Born On This Day- August 10th... Writer, Mark Doty

Mark Doty is my favorite American poet, in a league with Walt Whitman & Frank O’Hara. Elegant, unflinching, sometimes melancholy, his imagery haunts me. I appreciate the duality of the rural & the urbane in his work, indeed, he describes the plant life of a vacant city lot. Like the poet, as a gay man I have always sought out a life in an urban center while being enchanted by a cabin at the beach. I have attempted to take my city lot & make a place for nature. A tiny attempt at both worlds.

Doty: "I've always been a poet who wrote about urban life because I love the layers & surprises & the jangly complexities of cities. I feel at home in cities, being a gay man. It's a place of permission & possibility. In 1990, I moved to Provincetown. I also love this landscape of salt marshes, beaches & dunes, but I had to write about it in a different way. In the marsh, there is no narrative. All that happens is that a bird flies by, the tide comes in & goes out."

His poetry also addresses the artifice & the natural: "I play around with the distinction between art & nature, the real & the false. My experience often feels pretty seamless. . . I've always been drawn to artifice & the beauties of surface and shadings and tone. A lot of the process of development is figuring out how to be all of yourself in a poem. How do you let your love of wigs & make-up, your sense of humor, your anger find its way into the poem?"

My husband & I have lived with, loved & buried 4 dogs. Just this past week we lost a canine friend of an important player in our lives, a dog loved as if she was our own. Doty’s poetry collections have altered my point of view & his language has transported me. But, it is a work of prose that has moved me the most. I read his lovely Dog Years: A Memoir in 2 sittings, ironically taking a break only to walk my terriers. A meditation on life & loss & the method that grief squeezes into your life & never lets go, Doty tells of the life he shared with his 2 dogs as he experiences the decline & death of a partner from HIV, & how the canines move & affect a new relationship with a new love & future spouse.

How many ways have all my dogs had a profound affect on how I have dealt with the heights & valleys of my life & my 30 year marriage? The Husband & I have had a dog, usually 2, for nearly all our time together. At one point, I think we stayed a couple because of the dogs.

In Dog Years, Doty, in an improbable decision, adopts a dog as a companion for his dying partner. Beau is a large golden retriever, possibly abused & in need of love & companionship. Beau is made part of the family, paired with Arden, another retriever, & Doty’s partner- Wally. Beau responds well to his new life, & bounces back to life. The 2 dogs become Doty's best friends, comfort, & the reason to keep going on the worst of days. The canines’ moxie, loyalty, & love give him hope when all else fails.

Dog Years is a moving & intimate memoir with profound meditations on the life we share with animals & the lessons they teach us about life, love, & loss. Doty gives me a view of the vulnerability of dogs, how they rely on us, & the positive outlook they bring, & the gift of unconditional love. Dog Years is unsentimental, but intensely, mournfully, movingly affecting. We all will have to deal with loss. This book will help just a little bit.

The very handsome Mark Doty’s work has been honored by the National Book Critics Circle Award, the PEN/Martha Albrand Award for First Nonfiction, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, a Whiting Writers Award, a Lila Wallace-Reader’s Digest Writer’s Award, & the T.S. Eliot Prize. He has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Ingram Merrill Foundation, & the Dorothy & Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars & Writers at the New York Public Library. He is a professor at the University of Houston. Doty lives in NYC, Fire Island, & Provincetown with his equally handsome & talented husband- writer Paul Lisicky.

We are the same age, along with a love of men, & dogs, Mark Doty & I are both bloggers. I don't impy that we are in the same league & now I must sign off. Lulu & Junior are waiting for their morning walk.

Born On This Day- July 21st... Hart Crane

Hart Crane was born & raised in Ohio. His father was the inventor of Life Savers candy & he had a mother who was an overbearing, flashy hypochondriac. The parents fought bitterly & eventually divorce, providing the young poet a very unhappy childhood.

Crane finally had enough & dropped out of high school to move to NYC in 1916. For 7 years, he split his time between Cleveland & NYC, working at his father's factory, a copy editor, & writing poems that were published in small literary magazines. He often needed to borrow money from his father to survive.

As his work was published, some praised his work, but most critics scoffed at it. Crane has often been criticized as incomprehensible; he was certainly that for me when I attempted to get through his work in a class in American poetry.

Tormented by his attraction to other men, Crane did have a rapturous love affair with a Danish sailor- Emil Opffer who was the inspiration for the epic, erotic poem-Voyages. The poem was the center piece of his first book- White Buildings, in 1926, Crane was indubitably gay, which lead to a lifetime of problems both social & personal. His failed love life was partly due to his obsession with men from the Navy. Ernest Hemingway (they share a birthday) noted: "Poor Hart Crane, always trying to pick up the wrong sailor." Booze contributed to his downfall, under the influence, he would become flirty, frequently in the wrong situations, at the wrong times.

