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He Do The Gay Man In Different Voices
Winner of the 2012 Lambda Literary Prize for Gay Poetry.
Unable to accept complacency in suburban life, Stephen S. Mills transports himself to dank prison cells, international executions, and the minds of murderers that unravel through the kinky underbelly of America. He comes full-circle back to the bedroom of a young, gay couple whose everyday lives surprise us in a flawed and fascinating world. He Do the Gay Man in Different Voices channels the hushed tones, loving whispers, and lusty moans of a generation deluged in an unflinching, unending media assault that brings the best and worst of us to an exciting, terrifying proximity.
Unable to accept complacency in suburban life, Stephen S. Mills transports himself to dank prison cells, international executions, and the minds of murderers that unravel through the kinky underbelly of America. He comes full-circle back to the bedroom of a young, gay couple whose everyday lives surprise us in a flawed and fascinating world. He Do the Gay Man in Different Voices channels the hushed tones, loving whispers, and lusty moans of a generation deluged in an unflinching, unending media assault that brings the best and worst of us to an exciting, terrifying proximity.
94 pages, Paperback
First published February 1, 2012
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About the author
Stephen S. Mills
7 books37 followersStephen S. Mills (he/they) is the author of the Lambda Award-winning book He Do the Gay Man in Different Voices (2012) as well as A History of the Unmarried (2014) and Not Everything Thrown Starts a Revolution (2018) all from Sibling Rivalry Press. His work has appeared in The American Poetry Review, Columbia Poetry Review, Fourteen Poems, The New York Quarterly, The Los Angeles Review, The Rumpus, and others. Two of his books were placed on the Over the Rainbow List compiled yearly by the American Library Association. He is also the author of the plays Waiting for Manilow and Is That All There Is? His fourth book Final Slash Boy is forthcoming from Broken Sleep Books. He lives in New York City.
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Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
March 31, 2012
The power of great poetry lies in its ability to echo the complexities of human experience. It strives to employ language, a tool aimed to simplify, in order to achieve what the dictionary has failed to give us: the vast definition(s) of human experience. As the great Jack Gilbert once wrote: “Love, we say,
God, we say, Rome and Michiko, we write, and the words
Get it wrong.”
Unfortunately, Stephen S. Mills's first book He Do the Gay Man in Different Voices, falls short of that very important endeavor. In fact, Mills has, through the simplified metaphor and language, reduced socially complex ideas of identity, race, and gender, to their basest and sometimes even stereotypical existences. In the book's longest sequence “A Experiment in How To Become Someone Else Who Isn't Moving Anymore,” in which Mills negotiates his queer identity through the trauma of Jefferey Dahmer's life, Mills writes that “[Dahmer] would've liked my gayness, my effeminate/ voice, my tight ass, and thick cock.” What's most troubling is that Mills, by a few strokes of his pen, has reduced the incredibly intricate identity of “gayness” to three terse phrases: effeminate, tight ass, and thick cock. It seems the very poet who speaks for gay suffrage has succumbed to the social propaganda that has for years sexualized gay male identities and has, unintentionally, not only echoed the very language of LGBT oppressors but also reduced the gay experience to a restrictive bodily trope.
But perhaps the book's most stifling errors occur when the poet engages issues of race. As a Black queer reader, I often welcome the idea of White writers engaging in racial trauma, something that has historically been a burden embraced exclusively by writers of color. When dealing with difficult and often times complex issues, a writer is only as good as he is informed. This is not the case with this book:
Black men love the paleness of my body,
grow hard at the redness of my hair.
I'm as far from black as you can get.
It's a treat to get to sleep with a white man.
I could take any of the men home,
and I have. Have seen my whiteness
sprawled across their darkness—
The presumptions and the imposed lusting of Black men over the speaker's whiteness is cringe-worthy. The generalization of the phrase “Black men”, the confidence in its declarative tone is worthy of a double-take. I had to put the book down. I had to catch my breath. As a person of color, I am unsettled. But this, unfortunately, is not new nor surprising to me. For centuries, the white body has been equated to beauty and perfection. From depictions of seraphim to Jesus Christ to Brad Pitt. This sentiment has only been perpetuated further in popular culture, a predominate influence in Mills's writing, and it shows. Instead of exploring this friction of race relations by asking the tougher questions, Mills, like other popular media outlets, echoes these loathsome stereotypes , and not to elucidate—but rather, to simply confirm their erroneous influence on queer people. Mills goes to write that “[Black men] [h]ave seen my whiteness/ sprawled across their darkness—” Through the means of descriptive narrative, Mills evinces a freudian slip: the “whiteness” is moving across a “darkness,” a word heavily steeped in negative connotations. This, coupled with the speaker's body “sprawled” across the Black men, presents an image of a “darkness” that necessitates illumination, one that is offered only through the speaker's white body. In hopes to support these bold claims, Mills inserts a line by the late Black poet Reginald Shepherd: “It's a treat to sleep with a white man.” But Shepherd's statement, which speaks to the isolation and discrimination experienced by Black men within the queer community and therefore making intimate relations with White men a rarity, is misread as a Black infatuation with white bodies:'Black men love the paleness of my body,/ grow hard at the redness of my hair.”
