Christopher Matthew Hennessy's Blog, page 2
June 9, 2012
A new video poem project
My good friend (and Thom Gunn and Lambda Award finalist) Garth Greenwell is featured in a new video poem project called Three Poems. It’s quite stunning. Check it out!








June 7, 2012
D.A. Powell, sex, poetry, and a stunning review from Stephen Burt
http://www.bostonreview.net/BR37.3/stephen_burt_da_powell.php
The last paragraph:
Many GLBT poets (as we say now) write about sex; many seek not just libidinal celebration, not only attentive mimesis, but also ethical stances against prejudice and denial, disease and death. Even among those peers, though, Powell’s puns and his ironies, his command of genuinely elevated along with grinningly rueful tones, his refusal to simplify the life he depicts, and his sense of the shape of a line set him apart. Those attributes make his new writing, on sex but not just about sex, not only sad and funny and grotesque and dense and resonant, but itself often thrillingly, shockingly sexy. One of the last poems in Useless Landscape even bears the title “Ode to Joy,” though it takes place in the apparently unromantic space of fast food restaurants, with “teens, as teens must do, eating the potato nuggets / of cupidity . . . . Their cups / of catsup and other dipping sauces creating little o’s / of transparency in their suck-me-off jeans.” The very next poem gets religion: “There is no God but that which visits us / in skin and thew and pleasing face.” Powell’s new poems could make you believe that too.








Sex and gender trending on the web
I’m trying to start a tumblr for my online course where I post stuff I’ve come across on the web that speaks to issues of sexuality and gender in hopefully fun and provocative ways. Would love to get folks suggestions as they come across stuff!
And check out what I’ve already posted!
http://sexandgenderontheweb.tumblr.com/








May 18, 2012
Joe Brainard, Tim Dlugos and ‘the gay artist’ question
From the new Joe Brainard Collected Works, via an interview at the back of the book with Tim Dlugos. (Thanks, Matthew Hittinger! And congrats on Skin Shift!)
TD: Do you consider yourself a “gay artist”? Is there such a thing as “gay art” outside of subject matter? Is there a “gay sensibility” that infuses your work of infuses the work of poets you know?
JB: Does a gay sensibility exist?
TD: Does it exist in your work, and does it exist at all?
JB: I think it does in mine, but I think it’s sort of closing out. I think that kids are coming up now…I don’t think it’s that important to most kids now. I mean it’s not that much of an issue, while at one point, in my life, it was an issue.
TD: You mean personal?
JB: Yeah. Isn’t that what you mean?
TD: Well, is it a matter of subject, or what’s it a matter of?
JB: It’s a matter of being aware of it, I think, but that doesn’t answer your question. Sometimes it’s a subject matter, obviously; with a drawing of two guys fucking it’s obviously subject matter. But I think it’s more than that. Most artists are very straight, I mean straight in their seriousness and in what they’re trying to do. I think I’m a lot more sensual, I mean I’m a lot more ga-ga than that–but on purpose. No, not on purpose.
TD: Sort of a ludic quality, playful?JB: Yes. (Pause). I’m not really sure that has anything to do with being gay, though, ’cause I think my work is very sensual, very lush and all that, but I’m not sure that has to do with being gay. If I was straight it might be that way too. I don’t know.








May 17, 2012
Literature, empathy, identification…and science
from a Salon.com story ( Can you identify?: Science shows that the only way around some readers’ prejudices is to trick them)
A far more unsettling finding is buried in this otherwise up-with-reading news item. The Ohio State researchers gave 70 heterosexual male readers stories about a college student much like themselves. In one version, the character was straight. In another, the character is described as gay early in the story. In a third version the character is gay, but this isn’t revealed until near the end. In each case, the readers’ “experience-taking” — the name these researchers have given to the act of immersing oneself in the perspective, thoughts and emotions of a story’s protagonist — was measured. The straight readers were far more likely to take on the experience of the main character if they weren’t told until late in the story that he was different from themselves.
This, too, is not so surprising.Human beings are notorious for extending more of their sympathy to people they perceive as being of their own kind. But the researchers also found that readers of the “gay-late” story showed “significantly more favorable attitudes toward homosexuals” than the other two groups of readers, and that they were less likely to attribute stereotypically gay traits, such as effeminacy, to the main character. The “gay-late” story actually reduced their biases (conscious or not) against gays, and made them more empathetic. Similar results were found when white readers were given stories about black characters to read.
What can we do with this information?








May 14, 2012
Gender and sexuality issues online
Hello friends! I am in the midst of planning an online course on gender and sexuality and would like to know if you have any favorite ONLINE content I might be able to use. I’d like to offer my students a variety of easily accessible INTERNET stuff, from online news segments to video to images to YouTube clips to flickr sets to general images or memes. Would love your suggestions!








May 11, 2012
Stephen Jonas
“be you also mindful
Love lest you
forget i too come from
the sea scum the
phosphorus lumi-
nosity”
– “No. LXVI” of “Exercises for Ear”
http://chax.org/eoagh/issue3/issuethree/jonas.html








April 25, 2012
A big moment for Assaracus, Sibling Rivalry Press, and gay poetry
I am so happy to report some really wonderful news. Library Journal, in its May 1 issue, has named Assaracus as one of its best new magazines of 2011. A HUGE congrats to publisher and poet Bryan Borland. Wow! What an achievement! I am honored to be a subscriber and contributor (issue 1).
Bryan writes, in an email to contributors, “This is monumental for Assaracus, for Sibling Rivalry Press, and for gay poetry, however you define it, in that it’s mainstream recognition and will serve to get Assaracus into more hands that need it (we’re listed alongside publications like HGTV magazine – and many libraries subscribe based on this list). This means more exposure for you – as poets – and for us as a community and brotherhood of writers.”
In part the article reads,”…Sibling Rivalry Press is publishing well-wrought, challenging literature that provides deep insight into the broad range of emotional experiences of being gay…”
OH HOW I LOVE THAT!








April 20, 2012
The Triangle Awards
Back from NYC in one piece. Congrats to Henri Cole for winning the Thom Gunn Award. I was really honored to be among the finalists in that category and thoroughly enjoyed a nice evening. It was rather exciting to be part of a night celebrating so many talented GLBT authors. I got to see Allison Bechdel speak and was sitting just across the aisle from her! #brusheswithgreatness. And had a lovely moment finally meeting Rahul Mehta, fellow finalist and author of Quarantine. (Get it!) Just an all around good time seeing friends (speaking of, get Garth Greenwell‘s book Mitko, too!) and pigging out on Chinese food afterward. Thanks, Publishing Triangle, for a wonderful ceremony and reception and for doing the important (and necessary) work you do! And huge special thanks to Lisa and Jim and Joe and Wendy!
And since I aim to be your one-stop shopping for gay lit. news, here are two article about the event for your reading pleasure. One from the Lambda Literary site and one from the always-wonderful Band of Thebes site.








April 14, 2012
National Poetry Month
Many thanks to poet Stephen Mills! He’s giving away his book and mine (which he so generously calls “one of my favorite books of the last year”) to celebrate National Poetry Month. Surf on over to his website (Joe’s Jacket–love that name for a website!) and enter to win! And learn about his book He Do The Gay Man In Different Voices.