Later in life, Crane made an attempt to play it straight to please the people in his life. Though he tried, he was miserable. Drinking & rough trade bearable, yet made his life worse & worse.

In the early 1930s Hart attempted to marry a girl, Peggy Crowley, the recently divorced wife if his good friend, writer & critic- Malcolm Crowley, but everyone knew it was a sham.

On April 26, 1932, while on board a cruise ship in the Caribbean, Crane was badly beaten after an altercation with a member of the crew that he had made a pass at. The following morning, a female friend found him sitting in his room, remote & ashen. She told him to dress for lunch & left. Shortly before noon on the 27 April, Hart Crane was seen on the deck, looking down at the water. Crane said: "Goodbye, everybody!" & jumped overboard to his death. His body was never recovered.

The most devoted of all the writers & artists who venerated Crane, Tennessee Williams, left instructions that his body be buried at sea in the Gulf of Mexico at the spot that Crane drowned. William’s family buried him in St. Louis.

His life is a truly troubled tale of a talented man trying to find where he belongs. His poetry confounds me & his life leaves me circumspect.

We make our meek adjustments,

Contented with such random consolations

As the wind deposits

In slithered & too ample pockets.

For we can still love the world, who find

A famished kitten on the step & know

Recesses for it from the fury of the street,

Or warm torn elbow coverts.

We will sidestep, & to the final smirk

Dally the doom of that inevitable thumb

That slowly chafes its puckered index toward us,

Facing the dull squint with what innocence

& what surprise!

& yet these fine collapses are not lies

More than the pirouettes of any pliant cane;

Our obsequies are, in a way, no enterprise.

We can evade you, & all else but the heart:

What blame to us if the heart live on.

The game enforces smirks; but we have seen

The moon in lonely alleys make

A grail of laughter of an empty ash can,

& through all sound of gaiety & quest

Have heard a kitten in the wilderness

My occasional lover- James Franco is fascinated by Crane's legendarily difficult, brilliant poetry, as well as his personal demons. We were talking about Crane just the other morning while sipping champagne in bed. Franco wrote directed, produced & starred in The Broken Tower as his Master Thesis in Film at NYU. I caught it on the Sundance Channel. The film is a bit of a mess. It's filmed in black & white, its plot can be hard to follow & its pacing is much slow, & there are many seemingly aimless silent scenes that follow the back of Franco's head while he stalks around various streetscapes.

Franco: "Crane was very comfortable with his sexuality, to the point that it intimidated, even scared, a lot of his friends in the poetry world. I wanted the film to have something of that same in-your-face quality."

Born On This Day- June 3rd... Allen Ginsberg

Allen Ginsberg, the Beat Generation’s premier poet, wrote a long ode- Howl, in 1956. Its famous opening lines: “I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked, dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn, looking for an angry fix.”

I'm not sure Ginsberg's poem is good, exactly, but it's a piece that has been quoted from for too long to really ignore. The image of Ginsberg in his later years, a bald, chubby dharma  bear, has eclipsed his early years as a cute, soulful jewish gay boy, back-to-back on a Paris park bench with his lifelong partner- Peter Orlovsky.

The poem warns of the destructive forces of materialism & conformity in the USA of the time, & it was an iconic moment in the social upheaval of the 1960s.

New Jersey born Ginsberg attended Columbia University where he met Lucien Carr, who introduced him to Jack Kerouac, William S. Burroughs, & John Clellon Holmes, all future Beat Generation writers. They bonded over the potential they saw in the youth of America, as a counter movement to the McCarthy era.

In 1954, in San Francisco, just as I was being born across the bay in Oakland, Ginsberg met 21 year old Peter Orlovsky & they fell in love. Ginsberg encouraged Orlovsky to try writing poetry. They were partners for 40+ years, until Ginsberg’s death. Orlovsky’s gentleness & kindness were a contrast to Ginsberg’s dry brittle coldness. Ginsberg met members of the San Francisco Renaissance & other poets who would become part of a broader band, now known as The Beat Generation.

Ginsberg & Orlovsky by Avedon

Ginsberg held poetry reading that changed our culture, advertising the event as Six Poets at the Six Gallery. The reading, held on October 7, 1955, brought together the East & West Coast factions of the Beat Generation. It was the first public reading of Howl. The poem would bring him world-wide fame.

Because of its explicit, raw language, Howl was considered scandalous when it was first published. Banned for obscenity shortly after its1956 publication, that action became a cause célèbre among defenders of the First Amendment; the ban was rescinded after a judge declared the poem as having redeeming social importance.

Ginsberg's writings on taboo subjects made him a controversial figure in the conservative 1950s, but he continued to create  sensitive & inflammatory subjects throughout the next 4 decades. His openness about homosexuality, including his love of young men, was a constant expression. In his poetry he wrote graphically about his desire for the freedom of men to love other men. His work challenged obscenity laws, ultimately changing them.