Another problem lies in the vast and sweeping presumptions that hinder the book's potential to explore the controversial subjects it presents. Again, racial identities are simplified to mere symbols. In the same intimate scene between the speaker and his Black partner, the speaker imposes that
...There is more than sex here,
more than black cock, white ass, red hair between
legs. We are sleeping with history.
But instead of using this point to investigate the complex and particular drama of race between gay men, Mills dodges towards a broader trope:
There is a master inside me. A slave inside him....
In the confines of my bed, he moved against me,
kissed my lips, wanted me to hold him
as he whispered in my ear: I've never felt so close
to another man. A white man.
In the context of sex, something so immediate dictated by desire, the sentiment for conscious racial conclusion is forced and unearned. Where the speaker identifies himself using particulars: red hair, white body, tight ass, thick cock, etc..,the Black man, on the other hand, is generic and faceless, he is used as a tool in an effort to conveniently mend the historical gap of slavery via the act of sex. As if sex is enough to remedy the troublesome riffs of race in America, as if the speaker can possibly mend the imbalances of power structures instilled and still felt today from historical slavery simply by sleeping with a black man. The poem fails not in it's desire to explore race, but in its anxiety to force a neat closure to something as serrated and traumatic as race in America. What's most problematic is that such closures can come only through the agent of a white body.
Throughout these missteps, it's important to note that Mills is attempting to voice the liberal and progressive perception of social progress. But good intentions can easily falter through misinformed conceits. In the poem “I Tell Edmon He Writes Better Than My Students,” in which the speaker meditates on his correspondence with an imprisoned gay Armenian-born porn star, Mills attempts to vilify American narrow-mindedness but the conceit backfires in its unintentional exclusions. When speaking of the Armenian porn star, the speaker informs us that
...English is his third
language, which reminds me how stupid Americans
can be. I took French for six years and still
can't speak it or write it, can barely read it.
In an attempt at modesty, the speaker reveals his own shortcomings with language. But by doing so, and by stating that Americans are “stupid” for not knowing a language other than English, Mills excludes anyone speaking another language the title of “American.” For MIlls, one cannot speak Spanish, Chinese, Armenian, or all of the above and still be American. Again, identities, and in this case the American identity, is boiled down to simplistic adjectives and stereotypes. This tendency follows Mills at nearly every turn, even when dealing with issues of femininity and woman's suffrage:
...Women are taught
to fear all men, are told every man wants to rape
and kill you, and if a man walks behind you
in a parking lot, walk faster, have keys ready,
and be prepared to knee him in the balls—a man's
only weak spot—a woman's only defense.
In the admirable effort to speak towards male dominance in our contemporary society, Mills's rhetoric reads closer to an anti-feminist’s attack on female thought. It employs common and stereotyped conceptions of femininity in hopes of defending it. The argument collapses before it even has a chance for thorough investigation. Perhaps a better approach would be to explore more particular and specific instances, using singular people or persons rather than the broad and sweeping labels of “Men” and “Women.”
The forced sentimental movements in Mills's first book is, for the lack of a better word, dangerous. Particularly in its simplification of vast and complex American identifies. Yes, Mills should be credited in his engagement of difficult and often shunned topics in his poems. We can only hope more writers will follow from this example and negotiate the tough social/political questions. But with such a heady endeavor requires careful and thoroughly informed meditations, something this book lacks at its most pivotal junctions.
Unfortunately, Stephen S. Mills's first book He Do the Gay Man in Different Voices, falls short of that very important endeavor. In fact, Mills has, through the simplified metaphor and language, reduced socially complex ideas of identity, race, and gender, to their basest and sometimes even stereotypical existences. In the book's longest sequence “A Experiment in How To Become Someone Else Who Isn't Moving Anymore,” in which Mills negotiates his queer identity through the trauma of Jefferey Dahmer's life, Mills writes that “[Dahmer] would've liked my gayness, my effeminate/ voice, my tight ass, and thick cock.” What's most troubling is that Mills, by a few strokes of his pen, has reduced the incredibly intricate identity of “gayness” to three terse phrases: effeminate, tight ass, and thick cock. It seems the very poet who speaks for gay suffrage has succumbed to the social propaganda that has for years sexualized gay male identities and has, unintentionally, not only echoed the very language of LGBT oppressors but also reduced the gay experience to a restrictive bodily trope.
