Christopher Matthew Hennessy's Blog, page 20
January 5, 2011
Fast Life, Tim Dlugos, oh April you can't come fast enough
I'm so excited about this! Due in April
Fast Life: The Collected Poems of Tim Dlugos
(David Trinidad, editor)
A Fast Life establishes Tim Dlugos—the witty and innovative poet at the heart of the New York literary scene in the late 1970s and 1980s and seminal poet of the AIDS epidemic—as one of the most distinctive and energetic poets of our time. This definitive volume contains all of the poems Dlugos published in his lifetime, a wealth of previously unpublished poems, and an informative introduction, chronology, and notes assembled by the volume's editor, poet David Trinidad.
January 4, 2011
Dear "Love in Idleness," or a letter on the occasion of my first book of poetry accepted for publication
Dear Love in Idleness,
Today is the day. Today I tell the world how much I love you, how happy I am for us. I don't know if the other poets and books will think this letter to you crass, but right now I'm not thinking straight. I hope my exuberance can be forgiven, but it's not every day a boy sees his first book of poetry accepted for publication. It's been a long haul, with lots of rejections and lots of encouragement, but we made it, you and I! We found a home for you, someone who wants to take you out into the world to share with others, to repeat the sheaf of you numerous times, to sit you on shelves where I can stare at you longingly, hoping others are considering just what you mean. You and I have a lot to think about as this process moves forward, not the least of which will be what I am going to do without you to fret over. And while I adore you now, I know soon I will begin to think about the poems that will come next. Forgive me. Even now, the thought excites me. But enough, you're not even in the world…yet.
I want to take every last poem out of your soon-to-be bound ribcage and touch and fondle its every word, turn the nouns over on my tongue, trill the verbs, swallow the adjectives. I want to write letters to the subjects of the poems, tell them how much it means to me that they gave of themselves to my imagination — mom, dad, lover, friend, God, gods, childhood me, future me, Google me, sibling, grandpa, grandma, childhood bully/crush/jock, college unrequited love, Michigan's own little Bavaria, and Princess Leia, Rosalind and Queen Elizabeth, and Dracula, among others.
Oh Love! I want to write letters to all those people in the poems, tell them poetry has no memory, at least not like ours, that poetry's truth stretches along a timeless axis of emotional honesty and the integrity of creation, that they should not look for themselves but for something human that transpired between us one day, one moment, or even through a life. That moment or that life is its own moment and life and is not their moment or their life. I hope it's something they can understand.
Dear Love, I want to recall together how we made each other, the person I was when I wrote this poem or that poem, how you treated me, shall we say, not so kindly at times, and how you showered me with affection at others. I want to look inside you, poke around and see the boy I was who experienced the poem, the man I was when I wrote the poem, and the imagination that fielded interference.
But for now, I just want to trail my finger down your list of names, take out the first lines of each, fold them carefully in squares and hide them — in my underwear drawer, the medicine cabinet, in the collected poems of Whitman, O'Hara, and Roethke, in my lover's hands, in the toaster, the produce drawer in the fridge, my gloves, underneath my cat, oh everywhere!
Love, you're mine.
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What follows is an email I sent out to my friends, family, colleagues and fellow writers. I'm so pleased to also share it with, this blog's readers.
Dear friends,
Happy 2011! I hope this new year brings good things for you. I'm writing to share some news about something good that 2010 brought me.
I'm thrilled to report that my full-length poetry manuscript, Love in Idleness, will be published later this year by Brooklyn Arts Press (BAP). It may be cliche but it's not an exaggeration to say this is a dream come true. (On its way to BAP the manuscript picked up a finalist nod from Four Way Books Intro Prize competition and two semi-finalist nods from other first book competitions. It also received a generous offer from Chelsea Station Press — and though I went with BAP the offer led to me taking the role of a poetry reader for the press.)
Needless to say, I'm ecstatic that my work found a home at BAP. I encourage you to check out their website; they publish poetry as well as art books. They've published the likes of Joe Millar, whose first book was shortlisted for the Yale Younger Poets prize, the National Poetry Series, and the Academy of American Poets' Walt Whitman Awards. Obviously, I'm thrilled to be in good company.
Love in Idleness is the result of a decade of writing and draws deeply on my Midwestern upbringing, my love of myth and received stories, and my identity as a gay man in 21st century America — and how each of these informs the others. I will be blogging about the process of turning manuscript into published book and will be discussing more in-depth what the book represents for me, so stay tuned if you're interested. One of the topics I hope to discuss is how my "other" passion (interviewing poets) shaped my poetry.