Ginsberg left this world in 1997, at age 70, surrounded by family, friend & Orlovsky in his East Village loft in NYC. Orlovsky died in spring of 2010.  Gay people owe our legal freedom of expression to Ginsberg who bravely challenged the conservative conditions of our reactionary times. 

Howl was made into a film of sorts in 2010. As Allen Ginsberg talks about his life & art, his famous poem is illustrated in animation while the obscenity trial over the work is dramatized with an improbable James Franco, my occasional lover, playing Ginsberg.

Considering Walt Whitman On His 193rd Birthday

When I write about individuals from history that were homosexual, I avoid using the term- GAY, because for me, there was no GAY before the 20th century, until I consider Walt Whitman on this, the day of his birth. Whitman was GAY, using the 20th/21st century definition.

Has there ever been a poet so thoroughly a man of this nation than Walt Whitman?  Whitman’s book of poetry- Leaves of Grass, holds the essence of being an American. It also reflects the ways in which America ideals have been sacrificed. Walt Whitman's personal life suffered much at the hands of the American taboo against sex.

Whitman is this country’s greatest embarrassment, if what he says about democracy is true, the American ideal of universal equality must embrace homosexuals, & same sex love. Whitman is a subversive & radical poet & American school children for the past 50 years have been carefully protected from exposure to America's greatest poet. I have always been an avid reader, & I did not read Whitman until I was finished with college, when my mother, of all people, gave me a volume of Leaves Of Grass as a gift.

A leaf for hand in hand;

You natural persons old and young!

You on the Mississippi and on all the branches & bayous of the Mississippi!

You friendly boatmen and mechanics! You roughs!

You twain! & all processions moving along the streets!

I wish to infuse myself among you till I see it common for you to walk hand in hand.

Walt Whitman was a true bohemian. He never gave into having a regular job occupation, & he was a singularly solitary man, probably not by choice. In 1819, Whitman was born in Long Island, NY. He did the usual things until he was 11, when he quit school. He ran errands for a lawyer & doctor, & then became an apprentice typesetter for a Brooklyn paper.

He taught school in several small villages in NY, & contributed articles to newspapers. In 1841 he left country life for the big city. In NYC he worked for newspapers as typesetter, reporter, feature writer & editor. Whitman took a life of theatre, cafes & nightclubs.

He went to art exhibitions, museums, the opera, watch the ships, & walked among the masses in the great city. His favorite activity was to sit near the hot, young, rugged carriage drivers, & cross back & forth on the Brooklyn ferry to mingle with the rough deck hands.  Because he was repressing his sexuality, he was a loner in a crowd, a spectator rather than a participant.

Sometime after 1855, when Leaves of Grass was first published, he experienced some sort of emotional crisis that transformed him from journalist to poet. In the manner so many gay men in NYC & San Francisco of late 1970s, he gave up being a dandy & became a hyper masculine clone.

Crowds of men & women attired in the usual costumes, how curious you are to me.

On the ferry-boats the hundreds & hundreds that cross, returning home, are more curious to me than you suppose

& you that shall cross from shore to shore years hence are more to me, & more in my meditations, than you might suppose . . .

I was one with the rest, the days and haps of the rest,

Was call'd by my nighest name by clear loud voices of young men as they saw me approaching or passing,

Felt their arms on my neck as I stood, or the negligent leaning of their flesh against me as I sat,

Saw many I loved in the street or ferry-boat or public assembly, yet never told them a word.
Crossing Brooklyn Ferry

Once I pass'd through a populous city imprinting my brain for future use with its shows, architecture, customs, tradition,

Yet now of all that city I remember only a man I casually met there who detained me for love of me,

Day by day & night by night we were together — all else has long been forgotten by me,

I remember I saw only that man who passionately clung to me,

 Again we wander, we love, we separate again,

Again he holds me by the hand, I must not go,

I see him close beside me with silent lips sad & tremulous.
Once I Pass'd Through A Populous City

Walt Whitman, a kosmos, of Manhattan the son,

Turbulent, fleshy, sensual, eating, drinking & breeding,

No sentimentalist, no stander above men & women or apart from them,

No more modest than immodest.

Unscrew the locks from the doors!

Unscrew the doors themselves from their jambs!

Whoever degrades another degrades me,

& whatever is done or said returns at last to me.

Through me the afflatus surging & surging, through me the current & index.

I speak the pass-word primeval, I give the song of democracy,

By God! I will accept nothing which all cannot have their counterpart of on the same terms.
Song Of Myself

When Whitman is taught in school as part of the canon of American literature, there is still much resistance to identifying him as gay, despite some fairly well documented evidence.

I share the midnight orgies of young men . . .