But perhaps the book's most stifling errors occur when the poet engages issues of race. As a Black queer reader, I often welcome the idea of White writers engaging in racial trauma, something that has historically been a burden embraced exclusively by writers of color. When dealing with difficult and often times complex issues, a writer is only as good as he is informed. This is not the case with this book:
Black men love the paleness of my body,
grow hard at the redness of my hair.
I'm as far from black as you can get.
It's a treat to get to sleep with a white man.
I could take any of the men home,
and I have. Have seen my whiteness
sprawled across their darkness—
The presumptions and the imposed lusting of Black men over the speaker's whiteness is cringe-worthy. The generalization of the phrase “Black men”, the confidence in its declarative tone is worthy of a double-take. I had to put the book down. I had to catch my breath. As a person of color, I am unsettled. But this, unfortunately, is not new nor surprising to me. For centuries, the white body has been equated to beauty and perfection. From depictions of seraphim to Jesus Christ to Brad Pitt. This sentiment has only been perpetuated further in popular culture, a predominate influence in Mills's writing, and it shows. Instead of exploring this friction of race relations by asking the tougher questions, Mills, like other popular media outlets, echoes these loathsome stereotypes , and not to elucidate—but rather, to simply confirm their erroneous influence on queer people. Mills goes to write that “[Black men] [h]ave seen my whiteness/ sprawled across their darkness—” Through the means of descriptive narrative, Mills evinces a freudian slip: the “whiteness” is moving across a “darkness,” a word heavily steeped in negative connotations. This, coupled with the speaker's body “sprawled” across the Black men, presents an image of a “darkness” that necessitates illumination, one that is offered only through the speaker's white body. In hopes to support these bold claims, Mills inserts a line by the late Black poet Reginald Shepherd: “It's a treat to sleep with a white man.” But Shepherd's statement, which speaks to the isolation and discrimination experienced by Black men within the queer community and therefore making intimate relations with White men a rarity, is misread as a Black infatuation with white bodies:'Black men love the paleness of my body,/ grow hard at the redness of my hair.”
Another problem lies in the vast and sweeping presumptions that hinder the book's potential to explore the controversial subjects it presents. Again, racial identities are simplified to mere symbols. In the same intimate scene between the speaker and his Black partner, the speaker imposes that
...There is more than sex here,
more than black cock, white ass, red hair between
legs. We are sleeping with history.
But instead of using this point to investigate the complex and particular drama of race between gay men, Mills dodges towards a broader trope:
There is a master inside me. A slave inside him....
In the confines of my bed, he moved against me,
kissed my lips, wanted me to hold him
as he whispered in my ear: I've never felt so close
to another man. A white man.
In the context of sex, something so immediate dictated by desire, the sentiment for conscious racial conclusion is forced and unearned. Where the speaker identifies himself using particulars: red hair, white body, tight ass, thick cock, etc..,the Black man, on the other hand, is generic and faceless, he is used as a tool in an effort to conveniently mend the historical gap of slavery via the act of sex. As if sex is enough to remedy the troublesome riffs of race in America, as if the speaker can possibly mend the imbalances of power structures instilled and still felt today from historical slavery simply by sleeping with a black man. The poem fails not in it's desire to explore race, but in its anxiety to force a neat closure to something as serrated and traumatic as race in America. What's most problematic is that such closures can come only through the agent of a white body.
Throughout these missteps, it's important to note that Mills is attempting to voice the liberal and progressive perception of social progress. But good intentions can easily falter through misinformed conceits. In the poem “I Tell Edmon He Writes Better Than My Students,” in which the speaker meditates on his correspondence with an imprisoned gay Armenian-born porn star, Mills attempts to vilify American narrow-mindedness but the conceit backfires in its unintentional exclusions. When speaking of the Armenian porn star, the speaker informs us that
...English is his third
language, which reminds me how stupid Americans
can be. I took French for six years and still
can't speak it or write it, can barely read it.
