Lauding Frank O'Hara

Back in 2014, we read Frank O'Hara's Lunch Poems, and last October we discussed Brad Gooch's biography, City Poet: The Life and Times of Frank O'Hara. (He's also figured into several other books we've discussed over the years.) With that in mind, I appreciated Ada Calhoun's tribute to her fellow poet in the June 22 New York Times "Letter of Recommendation." She observes that O'Hara "had tremendous belief in the value of one person honestly encountering another" (quoting his declaration that "The only truth is face to face, the poem whose words become your mouth"), and "faith in the world to provide for us. ... He loved the world so much that seeing it through his eyes made me love the world, too."

As a bonus, she links to the obituary her father, Peter Schejeldahl, published in the Village Voice soon after O'Hara's untimely demise in 1966: "Everything about O'Hara is easy to demonstrate and exceedingly difficult to 'understand.' And the aura of the legendary, never far from him while he lived, now seems about to engulf the memory of all he was and did." I warmly commend both tributes to you.

George Chauncey claims the past--and present

Way back in 2009, five years after its publication, we discussed George Chauncey's Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture and the Making of the Gay Male World, 1890-1940. I still consult that seminal work from time to time, and highly recommend it. So I was pleased to read in the New York Times that the Library of Congress has named Chauncey this year's winner of the Kluge Humanities Prize, making him the first scholar in LGBT studies to be so honored. The award, which is conferred every two years and comes with a $500,000 prize, is intended to recognize scholarship that resonates both inside and outside academia.

Chauncey, a professor of American history at Columbia University, where he is the director of the school's Research Initiative on the Global History of Sexualities, intends to use the prize to collaborate with the library's historians and curators on its AIDS Memorial Quilt archive collection. He notes that he was inspired to enter the field of LGBTQ history through the research of other suppressed groups: "Debates over who should be included in history are really often about who do we think should be included in American society today. Who should be respected in American society today? And to establish black history or women's history or LGBTQ history as a vibrant and respected field of historical scholarship is to lay a claim on the present as well as the past."

The Godfather of Gay Lit

To promote its Pride Reading List, OR Books is offering Felice Picano's 2015 memoir, Nights at Rizzoli, at a 15% discount if you order by June 30. (We've read Picano's novel, The Lure, and several selections by him in The Violet Quill Reader.) The memoir recounts how Picano, an aspiring young writer, lucked into a job as a manager at the legendary Rizzoli Books in Manhattan in 1971, and parlayed that into a literary career that exposed him to some of the brightest lights in the world's cultural capital--all while he was exploring post-Stonewall, pre-AIDS New York City.

The OR list includes several other books that are intriguing, and the same discount is available for those.

The Queer Books Auction

Back in April, Octavio Roca was kind enough to alert us to an Esquire article touting "25 Must-Read Books by Queer Authors." Well, wouldn't you know it? The magazine has just upped the ante by replacing it with "46 Best Books by Queer Authors," selected by 18 LBGTQIA+ luminaries. Not to be outdone, Octavio shared with me this Book Riot article, "The 100 Most Influential Queer Books of All Time." I'll certainly be curious to find out how much overlap (if any) there is among these compilations.

Bad Gays, Bad Gays!

For all the quips and jokes about the wicked being more interesting people to read about, and better company to hang out with, than the saintly, there has been surprisingly little literature devoted to "bad gays." I daresay respectability politics plays a big part in that imbalance, as none of us wants to give the homophobes and bigots ammunition (metaphorical and literal) by revealing our character flaws. 

Fortunately, Huw Lemmey and Ben Miller are here to shine the spotlight on "the gay people in history who do not flatter us, and whom we cannot make into heroes: the liars, the powerful, the criminal and the successful." They do so in the pages of Bad Gays: A Homosexual History, which covers an astonishingly wide range of eras and cultures. Here are reviews from Literary Hub and the Washington Post (the New York Times hasn't reviewed it yet).

Tobias Smollett

Last month we began our new anthology, Pages Passed from Hand to Hand: The Hidden Tradition of Homosexual Literature from 1748 to 1914, by reading an excerpt from Tobias Smollett's novel, The Adventures of Roderick Random. Here, courtesy of Mike Mazza, is a portrait of the author (a handsome fop, if I do say so myself):

Careening into Gay Midlife

To whet your appetite for our Wed., June 15, discussion of James Daniel's Careening into Gay Midlife, here is a glowing review from the Seattle Gay Times. James, a member of BookMen DC, will be on hand to talk about his memoir and answer questions. I hope to see many of you there!

James Kirchick speaks at the Library of Congress

As I noted in an earlier posting ("Sex and the Secret City"--scroll down), there is a lot of interest in reading James Kirchick's new book, Secret City: The Hidden History of Gay Washington. So I am most grateful to Ernie Raskauskas for alerting me to the fact that the author will appear at the Library of Congress this coming Thursday, June 9, at 7 p.m. BREAKING NEWS: Mr. Kirchick has tested positive for COVID-19, alas, so he will participate in the event remotely. However, the Library has set up a livestream, so you can enjoy the interview after the fact, regardless of whether you had ever registered to attend in person.

Poems for Pride Month

Continuing my ongoing series of postings here spotlighting LGBTQ poets the American Academy of Poetry has featured via its Poem-a-Day newsletter, here are a set of nine poems in honor of Pride Month.  

Enjoy!

i love you to the moon &                        by Chen Chen

from obedience [the clock is on time]     by kari edwards

This Is What Makes Us Worlds                by Joshua Jennifer Espinoza

10 AM Is When You Come to Me            by Meg Day

I, Lover                                                        by Elsa Gidlow

Black Parade                                                by Darrel Alejandro Holnes

Boy in a Stolen Evening Gown                    by Saeed Jones

Gay Marriage Poem                                      by Jenny Johnson

Edmonia Lewis and I Weather the Storm        by Xan Phillips