I pick out some low person for my dearest friend,


He shall be lawless, rude, illiterate, he shall be condemned by others for deeds done,


I will play a part no longer, why should I exile myself from my companions?

Whitman's notebooks of this period are filled with descriptions of bus drivers, boat men, & other "rude, illiterate" men that he picked up is really in the streets of Manhattan, & "slept with," often keeping notes of their home addresses. Excerpts from his Notebooks have been collected in Charley Shively's Calamus Lovers: Walt Whitman's Working Class Camerados:

Peter — large, strong-boned young fellow, driver. . . . I liked his refreshing wickedness, as it would be called by the orthodox.

George Fitch — Yankee boy — Driver . . . Good looking, tall, curly haired, black-eyed fellow

Saturday night Mike Ellis — wandering at the corner of Lexington av. & 32d st. — took him home to 150 37th street, — 4th story back room — bitter cold night

Wm Culver, boy in bath, aged 18

Dan'l Spencer . . . somewhat feminine . . . slept with me Sept 3d

Theodore M Carr — came to the house with me

James Sloan (night of Sept 18 '62) 23rd year of age — plain homely, American

John McNelly night Oct 7 young man, drunk, walk'd up Fulton & High st. home

David Wilson — night of Oct. 11 '62, walking up from Middagh — slept with me

Horace Ostrander Oct. 22 '62 — about 28 yr's of age — slept with him Dec 4th '62

October 9, 1863, Jerry Taylor, (NJ.) of 2d dist reg't slept with me last night weather soft, cool enough, warm enough, heavenly.

This is the 19^th century version of John Rechy’s Numbers!



As I have been noting the protests of the right wing & religious fundamentalists to the recent legislation adding references to gay people in history to the curriculum in public schools of California, I consider how liberating it will be for young gay people to acknowledge that the most American of poets was not just a homosexual, he was gay.


I recommend the excellent & very readable- Walt Whitman: A Gay Life by Gary Schmidgall.

Born On This Day- March 30th... Poet Paul Verlaine

I know of this because I took one class in 19^th century Poetry, a course I would have normally spent doodling, but with a dynamic teacher & the fact that the principals were absinth drinking, opium smoking homosexuals appealed to me.

Verlaine by Courbet

Paul Verlaine's life swayed between the cruel & criminal & the callow & chaste. He married a young girl in 1870 but after a year fell in love with 17 year old poet- Arthur Rimbaud. The pair, along with Charles Baudelair, formed a movement titled The Decadents. In The Decadents’ writing, only the self is important, & the function of poetry is to preserve moments of extreme sensation & unique impressions. In spite of the vagueness of his poetry, Verlaine showed a careful craftsmanship in his compositions, using simple, musical language.

"There is weeping in my heart
Like the rain falling on the city."
(from Romances sans Paroles, 1874)

When Verlaine began his affair with the young Rimbaud, his marriage was shattered. In this impossible situation Verlaine left his family in Paris, adopted the Bohemian life shared with Rimaud in London. Their relationship ended in 1873 when Verlaine, drunk & desolate, tried to shoot Rimbaud after a quarrel. He was jailed for 18 months. When he was examined by the court physicians they noted that his "anus can be dilated rather significantly by a moderate separation of the buttocks & bears on his person the signs of active and passive pederastic habits."

During his imprisonment Verlaine studied Shakespeare & wrote Romances Sans Paroles. "& here is my heart which beats only for you." The collection is considered his masterpiece.

After being released, Verlaine returned to Paris & Rimbaud who proceeded to get Verlaine drunk, beat him & force him blaspheme against his Catholic faith. Verlaine moved back to England where he taught French before returning to France in 1877 to teach at the college of Rethel. It was in this period that Verlaine composed most of the poems, many with religious sentiment that reflects the poet's conversion to Roman Catholicism. In 1879 he gave up teaching, adopted one of his pupils- Lucien Létinois, & they had a farm together. The farm went bankrupt, & Verlaine returned to Paris.

In 1883 Verlaine's Lucien died of typhus & his mother died. Even though he was drinking heavily during this period, Verlaine was celebrated as the leading poet of France. He published such critical works, short biographical studies of poets, short stories, sacred & profane verse. He rewrote old poems, which he earlier had not regarded worthy of publication. Verlaine spent time in & out of hospitals, continued to drink, slept in slums, & spent a month in prison. He also suffered from rheumatism, cirrhosis, jaundice, diabetes, & a broken heart.

Voici des fruits, des fleurs, des feuilles et des branches
Et puis voici mon coeur, qui ne bat que pour vous,
Ne le déchirez pas avec vos deux mains blanches,
Et qu'à vos yeux si beaux l'humble présent soit doux.
J'arrive tout couvert encore de rosée
Que le vent du matin vient glacer à mon front.
Souffrez que ma fatique, à vos pieds reposée,
Réve des chers instants qui la délasseront.
Sur votre jeune sein laissez rouler ma tête
Toute sonore encor de vos derniers baisers;
Laissez-la s'apaiser de la bonne tempête,
Et que je dorme un peu puisque vous reposez.