In an attempt at modesty, the speaker reveals his own shortcomings with language. But by doing so, and by stating that Americans are “stupid” for not knowing a language other than English, Mills excludes anyone speaking another language the title of “American.” For MIlls, one cannot speak Spanish, Chinese, Armenian, or all of the above and still be American. Again, identities, and in this case the American identity, is boiled down to simplistic adjectives and stereotypes. This tendency follows Mills at nearly every turn, even when dealing with issues of femininity and woman's suffrage:
...Women are taught
to fear all men, are told every man wants to rape
and kill you, and if a man walks behind you
in a parking lot, walk faster, have keys ready,
and be prepared to knee him in the balls—a man's
only weak spot—a woman's only defense.
In the admirable effort to speak towards male dominance in our contemporary society, Mills's rhetoric reads closer to an anti-feminist’s attack on female thought. It employs common and stereotyped conceptions of femininity in hopes of defending it. The argument collapses before it even has a chance for thorough investigation. Perhaps a better approach would be to explore more particular and specific instances, using singular people or persons rather than the broad and sweeping labels of “Men” and “Women.”
The forced sentimental movements in Mills's first book is, for the lack of a better word, dangerous. Particularly in its simplification of vast and complex American identifies. Yes, Mills should be credited in his engagement of difficult and often shunned topics in his poems. We can only hope more writers will follow from this example and negotiate the tough social/political questions. But with such a heady endeavor requires careful and thoroughly informed meditations, something this book lacks at its most pivotal junctions.
December 17, 2013
This is such mediocre poetry that it’s hard to know where to begin. For one thing, Mills seems to have included alternative drafts of more than a few poems in this volume, all their clunkiest lines intact. Perhaps he hoped readers would fall for the conceit that these variorums were actually distinct poems despite the fact that they worry the same material like a loose tooth. The thematically repetitive paeans to Nickolay Petrov (the nom de porn of Edmon Vardanyan, with whom Mills is obsessed), quickly become tedious, but what’s just plain icky about them is that Mills seems convinced he's exploring something outré here. That, in fact, is the book’s biggest failing. Mills is a young, cute (he wants to make sure you know that) gay man who has had a lot of anonymous sex, is titillated with S&M, and has a medium-sized porn addiction. Oooh! Edgy! Except that it isn’t. What it is, is a middle-class white boy’s tourist adventures in edgy. Mills mentions the late Reginald Shepherd like a kind of nervous tic, apparently hoping that street cred will rub off from a black poet who is too dead to notice that Mills also swiped enough material from Shepherd’s “Hygiene” to make at least a couple of the pieces in this anthology. (Yes; Mills acknowledges quoting Shepherd’s lines; he doesn’t cop to “borrowing” Shepherd’s entire perspective on Jeffrey Dahmer to write his own derivative poems on the same subject.) There’s a great deal of that kind of striving in this book, a reaching for “realness” that Mills can’t claim for his own. He writes about Dahmer; he writes about gay teenagers allegedly executed in Iran; he writes about Vardanyan, his porn star prison pen pal who is serving a deuce for attempted murder and whose f-ed up life chiefly serves as fodder for Mills’ sexual and rescue fantasies; he references someone else’s gay bashing and tries out ten-cent pop-psych analysis in “Anatomy of a Hate Crime.” In all of these cases, Mills attempts to situate himself within an experience that he appropriates but with which he never quite connects emotionally. When Mills writes, in a line from the title poem, “Nothing real / has ever happened to us. Nothing so bad,” he may finally be coming clean, but it’s not enough to bring these poems to life. At a stylistic level, in fact, they are too often painfully literal and linguistically flat. Because these are all prose poems, moreover, there’s a kind of a built-in cheat: Mills attempts to trick out drab prose with stanzas and line breaks, molding it into the form of poetry without adopting poetry’s aesthetics. Mills may be hoping to “do the gay man in different voices,” but in the end all the voices sound distressingly like his own.
November 26, 2013
Jessie McCartney has said before that the first book a poet shares is often introspective and revolves around the life and times of the poet. Stephen Mills' "He Do the Gay Man in Difference Voices" lives up to this expectation but manages to push the envelope through both the mundane and exceptional experiences the LGBT community encounters day-to-day and year-to-year.
What I liked most about this chapbook are these very aspects of mundane and exceptional: They are the tools Mills uses to invite us to experience his evolution as both a gay man and a poet. Out of this arises the sense of the artist honing his craft as he moves through the works, so much so that when a theme, concept, or idea reoccurs (and there are lots of repeated occurrences), it is new because it is now through the eyes of someone older, wiser, more insightful...and in the hands of a poet who understands his craft. There are a few high voltage poems here, but they have depth and are not mere attempts to shock and awe.
