted readg or wrg. If the difficulty of beg gay and effemate wasn’t a nstant prence my poetry, perhaps one day wouldn’t be my life.

THE GAY GOSPEL OF AARON SMH

Still, I wanted to go to a gay club and fd out for myself. The glimpse of gay adulthood prented here was more troublg, but there was neverthels somethg affirmg about the poem’s existence.

It was the first llectn by a livg gay poet that I ever read. In his past three books—Blue on Blue Ground (2005), Appete (2012), and Primer (2016)—Smh mataed the re set of poetic preoccupatns that spoke to me as a teenager: the gay male subject’s sir and sham (as well as the often blurry boundary between them), and the e of pop culture as a mirror which to figure one’s own experience (“Walkg to lunch I am Cher Moonstck, hly fucked, ” om Blue on Blue on Ground, is a le that will never leave me). ” It’s a triple-entendre: a play on the homophone you might hear a workshop or at an open mic, a nod to his own “poem to Cher, ” and a wkg acknowledgment of his secury about his stature as a poet.

While Smh has been wrg unapologetilly gay poems sce the start of his reer, he has never seemed so unncerned wh acmodatg a general dience—that is, one outsi the poetry world. In Smh’s prev books, she was a remarkably unsympathetic figure, as she sometim is the pag; the last le of “The Dancg Lbian” reads, “Mom cried when she found out I was gay. ”) Though The Book of Daniel is a ls bleak llectn than his prev one—and I don’t e bleak pejoratively here— don’t shy away om his most difficult subjects: the trma of homophobia, both past and prent; his ght relatnship to sex; the specter of suici.

POEMS / GAY LOVE POEMS - THE BT POETRY ON THE WEBNEWTJOSHUA KENRYU   FOLLOWON FEB 16 2023 05:38 PM PST  BEE I WANTED YOU TO KNOW

The book’s fal poem, “Elegy, ” seems to yield some clary: “I told my therapist that gayns // has always been more athetic for me / than sexual. And I am: gay, a poet, and a prsive.

POEMS / GAY MAN POEMS - THE BT POETRY ON THE WEB

There have been some surprisg viatns om the expectatns I had when I first stumbled upon that say at 17: I’ve spent ls time gay clubs than I imaged I would, for one (but turns out I still enjoy hurried trysts basements, back seats, and the ocsnal bathroom).