In his last years, Verlaine wasted his royalties he earned on prostitutes he lived with a gay man, Bibi-la-Purée, who was especially famous for stealing umbrellas.

Verlaine: "For me, Rimbaud is an ever-living reality, a sun that burns inside me that does not want to be put out..." In his autobiographical writings he denied any sexual relationship with Rimbaud.

Verlaine died in Paris, at the age of 52, in 1896. His funeral was a public event, with thousands of Parisians following the casket to the Batignolles cemetery. Despite his fame, Verlaine died in poverty.

Beautiful, Interesting & Modern

Now I am quietly waiting for

the catastrophe of my personality

to seem beautiful again,

& interesting, & modern.

The country is grey and

brown & white in trees,

snows & skies of laughter

always diminishing, less funny

not just darker, not just grey.

It may be the coldest day of the year,

what does he think of that?

I mean, what do I do?

& if I do,

perhaps I am myself again.

Mayakovsky by Frank O’Hara from Meditations In An Emergency

Born On This Day- March 27th... American Poet, Frank O'Hara

At the conclusion of the opening episode of Mad Men’s second season, the show’s protagonist, Don Draper, buys a book of poetry after being told by a hipster in a Greenwich Village bar that he is incapable of appreciating the writer’s work. The book is Meditations in an Emergency by Frank O’Hara. Draper reads it later that night in his suburban home, and he is captivated by a haunting stanza from the poem Mayakovsky:

"Now I am quietly waiting for the catastrophe of my personality to seem beautiful again, and interesting, & modern. "

After inscribing the book with the simple message “Made me think of you”, Draper slips out of the house to post it to a mystery recipient, adding yet another layer to this most complicated of TV heroes. I was so struck with this detail that I started to read about this this poet. I was only vaguely aware of him before Mad Men. I have continued to read about him & to delve into his poetry.

Frank O'Hara grew up in Grafton, Massachusetts. He attended St. John's High School in Worcester & later studied piano at the New England Conservatory in Boston from 1941 to 1944. O'Hara served in the Navy seeing action in the South Pacific (the geographic area, not the Rodgers & Hammerstein musical) & Japan on the destroyer USS Nicholas during World War II.

With the funding made available to veterans he attended Harvard University, where he roomed with artist & writer Edward Gorey. Although he majored in music & did some composing, his attendance was irregular & his interests scattered.

He regularly attended classes in philosophy & theology, while writing impulsively in his spare time. O'Hara was heavily influenced by visual art, & by contemporary music, which was his first love (he remained a fine piano player all his life & would often shock his tricks by suddenly playing swathes of Rachmaninoff ). He did have favorite poets: Arthur Rimbaud, Stephane Mallarmé, Boris Pasternak, & Vladimir Mayakovsky. While at Harvard, O'Hara met John Ashbery & began publishing poems in the Harvard Advocate. Despite his love of music, O'Hara changed his major & graduated from Harvard in 1950 with a degree in English.

He then attended graduate school at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. While at Michigan, he won a Hopwood Award & received his M.A. in English literature 1951.

That autumn O'Hara moved into an apartment in NYC with Joe LeSueur, who would be his lover for the next 11 years. Known throughout his life for his extreme sociability, passion, & warmth, O'Hara had hundreds of friends & lovers throughout his life, many from the NYC art & poetry worlds. Soon after arriving in NYC, he found at the front desk of the Museum of Modern Art & began to write seriously.

O'Hara always remained active in the art world, working as a reviewer for Art News, & in 1960 was made Assistant Curator of Painting & Sculpture Exhibitions for the Museum of Modern Art. He was also friends with the artists Willem de Kooning, Larry Rivers & Joan Mitchell.

O'Hara died following an accident on Fire Island in which he was struck by a man speeding in a beach buggy during the early morning hours of July 24, 1966. He died the next day of a ruptured liver at the age of 40.

Frank’s poetry is gay poetry. It is poetry by a gay poet who knows that he is gay & doesn't care what his readers would think. But in its breezy affirmation of his gayness, his poetry immediately grabs back at what is universal.

Having a Coke with You

is even more fun than going to San Sebastian, Irún, Hendaye, Biarritz, Bayonne 

or being sick to my stomach on the Travesera de Gracia in Barcelona 

partly because in your orange shirt you look like a better happier St. Sebastian

partly because of my love for you, partly because of your love for yogurt

partly because of the fluorescent orange tulips around the birches

The gay references are all there (St. Sebastian, etc.) but it all balances so effortlessly with the simply rendered feeling of human closeness. O’ Hara’s gayness is an expression of his humanity, & the other way around. He brought a refreshing new casualness & spontaneity to American poetry, making deliriously funny & surprisingly moving verse out of everyday activities recounted in conversational tones. What he called his “I do this I do that” poems often featured glimpses of his adored NYC or anecdotes about friend, most of whom were themselves poets or painters.