If you're a poet, writer, blogger, educator, otherwise connected with literary circles or just know people who like a good read, please consider helping me spread the word about my book. If you're a blogger or are on Facebook, I'd be honored if you mentioned my news. (Here's a link if you're interested.) If you can suggest places that might be interested in review copies, please shoot that info. my way. As you know, word of mouth is often the only (but best) 'marketing' available to poets.
Lastly, let me thank all those out there how have supported me in any way. Great friends, family and colleagues [and blog readers!] are invaluable, and I'm lucky to have so many!
Best,
Christopher
My blog about poetry, sexuality and identity
My Twitter
My Facebook page:
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Brooklyn Arts Press's home page
My other book, Outside the Lines: Talking with Contemporary Gay Poets
G.W. Bush meets Foucault
A teaser from the London Review of Books for Eliot Weinberger's review of…Decision Points by George W. Bush. Trust me, you'll find it fascinating. (Thanks, Marshall.)
In the 1960s,' Eliot Weinberger writes, 'George Bush Jr was at Yale, branding the asses of pledges to the Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity with a hot coathanger. Michel Foucault was at the Societé française de philosophie, considering the question "What is an author?" The two, needless to say, never met.' In his Foucauldian reading of the former president's memoir, Decision Points, Weinberger says that the book 'holds the same relation to George W. Bush as a line of fashion accessories or a perfume does to the movie star that bears its name; he no doubt served in some advisory capacity.' But as Foucault put it, 'What difference does it make who is speaking?' 'The mark of the writer is . . . nothing more than the singularity of his absence.' And 'Team DP,' as Weinberger calls the coalition of the willing who cobbled Decision Points together, 'has indeed created "a space into which the writing subject constantly disappears"; one learns almost nothing about George W. Bush from this book,' even though, or perhaps in part because, he is the 'lone hero of every page'. 'It is astonishing how many major players from Bush World are here Missing in Action,' Weinberger writes: most conspicuously, 'the grand puppetmaster himself', Dick Cheney. 'In Decision Points, as in the Bush years, he is nearly always hiding in an undisclosed location.
January 3, 2011
A 2011 challenge
I don't know anything about this site, but I came across it (via a Google alert) and thought I'd share it with you, you voracious GLBT readers, you! It's all having to do with a reading challenge. The blogger writes:
Click on the link to learn more if you're interested.
To reiterate, I don't know anything about this particular blogger.
January 2, 2011
Queer New Year Resolutions
Kathi Wolfe over at the Washington Blade shares New Year's Resolutions with us. What caught my eye was the preface to the resolutions, which includes this moment:
Oscar Wilde, the quintessential queer, knew [our resolves don't last long]…. [He said,] "Good resolutions are simply checks that men draw on a bank where they have no account," he said.
"The only way to spend New Year's Eve is either quietly with friends or in a brothel," the gay poet W.H. Auden said about spending Dec. 31 agog in resolutions.
So in some sense I shouldn't be surprised to find this in the list of resolutions:
When a "progressive," hetero poet says I should treat my queerness as a "teachable moment," I won't sigh and turn away from her. It gets old fast, but as long as there is homophobia, we queers will be placed in the role of "educators."
What are your New Year's Resolutions? Or do you think it's all a bunch of bollocks!
Hope everyone is looking forward to a bright 2011. Watch this space for some personal news about where 2011 will find me.
December 29, 2010
Can literature still save us?
From the Wall Street Journal (via harriet):
Alain de Botton writes:
My own answer to what the humanities are for is simple: They should help us to live. We should look to culture as a storehouse of useful ideas about how to face our most pressing personal and professional issues. Novels and historical narratives can impart moral instruction and edification. Great paintings can suggest the requirements for happiness. Philosophy can probe our anxieties and offer consolation. It should be the job of a university education to tease out the therapeutic and illuminative aspects of culture, so that we emerge from a period of study as slightly less disturbed, selfish and blinkered human beings. Such a transformation benefits not only the economy but also our friends, children and spouses.