If I were to highlight my favorite poems, they would include the following works:
Iranian Boys Hanged for Sodomy, July 2005 This is a heavy, heady poem whose image reemerges throughout the chapbook. I felt it was an important, moving poem that roots out how we individually perceive things that occur in our lives, both near and distant. This poem became something of a cornerstone for me throughout the book.
Fisting You for the First Time on the Day "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" is Repealed If left up to its title alone, this would be nothing more than a poem that shocks for shock's sake. Mills, though, creates a love story in the way he handles and executes a topic that normally leaves me squeamish and in psychosomatic pain. The reference to "a child you will never carry" is one of the most beautiful lines I have read.
Against Our Better Judgment We Plan a Trip to Iran Again, the theme of the executed Iranian boys returns, but here the men in the poem are older and wiser. Mills grapples with "politically correct / pleas for respect to culture, to a religion that isn't ours to have" and the counter intuitive desire to "fuck religion" and seek out a poetic justice turned vengeance, as the martyr within fights "to get out." This is probably my favorite poem in the chapbook.
An Experiment In How to Become Someone Else Who Isn't Moving Anymore is a fascinating work that centers around the mundane routines of daily live that are orbited by the extremes, like Jeffrey Dahmer. It's a poetic powerhouse that feels as if you're reading different poems, but there are stanzas and segments within that really unite and carry the entire piece. The heaviness of race and gender roles/expectations politically charges things up in the beginning but the spark actually comes when you read lines, "I know it can be hard to love a poet. / To take him in your bed each night, / knowing whatever you do might end up / in his next verse. It is even harder to lose / a poet, or so I imagine." As a poet in a 13-year interracial relationship, the particulars of this poem strongly resonated with me, especially the imagery of "patterns to everything," especially our daily routines. Where Mills really brings it home, though, is when he asks "How many lives does a gay man have? / How many shots?" Here, it becomes evident that we are the people to whom Mills is giving poetic voice.
My Boyfriend Tells My Parents I'm Writing To a Gay Porn Star in Prison This is another favorite poem because it circles around the aspect of writing. You sense the necessary defensiveness Mills experiences after his parents learn of his pen pal inmate, but what I found more interesting was how this leads him to coming out as a poet, which is sometimes even harder since poetry can be more personal and introspective (and poets are, indeed, guilty of the "poetic bending of the truth.") It was another poem with which I could relate. At this point, of course, we know what Mills is cooking in his poetic verses, so one has to wonder how his parents have responded...
"A History of Blood" is one of the last poems in the book, and its concepts weave the poems together, leaving me to wonder why it was not selected as the title. Blood itself is a theme that occurs over and over in Mills' collection and the unifying force behind our mundane yet exceptional humanity, the things that terrorize and excite us, which "He Do the Gay Man in Different Voices" strives to, and succeeds at, showcasing.
What I liked most about this chapbook are these very aspects of mundane and exceptional: They are the tools Mills uses to invite us to experience his evolution as both a gay man and a poet. Out of this arises the sense of the artist honing his craft as he moves through the works, so much so that when a theme, concept, or idea reoccurs (and there are lots of repeated occurrences), it is new because it is now through the eyes of someone older, wiser, more insightful...and in the hands of a poet who understands his craft. There are a few high voltage poems here, but they have depth and are not mere attempts to shock and awe.
If I were to highlight my favorite poems, they would include the following works:
Iranian Boys Hanged for Sodomy, July 2005 This is a heavy, heady poem whose image reemerges throughout the chapbook. I felt it was an important, moving poem that roots out how we individually perceive things that occur in our lives, both near and distant. This poem became something of a cornerstone for me throughout the book.
Fisting You for the First Time on the Day "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" is Repealed If left up to its title alone, this would be nothing more than a poem that shocks for shock's sake. Mills, though, creates a love story in the way he handles and executes a topic that normally leaves me squeamish and in psychosomatic pain. The reference to "a child you will never carry" is one of the most beautiful lines I have read.
Against Our Better Judgment We Plan a Trip to Iran Again, the theme of the executed Iranian boys returns, but here the men in the poem are older and wiser. Mills grapples with "politically correct / pleas for respect to culture, to a religion that isn't ours to have" and the counter intuitive desire to "fuck religion" and seek out a poetic justice turned vengeance, as the martyr within fights "to get out." This is probably my favorite poem in the chapbook.