Born On This Day- February 21st... Wystan Hugh Auden

Wystan Hugh Auden, Christopher William Bradshaw Isherwood, Sir Stephen Harold Spender

Photo by Howard Coster

If you have stopped by my little spot on the Internet, you know that I am fascinated & fully engaged by his circle. He was a British poet in 1907, but he chose the USA as his home. In the 1930s, he once lived in an apartment in Brooklyn with gay artists Carson McCullers, Truman Capote & Benjamin Britten. A friend & contemporary of Christopher Isherwood, W.H. Auden’s work has perhaps the widest range &the greatest depth of any English language poet of the past 3 centuries. Auden wrote in a voice that addressed readers personally rather than as part of a collective audience. His styles & forms extend from ballads & songs to haiku & limericks to sonnets, prose poems, & constructions of his own invention. His tone ranges from spirited comedy to memorable & profound, often in the same work. His poems manage to be secular & sacred, philosophical & erotic, personal & universal. This poem- Funeral Blues opened new interest in Auden’s work when it was featured in the film Four Weddings & A Funeral:

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,

Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone.
Silence the pianos & with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.


Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message He is Dead,
Put crépe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.


He was my North, my South, my East & West,
My working week & my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song,
I thought that love would last forever: 'I was wrong'


The stars are not wanted now, put out every one;
Pack up the moon & dismantle the sun;
Pour away the ocean & sweep up the wood.
For nothing now can ever come to any good.

He wrote much erotic poetry, most not published in his lifetime, & by erotic, I mean dirty, really dirty:



We aligned mouths. We entwined. All act was clutch,
All fact contact, the attack & the interlock
Of tongues, the charms of arms. I shook at the touch
Of his fresh flesh, I rocked at the shock of his cock.

I plunged with a rhythmical lunge steady & slow,
And at every stroke made a corkscrew roll of my tongue.
His soul reeled in the feeling. He whimpered "Oh!"
As I tongued & squeezed & rolled & tickled & swung.


Then I pressed on the spot where the groin is joined to the cock,
Slipped a finger into his arse & massaged him from inside.
The secret sluices of his juices began to unlock.
He melted into what he felt. "O Jesus!" he cried.


Waves of immeasurable pleasures mounted his member in quick
Spasms. I lay still in the notch of his crotch inhaling his sweat.
His ring convulsed round my finger. Into me, rich & thick,
His hot spunk spouted in gouts, spurted in jet after jet.
(written in 1948)

Born On This Day- July 21st... American Poet Hart Crane

Hart Crane was born & raised in Ohio. His father was the inventor of Life Savers candy & he had a mother who was an overbearing, flashy hypochondriac. The parents fought bitterly & eventually divorce, providing the young poet a very unhappy childhood.

Crane finally had enough & dropped out of high school to move to NYC in 1916. For 7 years, he split his time between Cleveland & NYC, working at his father's factory, a copy editor, & writing poems that were published in small literary magazines. He often needed to borrow money from his father to survive.

As his work was published, some praised his work, but most critics scoffed at it. Crane has often been criticized as incomprehensible; he was certainly that for me when I attempted to get through his work in a class in American poetry.

Tormented by his attraction to other men, Crane did have a rapturous love affair with a Danish sailor- Emil Opffer who was the inspiration for the epic, erotic poem-Voyages. The poem was the center piece of his first book- White Buildings, in 1926, Crane was indubitably gay, which lead to a lifetime of problems both social & personal. His failed love life was partly due to his obsession with men from the Navy. Ernest Hemingway (they share a birthday) noted: "Poor Hart Crane, always trying to pick up the wrong sailor." Booze contributed to his downfall, under the influence, he would become flirty, frequently in the wrong situations, at the wrong times.

Later in life, Crane made an attempt to play it straight to please the people in his life. Though he tried, he was miserable. Drinking & rough trade bearable, yet made his life worse & worse.

In the early 1930s Hart attempted to marry a girl, Peggy Crowley, the recently divorced wife if his good friend, writer & critic- Malcolm Crowley, but everyone knew it was a sham.

On April 26, 1932, while on board a cruise ship in the Caribbean, Crane was badly beaten after an altercation with a member of the crew that he had made a pass at. The following morning, a female friend found him sitting in his room, remote & ashen. She told him to dress for lunch & left. Shortly before noon on the 27 April, Hart Crane was seen on the deck, looking down at the water. Crane said, "Goodbye, everybody!" & jumped overboard to his death. His body was never recovered.

