The Male Muse: Gittin Homophile Wit It!

Okay, I bought this book to flip, because the ABE seller had it listed as having a Robert Duncan signed dedication in the front that was very PURPLE and very GAY, and the price was right.

Only problem is the dedication was really by Ian Young, the editor of this anthology of gay poetry. But I decided to keep it, because I figured it would be interesting and it's a rather obscure anthology of gay poetry from early in the pride movement. No, wait. It's NOT an anthology of "gay poetry." This is 1973, and people are still (forgive the pun) covering their asses. The editor writes in his introduction: "(I)t is not an anthology of 'gay poets' (a difficult and useless categorization) but rather a collection of poems by contemporary writers on themes relating to male homosexuality, gay love, romantic friendships, what Whitman called "the dear love of comrades, the attraction of friend to friend."

So you could give this to your married squash partner or that cute metrosexual coworker in the next cubicle, and presumably have no worries about any ensuing misunderstanding.

NOT!! DON'T DO IT KID!

It's a queerbo book for queerbos.

Thank God.

This was published early on in what the editor refers to as the "Homophile/Gay Liberation movement."

I'm so glad we lost "homophile." That sounds like something you find in a diagram of an electron's shells. SCIENTIFIC BEN STEIN DRONE: "Now watch the homophile pull the electron up to the next quantum level..."

Okay, so far all I'm finding is really awful poetry and a few cutesy poems, even from name poets who should be writing better.

The theme is THE MALE MUSE, so we are to see the male in all his glory and splendor, leading us on to birth beauty from the male womb of the gay poem. Right?

Okay, let me give you a few exempla maledicta. Let's start with Thom Gunn, a poet one would expect to represent well...


    BLACKIE, THE ELECTRIC REMBRANDT

We watch through the shop-front while
Blackie draws stars--an equal

concentration on his and
the youngster's faces. The hand

is steady and accurate;
but the boy does not see it

for his eyes follow the point
that touches (quick, dark movement!)

a virginal arm beneath
his rolled sleeve: he holds his breath.

...Now that it is finished, he
hands a few bills to Blackie

and leaves with a bandage on
his arm, under which gleam ten

stars, hanging in a blue thick
cluster. Now he is starlike.


I don't know about you, but when I go out I NEVER order chopped steak. Similarly, I have an aversion to chopped prose masquerading as poetry. I know that's a poetry argument from the 1970s, but I think we see here on what side of the argument/gravamen Mr. Gunn fell for the duration of this poem.

Yuck. It's so nothing. Worse than nothing. At least you could meditate to nothing.

There are WAY too many poems about older men picking up young boys and admiring them in "poetry" as they lie bare-assed on a motel bed. This usually leads on to some insipid comparison to a Michelangelo sculpture, or to admiration of a little bubble butt like "peaches."

I have to think instantly of Dennis Cooper's masterful and darkly funny poem about intergenerational cruising, which is a classic. Dennis isn't in here. There are no freaks (that I've found yet), and the collection sorely needs them. Early on in assimilation politics, you put forward the poster boys or mildly racy members of the clan. Only in the last phases of fuck-all assimilation do you bring out The Gimps.

I guess the transgressive stakes at this point in time were much higher, and the threshold was much lower. 1973, remember?

I am aware that many of these writers were probably wiped out by the coming plague, and wonder as I read so many of these names how many of these poor guys were just taken out before we even had a name for the killer among us.

But it's still a mediocre anthology...identity politics and poetics can grow so quickly tiresome, largely because of the mandated conventions of sentiment and expression that emerge in such a subculture.

John Wieners is represented by three poems, and they are just alright. Wieners was the consummate blues musician of the gay lyric, and could pine so well. He's always in love with the wrong man (often the marginally straight or married man) and it makes for great moaning. All three poems included by him fall under that rubric.

Jonathan Williams has two wacky poems, and then a pretty hungry and somewhat moving poem, although I detect more than a soupcon of sarcastic humor and critique of gay appetite in it.

     MARCH 2:


All you ask is
one person, one person only
to look at you
for real
scratch your back
suck your cock
put his arms
around you

one person
one person only

for that
you
may
cry
your
heart
out


Walter Griffin contributes what I'm sure is not his finest poem, and one which is unfortunately fairly typical of the way most contributors seemed to interpret the theme of the anthology.

    ROUGH TRADE

The boy stands
like Michelangelo's David,
in blue jeans reaching

with his blood,
hungry for sun
and Miami beach,

gesturing with his hips
at the red convertible
slowing down.

The driver watches
behind hooded eyes,
the outline of head.

Beneath the caution light,
the two submerge
and drown in hands.

Ugh. I really hate it when you can hear a poem's machinations grinding like the Titanic's metal before the final plummet. Ars est celare artem. Listen to Ovid, phreak. You can just hear the poet licking his lips when he makes the "head" pun, and when he describes the "hooded" (cobra) eyes of the predator. Just awful.


Ginsberg contributes a very strong poem about the changing Leroi (now Baraka).

    GENOCIDE

Dreamed that I met Leroi
his American speech slightly thickened &
slurred from learning Yoruba
& thinking in Afric Syntax--
   We lay together, our
legs wrapped & twined round
each other's bodies, soft cheeks
together, I had difficulty making
out his words, and though he
was not aloof and I thought
he spoke against my Jews,
flashed thru my mind to
tell him this fault, I
listened instead, and sad
said "What will happen
to me Leroi? I may
perish for all this War
in America"--He lay his
head next to mine & held
me close, dawning on me
his tragic fear & sympathy
all along despite what
the newspapers said--But
don't remember his dreamy
words as murmured, far away,
& his body brown & warm as
we pressed our breasts together,
I felt his hard on at first,
which went away as we
clung closer. He wanted
to protect me in the War
storm, but was unable
for the great force that was
upon us, of strangeness and
alien white mind in America,
rising from Iowa, Kansas,
Nebraska, Wisconsin, Brooklyn.

   (Feb. 23, 1968--4 a.m.
   Cedar Falls, Iowa)

Pretty sad in retrospect, innit? Did Ginsberg live to see the publication of "Somebody Blew Up America?" I tend to think no. I could Google it but I'm too lazy right now.

Edward Field, ever the underrated poet, contributes three really strong poems on gay relationships which are head and shoulders above most of his anthology mates' work.

Robert Duncan is represented by "Sonnet 1," "Such is the Sickness of Many a Good Thing," "Five Pieces" and "Unkingd by Affection." This last poem is worth sharing. When he's on, he's quite compelling. For that closing turn and line, we can even forgive him the "jewel-like reflections."

    UNKINGD BY AFFECTION

  Unkinged by affection? One exchanges the empire of
ones desires for the anarchy of pleasures. But pleasures
themselves one finds are not domesticated. And the
troubles of the soul cast jewel-like reflections upon
the daily surfaces. One has moved only to a world where
the devoted household commonplaces cast shadows that
are empires; where the warmth of the hearth is kept alive
in a cold that extends infinitely--the dreams of a king,
ruthless in his omnipotence--a plenitude of powers, an
over-reaching inspired pretension, an unam sanctum, a
papal conceit over all beloved things.

   We live within ourselves, like honest woodsmen
within a tyrannical forest, a magical element, sheltered
by our humble imaginary lives from the eternal storm of
our rage.

Several of Duncan's poems included are apologias for unbridled desire. From the limited biography I've read, he seemed to like cattin' quite a bit.

I'll try to find more quality pieces from this anthology to share, and promise not to post any more of the lesser work included here. I have a feeling there are some more Kohinoors hiding in here.

Maybe the Male Muse isn't to be found only in Advocate Men, after all.