An Experiment In How to Become Someone Else Who Isn't Moving Anymore is a fascinating work that centers around the mundane routines of daily live that are orbited by the extremes, like Jeffrey Dahmer. It's a poetic powerhouse that feels as if you're reading different poems, but there are stanzas and segments within that really unite and carry the entire piece. The heaviness of race and gender roles/expectations politically charges things up in the beginning but the spark actually comes when you read lines, "I know it can be hard to love a poet. / To take him in your bed each night, / knowing whatever you do might end up / in his next verse. It is even harder to lose / a poet, or so I imagine." As a poet in a 13-year interracial relationship, the particulars of this poem strongly resonated with me, especially the imagery of "patterns to everything," especially our daily routines. Where Mills really brings it home, though, is when he asks "How many lives does a gay man have? / How many shots?" Here, it becomes evident that we are the people to whom Mills is giving poetic voice.
My Boyfriend Tells My Parents I'm Writing To a Gay Porn Star in Prison This is another favorite poem because it circles around the aspect of writing. You sense the necessary defensiveness Mills experiences after his parents learn of his pen pal inmate, but what I found more interesting was how this leads him to coming out as a poet, which is sometimes even harder since poetry can be more personal and introspective (and poets are, indeed, guilty of the "poetic bending of the truth.") It was another poem with which I could relate. At this point, of course, we know what Mills is cooking in his poetic verses, so one has to wonder how his parents have responded...
"A History of Blood" is one of the last poems in the book, and its concepts weave the poems together, leaving me to wonder why it was not selected as the title. Blood itself is a theme that occurs over and over in Mills' collection and the unifying force behind our mundane yet exceptional humanity, the things that terrorize and excite us, which "He Do the Gay Man in Different Voices" strives to, and succeeds at, showcasing.
August 10, 2017
Raw and real and mesmerizing. Couldn't put this book down.
August 30, 2013
Many of Mills' poems, particularly because of their prose nature, feel solidly in the realm of process; that is a processing of ideas, a seeking to understand one's self and other selves. The speaker, who often identifies himself as the writer by repeatedly pointing out the color of his hair, is very forward about presenting his fascinations on the page, whether with Jeffrey Dahmer or writing to cons or reflecting on going to the clubs and first encounters with sex. As such, the writer seems to be exploring the layers of his experience, but I sense deeper layers yet to be explored. There's a superficiality and shock value the writer is playing with, daring you to think he's just a superficial club boy, but a main theme he addresses here is duality. How Dahmer compartmentalized himself between normal/killer, how the con Mills writes to compartmentalizes between porn star/convict. Mills himself reflects upon his own duality as sexual adventurer by night/college instructor by day.
I think some of these ideas are pretty brave to put down in print, even if they're ideas others have likely thought; I mean how do you reconcile how awful Dahmer's crimes are with the observance of how handsome he was? Desire and revulsion on the same page. Or admitting that retaining sexual desire in a committed relationship is challenging? Even admitting that sexuality is nebulous and odd and one's objects of desire can be as exciting as they are enigmatic.
I think some of these ideas are pretty brave to put down in print, even if they're ideas others have likely thought; I mean how do you reconcile how awful Dahmer's crimes are with the observance of how handsome he was? Desire and revulsion on the same page. Or admitting that retaining sexual desire in a committed relationship is challenging? Even admitting that sexuality is nebulous and odd and one's objects of desire can be as exciting as they are enigmatic.
July 22, 2016
While Mr. Mill's writing initially picqued my interest in one of the Assaracus journals, I was disappointed at his first full length release. I appreciate the topics he attempts to tackle, but as a whole, the book is extremely self-indulgent (reminding us time and time again how often Mr. Mills loves himself), it consistently makes incorrect presumptions about the reader, and ultimately fails in its handling and broad generalizations of race, gender, and sexuality. I hope that with a bit more life experience under his belt Mr. Mills can blossom into the writer I believe I can be.
March 25, 2012
He Do the Gay Man is Different Voices is definitely a collection worth talking about. The anger and fear is palpable in each poem, and as is his love for his partner. Not being a gay man myself, I was able to learn and empathize with fear and anger over hate crimes, especially, in a way I hadn't before. This collection brought to me an awareness of the culture around me that I hadn't had.
Read
February 5, 2016Terrific narrative poetry, very dark, very sensual, not erotic although some may find it too explicit. Fascination with death, dark, murder, the angst of youth, pessimism and hate crimes. Enjoyed part 3 with porn star in prison and thought part 2 regarding Dalmer was well done.
July 13, 2012
Stunning, breathtaking, unexpected. One to read over and over.
November 17, 2017
Irreverent, dark, funny, brutal, honest first collection of poems. Glad I stumbled on it when I did.