The most devoted of all the writers & artists who venerated Crane, Tennessee Williams left instructions that his body be buried at sea in the Gulf of Mexico at the spot that Crane drowned. Williams family buried him in St. Louis.

His life is a truly troubled tale of a talented man trying to find where he belongs. His poetry confounds me & his life leaves me circumspect.

We make our meek adjustments,

Contented with such random consolations

As the wind deposits

In slithered & too ample pockets.

For we can still love the world, who find

A famished kitten on the step & know

Recesses for it from the fury of the street,

Or warm torn elbow coverts.

We will sidestep, & to the final smirk

Dally the doom of that inevitable thumb

That slowly chafes its puckered index toward us,

Facing the dull squint with what innocence

& what surprise!

& yet these fine collapses are not lies

More than the pirouettes of any pliant cane;

Our obsequies are, in a way, no enterprise.

We can evade you, & all else but the heart:

What blame to us if the heart live on.

The game enforces smirks; but we have seen

The moon in lonely alleys make

A grail of laughter of an empty ash can,

& through all sound of gaiety & quest

Have heard a kitten in the wilderness

“Follow Your Inner Moonlight; Don't Hide The Madness.”

Have you ever spent time with a book you loved so much, you didn’t want it to end? I started to slow down my pace with Just Kids, Patti Smith’s recollection of her time with Robert Mapplethorpe, when they were young, inseparable, perfectly bohemian, & completely unknown, just to have it linger. Smith recounts how when a couple of tourists in Washington Square Park spotted them on an autumn day in1967 & argued if they warranted a snapshot. The woman thought they looked like artists. The man dismissed: “They’re just kids.”

Smith & Mapplethorpe walk through a snow storm to Times Square on New Year's Eve 1969 & witness a huge John & Yoko peace billboard. Later, on her own, she runs into Allen Ginsberg at the automat, where he helps her buy a sandwich after mistaking her for a boy. They became lifelong friends & he was a profound influence on her work & future.

 Ginsberg photograph by William S Burroughs

Irwin Allen Ginsberg was born on this day- June 3rd in1926.  Like Patti Smith, he was raised in New Jersey. His father, Louis, was a successful poet who walked around the house reciting poetry. His mother suffered from paranoia & was in & out of mental hospitals. 3 years after her death in 1958, Ginsberg wrote Kaddish for Naomi Ginsberg.

Allen Ginsberg was a social revolutionary, a protest poet & a longtime & committed activist. He beat the drum for the Beat movement, lauding nonconformity & new kind of poetry. Ginsberg’s works captured this anti-establishment groundswell & helped serve social change.

Ginsberg was tried & acquitted of obscenity charges related to his most celebrated poem 1956’s- Howl’s homoerotic content. A judge found that the poem had "redeeming social importance. Howl became a reference case for free speech cases in the1960s & 1970s.

Ginsberg gave us the term "flower power," which encouraged protesters to engage in nonviolent rebellion. He was kicked out of Cuba for saying Che Guevara was "cute”. His frank writing about homosexuality made an important contribution to gay rights.

“America I'm putting my queer shoulder to the wheel.”

In 1954, Ginsberg met the man who would become his life partner, Peter Orlovsky. Orlovsky was an American poet & experienced the mental illness of a family member. The relationship lasted 43 years, until Ginsberg’s death in 1997.
Ginsberg received:  the National Book Award, a Robert Frost Medal for distinguished poetic achievement & an American Book Award for contributions to literary excellence. In 1993, the French minister of culture awarded Ginsberg the Order of Arts & Letters.

Considering Walt Whitman On His 192nd Birthday

When I write about individuals from history that were homosexual, I avoid using the term- GAY, because for me, there was no GAY before the 20^th century, until I consider Walt Whitman on this, the day of his birth. Whitman was GAY, using the 20^th/21^st century definition.

Has there ever been a poet so thoroughly a man of this nation than Walt Whitman?  Whitman’s book of poetry- Leaves of Grass, holds the essence of being an American. It also reflects the ways in which America ideals have been sacrificed. Walt Whitman's personal life suffered much at the hands of the American taboo against sex.

Whitman is this country’s greatest embarrassment, if what he says about democracy is true, the American ideal of universal equality must embrace homosexuals, & same sex love. Whitman is a subversive & radical poet & American school children for the past 50 years have been carefully protected from exposure to America's greatest poet. I have always been an avid reader, & I did not read Whitman until I was finished with college, when my mother, of all people, gave me a volume of Leaves Of Grass as a gift.

A leaf for hand in hand;

You natural persons old and young!

You on the Mississippi and on all the branches & bayous of the Mississippi!

You friendly boatmen and mechanics! You roughs!

You twain! & all processions moving along the streets!

I wish to infuse myself among you till I see it common for you to walk hand in hand.