December 28, 2010
Happy Belated Birthday to Paul Cadmus
More from Band of Thebes. This time a birthday post (Dec. 17) about gay artist Paul Cadmus. B of T writes, in explaining the striking painting he posts on his page: "Cadmus's 1947 heavy-handed painting depicts happy gay life on the left and miserable heteros on the right. (So once again, let's eradicate the falsehood that there was no gay identity before Stonewall.) On the bright gay side, lush fecund green grass supports loving couples and great artists like Forster and Kirstein. On the dark straight side, there is no grass at all, only bleakness, horror, Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, and, terribly, miscegenation. It's from the Marion Koogler McNay Art Museum, San Antonio, Texas."What caught me eye is "So once again, let's eradicate the falsehood that there was no gay identity before Stonewall." I need to start a file collecting these examples!
December 27, 2010
The Year in Queer Poetry / Top 10 LGBT Fiction, Nonfiction of 2010
Lambda online has a really nice roundup for the Year in Queer Poetry!
Band of Thebes posts about "North America's preeminent guru of LGBT books, Richard Labonté['s]… top 10 fiction and nonfiction titles of 2010."
More gay poetry for your New Year's Resolution?
Huzzah! The new journal Assaracus is out, and I'm trumpeting this because I have seven poems in it! But wait, that's not all. The journal, edited by Bryan Borland at Sibling Rivalry Press, continues the work of the late John Stahle's journal Ganymede (Assaracus is Ganymede's brother).
The format is special, too, with a selection of poems not by a multitude of people in one issue, but rather focusing on a small group of poets, enabling the issue to devote more pages to each's work. The debut issue features work by: me, Shane Allison, Jay Burodny, Gavin Dillard, Matthew Hittinger, James Kangas, Raymond Luczak, Frank J. Miles, Stephen Mills, and Eric Norris.
Click here to order a copy!
Can you resist this cover?!?
The titles of my poems:
TO MY FATHER'S BLUE TUXEDO
MY PAPA'S FAULT (after Theodore Roethke's "My Papa's Waltz")
AUBADE WITH PLUM
SENSORIUM
BLOOD IN THE CUM
FINDING AN EGG IN WINTE
R
LUSTER
December 20, 2010
"And in shadow behind me, a primitive IV / To keep the show going." — from a poem by James Merrilll
Happy Holidays, everyone! It's that time of year. Every year as our Christmas tree begins to lose its life, I always think of this poem ("Christmas Tree" [1995]) by James Merrill, below. It simultaneously destroys me and gives me a sense of hopeful ongoingness. The comparison to a loved one dying of AIDS lies just under the surface, there… but not a forced reading, just another layer for those who see it. I see it. And that's part of what destroys me.
For more poems, visit the PoetryFoundation.com article that lists some contemporary poems for the holidays (also see below). Many of them are also about Christmas trees. Funny how that's become the poet's subject so often when it comes to this holiday. Do you have a favorite holiday poem to share? Please add in the comments!
CHRISTMAS TREE, by James Merrilll
To be
Brought down at last
From the cold sighing mountain
Where I and the others
Had been fed, looked after, kept still,
Meant, I knew—of course I knew—
That it would be only a matter of weeks,
That there was nothing more to do.
Warmly they took me in, made much of me,
The point from the start was to keep my spirits up.
I could assent to that. For honestly,
It did help to be wound in jewels, to send
Their colors flashing forth from vents in the deep
Fragrant sable that cloaked me head to foot.
Over me then they wove a spell of shining—
Purple and silver chains, eavesdripping tinsel,
Amulets, milagros: software of silver,
A heart, a little girl, a Model T,
Two staring eyes. The angels, trumpets, BUD and BEA
(The children's names) in clownlike capitals,
Somewhere a music box whose tiny song
Played and replayed I ended before long
By loving. And in shadow behind me, a primitive IV
To keep the show going. Yes, yes, what lay ahead
Was clear: the stripping, the cold street, my chemicals
Plowed back into Earth for lives to come—
No doubt a blessing, a harvest, but one that doesn't bear,
Now or ever, dwelling upon. To have grown so thin.
Needles and bone. The little boy's hands meeting
About my spine. The mother's voice: Holding up wonderfully!
No dread. No bitterness. The end beginning. Today's
Dusk room aglow
For the last time
With candlelight.
Faces love lit,
Gifts underfoot.
Still to be so poised, so
Receptive. Still to recall, to praise.
The poems over at PoetryFoundation include:
"Christmas, 1970" by Sandra M. Castillo
"Conches on Christmas" by Mike Chasar
"[little tree]" by E. E. Cummings
"Christmas Eve: My Mother Dressing" by Toi Derricotte
"Christmas Tree Lots" by Chris Green
"This is the Latest" by Ange Mlinko
"Advent" by Mary Jo Salter