January 4, 2022
Fue como ir en columpio. Pasaba por momentos de alto interés y excitación, pero después todo bajaba y se volvía un tanto plano. Hay poemas BELLOS pero a otros siento que les faltó un broche de oro que mostrara su verdadera potencia. Interesantes los símiles entre crimen y homosexualidad, pero también un poco facilistas las metáforas de la luna sobre los cuerpos y así. Sí puedo decir que quiero seguir leyendo a esta señora.
April 12, 2024
Holy fuck, how Mills’s poetry seemingly came out of its womb so fully-formed - I can’t even. An astonishing debut.
February 8, 2012
The Challenging and Enormously Successful Poetry of Stephen S. Mills
Reading this collection of poems HE DO THE GAY MAN IN DIFFERENT VOICES serves to introduce many readers to the power of the young intensely talented Stephen S. Mills. His style of writing, visually, looking at the pages of his poems that tend to be quite long, appears more like pages from a scrapbook or notebook, so dense is the content while so accessible is his technique of placing his words/thoughts/experiences/fantasies before us.
To get a bit of history out of the way: `Stephen S. Mills has an MFA from Florida State University. His poems have appeared in The Gay and Lesbian Review, PANK Literary Magazine, Velvet Mafia, The New York Quarterly, The Antioch Review, The Los Angeles Review, Knockout, Ganymede, Poetic Voices Without Borders 2, Assaracus, and others. He is also the winner of the 2008 Gival Press Oscar Wilde Poetry Award. He currently lives in Orlando, FL with his partner and his dog.' And having that on the table, there is a bit of an interview with poet Jory Mickelson, Mills shared something that deserves quoting: `As a lover of literature, there have been countless poems, stories, and novels I've read that have completely changed me and my outlook on life. In my poetry, I attempt to shed light on many issues people are very uncomfortable with. By doing that, I know many will turn away from my work and not accept it or value it, but I also know there are people out there wanting and needing poems like mine. In many ways, I try to write the poems I wish I could have read as a younger man coming to terms with being gay.'
But now for his poems. Mills is able to take us with him to the most bizarre frames of mind and places where he has either experienced moments of bliss or moments of wonder or of horror that he releases on the page with such fluidity that they become not only tolerable but enormously engrossing. His is a mind suffused with the history of literature and poetry and he uses those touchstones to bring us the most startling erotic, at times voyeuristic transports, while at other times demanding of us that we stare into the mirror of media assault he pushes toward our eyes and minds.
In his extended poem that bears the title of this book, he is parodying TS Eliot's poem `The Waste Land', the original title of which, according to Mills, was `He do the Police in Different Voices' : this long poem traverses the life of the poet and excursions into other milieus and yet after all the strangely humorous moments he ends this reflective journey with the following:
VII
It's Christmas.
The tree is trimmed with silver balls,
Red tinsel, a crooked angel.
There's a fire crackling.
It smells of cinnamon and pine needles.
He stands before the tree naked.
In his forties.
His ass is just beginning to lose its battle with gravity.
Winter light is flooding the room.
The year is ending.
Time is rushing by, yet everything feels so slow.
Like this tree that is growing brittle,
Sucking water form a try below.
This tree is holding on to life,
Yet knows it's all about to end.
In a week's time, it will be bare, needleless,
And on the corner waiting for the garbage truck
To rumble down the city street in the cold
Of a January morning.
No, this is not indicative of the contents of this book of poems, but it is one of the few that can be shared in a review! The rest of the poems deal with the agony of seeing death, sex education, dalliances in bed/accompanied, one called `My Boyfriend Tells My Parents I'm Writing to a Gay Porn Star in Prison', `Imagining You in a Prison Photograph', and one of the most powerful ones - `Iranian Boys Hanged for Sodomy, July 2005.' Mills is simply not afraid to go anywhere his burgeoning imagination takes him. He writes about gay life as well as anyone writing today. In his long poem `An Experiment in How to Become Someone Else Who Isn't Moving Anymore' he traipses through race, sadism, Jeffrey Dahmer and ends it with 'November can be a quiet month./ The birds head South. The leaves/ pile at the end of Midwestern/ driveways, where boys run in woods./ Boys who don't understand/ the fascination they have with death,/ with everything in life that moves/ and then, eventually, stops.'
Stephen S. Mills is exploding with talent and has the courage to tell us the dark interstices of his mind. He is an extremely important new voice - a bit scary, but very real. He is addicting.