Walt Whitman was a true bohemian. He never gave into having a regular job occupation, & he was a singularly solitary man, probably not by choice. In 1819, Whitman was born in Long Island, NY. He did the usual things until he was 11, when he quit school. He ran errands for a lawyer & doctor, & then became an apprentice typesetter for a Brooklyn paper.

He taught school in several small villages in NY, & contributed articles to newspapers. In 1841 he left country life for the big city. In NYC he worked for newspapers as typesetter, reporter, feature writer & editor. Whitman took a life of theatre, cafes & nightclubs.

He went to art exhibitions, museums, the opera, watch the ships, & walked among the masses in the great city. His favorite activity was to sit near the hot, young, rugged carriage drivers, & cross back & forth on the Brooklyn ferry to mingle with the rough deck hands.  Because he was repressing his sexuality, he was a loner in a crowd, a spectator rather than a participant.

Sometime after 1855, when Leaves of Grass was first published, he experienced some sort of emotional crisis that transformed him from journalist to poet. In the manner so many gay men in NYC & San Francisco of late 1970s, he gave up being a dandy & became a hyper masculine clone.

Crowds of men & women attired in the usual costumes, how curious you are to me.

  On the ferry-boats the hundreds & hundreds that cross, returning home, are more curious to me than you suppose
 
& you that shall cross from shore to shore years hence are more to me, & more in my meditations, than you might suppose . . .

I was one with the rest, the days and haps of the rest,

Was call'd by my nighest name by clear loud voices of young men as they saw me approaching or passing,

Felt their arms on my neck as I stood, or the negligent leaning of their flesh against me as I sat,

Saw many I loved in the street or ferry-boat or public assembly, yet never told them a word.
Crossing Brooklyn Ferry

Once I pass'd through a populous city imprinting my brain for future use with its shows, architecture, customs, tradition,

Yet now of all that city I remember only a man I casually met there who detained me for love of me,
 
Day by day & night by night we were together — all else has long been forgotten by me,

I remember I saw only that man who passionately clung to me,

 Again we wander, we love, we separate again,
 
Again he holds me by the hand, I must not go,

I see him close beside me with silent lips sad & tremulous.
Once I Pass'd Through A Populous City

Walt Whitman, a kosmos, of Manhattan the son,

Turbulent, fleshy, sensual, eating, drinking & breeding,

No sentimentalist, no stander above men & women or apart from them,

No more modest than immodest.

Unscrew the locks from the doors!
 
Unscrew the doors themselves from their jambs!

Whoever degrades another degrades me,

& whatever is done or said returns at last to me.
 
Through me the afflatus surging & surging, through me the current & index.

I speak the pass-word primeval, I give the song of democracy,

By God! I will accept nothing which all cannot have their counterpart of on the same terms.
Song Of Myself

When Whitman is taught in school as part of the canon of American literature, there is still much resistance to identifying him as gay, despite some fairly well documented evidence.

I share the midnight orgies of young men . . .

I pick out some low person for my dearest friend,

He shall be lawless, rude, illiterate, he shall be condemned by others for deeds done,

I will play a part no longer, why should I exile myself from my companions?

Whitman's notebooks of this period are filled with descriptions of bus drivers, boat men, & other "rude, illiterate" men that he picked up is really in the streets of Manhattan, & "slept with," often keeping notes of their home addresses. Excerpts from his Notebooks have been collected in Charley Shively's Calamus Lovers: Walt Whitman's Working Class Camerados:

Peter — large, strong-boned young fellow, driver. . . . I liked his refreshing wickedness, as it would be called by the orthodox.

George Fitch — Yankee boy — Driver . . . Good looking, tall, curly haired, black-eyed fellow

Saturday night Mike Ellis — wandering at the corner of Lexington av. & 32d st. — took him home to 150 37th street, — 4th story back room — bitter cold night

Wm Culver, boy in bath, aged 18

Dan'l Spencer . . . somewhat feminine . . . slept with me Sept 3d

Theodore M Carr — came to the house with me

James Sloan (night of Sept 18 '62) 23rd year of age — plain homely, American

John McNelly night Oct 7 young man, drunk, walk'd up Fulton & High st. home

David Wilson — night of Oct. 11 '62, walking up from Middagh — slept with me

Horace Ostrander Oct. 22 '62 — about 28 yr's of age — slept with him Dec 4th '62

October 9, 1863, Jerry Taylor, (NJ.) of 2d dist reg't slept with me last night weather soft, cool enough, warm enough, heavenly.

This is the 19^th century version of John Rechy’s Numbers!

As I have been noting the protests of the right wing & religious fundamentalists to the recent legislation adding references to gay people in history to the curriculum in public schools of California, I consider how liberating it will be for young gay people to acknowledge that the most American of poets was not just a homosexual, he was gay.

I recommend the excellent & very readable- Walt Whitman: A Gay Life by Gary Schmidgall