|
| Our Deep Gossip
ISBN: 9780299295639
Platform/Publisher: Project MUSE / University of Wisconsin Press
Digital rights: Users: Unlimited; Printing: Chapters; Download: Chapters
Subjects: American poetry; Gay men''s writings American; Poets American; Gay authors;
Interviewing eight contemporary gay male writers, this collection teases out the attachments between personal life and art-making practices in the dynamic world of queer poetry. Hennessy (Outside the Lines: Talking with Contemporary Gay Poets) is of equal measure an astute, studied academic and an enthusiastic fan of the collected writers. His intellect becomes a clever through line, adding cohesion to the diverse voices and philosophies of Edward Field, John Ashbery, Richard Howard, Aaron Shurin, Dennis Cooper, Cyrus Cassels, Wayne Koestenbaum, and Kazim Ali. While those who aren't already fans of these poets might find their interest lagging from time to time, there are enough singular and surprising moments to earn back the reader's attention-that incredibly rare occasion of hearing John Ashbery discuss the link between his sexuality and his writing style, for instance, or Wayne Koestenbaum's declaration that writing a particular poem felt like "diving into the wreck, but the drowned vessel was my father's anus." These moments are the strength of the text, allowing insight into the poet's work that evades the dry tedium of much criticism and is instead untethered through the free flow of conversation, favoring further questions rather than reductive answers. In short, Hennessy gives the poets generous space to speak, and in this space the book succeeds. B&w illus. (Nov.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Christopher Hennessy is the author of Outside the Lines: Talking with Contemporary Gay Poets and a collection of poems, Love-In-Idleness , which was a finalist for the Thom Gunn Award for Gay Poetry. He is the associate editor for The Gay & Lesbian Review-Worldwide and lives in Boston, Massachusetts. |