Grady Harp
Reading this collection of poems HE DO THE GAY MAN IN DIFFERENT VOICES serves to introduce many readers to the power of the young intensely talented Stephen S. Mills. His style of writing, visually, looking at the pages of his poems that tend to be quite long, appears more like pages from a scrapbook or notebook, so dense is the content while so accessible is his technique of placing his words/thoughts/experiences/fantasies before us.
To get a bit of history out of the way: `Stephen S. Mills has an MFA from Florida State University. His poems have appeared in The Gay and Lesbian Review, PANK Literary Magazine, Velvet Mafia, The New York Quarterly, The Antioch Review, The Los Angeles Review, Knockout, Ganymede, Poetic Voices Without Borders 2, Assaracus, and others. He is also the winner of the 2008 Gival Press Oscar Wilde Poetry Award. He currently lives in Orlando, FL with his partner and his dog.' And having that on the table, there is a bit of an interview with poet Jory Mickelson, Mills shared something that deserves quoting: `As a lover of literature, there have been countless poems, stories, and novels I've read that have completely changed me and my outlook on life. In my poetry, I attempt to shed light on many issues people are very uncomfortable with. By doing that, I know many will turn away from my work and not accept it or value it, but I also know there are people out there wanting and needing poems like mine. In many ways, I try to write the poems I wish I could have read as a younger man coming to terms with being gay.'
But now for his poems. Mills is able to take us with him to the most bizarre frames of mind and places where he has either experienced moments of bliss or moments of wonder or of horror that he releases on the page with such fluidity that they become not only tolerable but enormously engrossing. His is a mind suffused with the history of literature and poetry and he uses those touchstones to bring us the most startling erotic, at times voyeuristic transports, while at other times demanding of us that we stare into the mirror of media assault he pushes toward our eyes and minds.
In his extended poem that bears the title of this book, he is parodying TS Eliot's poem `The Waste Land', the original title of which, according to Mills, was `He do the Police in Different Voices' : this long poem traverses the life of the poet and excursions into other milieus and yet after all the strangely humorous moments he ends this reflective journey with the following:
VII
It's Christmas.
The tree is trimmed with silver balls,
Red tinsel, a crooked angel.
There's a fire crackling.
It smells of cinnamon and pine needles.
He stands before the tree naked.
In his forties.
His ass is just beginning to lose its battle with gravity.
Winter light is flooding the room.
The year is ending.
Time is rushing by, yet everything feels so slow.
Like this tree that is growing brittle,
Sucking water form a try below.
This tree is holding on to life,
Yet knows it's all about to end.
In a week's time, it will be bare, needleless,
And on the corner waiting for the garbage truck
To rumble down the city street in the cold
Of a January morning.
No, this is not indicative of the contents of this book of poems, but it is one of the few that can be shared in a review! The rest of the poems deal with the agony of seeing death, sex education, dalliances in bed/accompanied, one called `My Boyfriend Tells My Parents I'm Writing to a Gay Porn Star in Prison', `Imagining You in a Prison Photograph', and one of the most powerful ones - `Iranian Boys Hanged for Sodomy, July 2005.' Mills is simply not afraid to go anywhere his burgeoning imagination takes him. He writes about gay life as well as anyone writing today. In his long poem `An Experiment in How to Become Someone Else Who Isn't Moving Anymore' he traipses through race, sadism, Jeffrey Dahmer and ends it with 'November can be a quiet month./ The birds head South. The leaves/ pile at the end of Midwestern/ driveways, where boys run in woods./ Boys who don't understand/ the fascination they have with death,/ with everything in life that moves/ and then, eventually, stops.'
Stephen S. Mills is exploding with talent and has the courage to tell us the dark interstices of his mind. He is an extremely important new voice - a bit scary, but very real. He is addicting.
Grady Harp
March 17, 2017
Mills reminds me of a terribly earnest young John Waters, with all his talk of porn stars and serial killers. An interest in the perverse, but an inescapable sweetness always just underneath.
Of course, when Waters falters artistically, he still has his own elaborate, ironically constructed persona. Mills comes across much less fascinating, with his poems about process and teaching.
Maybe he's just young.
I liked the easy, conversational style of these poems, but found them to be too repetitive in their themes.
BUT I thought "Missing You While Watching Misery" was just terrific.
Of course, when Waters falters artistically, he still has his own elaborate, ironically constructed persona. Mills comes across much less fascinating, with his poems about process and teaching.
Maybe he's just young.
I liked the easy, conversational style of these poems, but found them to be too repetitive in their themes.
BUT I thought "Missing You While Watching Misery" was just terrific.
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews