Here are more LGBTQ-themed poems (not all by LGBTQ authors, I should note) which the American Academy of Poetry's Poem-a-Day newsletter featured this fall. Enjoy!
Ghazal of Oranges by Jan-Henry Gray
There Is No San Lenin by Chip Livingston
The Dream of the Anti-Ekphrasis by Fargo Nissim Tbakhi
Here is the first of three catch-up installments in my ongoing series of postings here, spotlighting LGBTQ poets whose work the American Academy of Poetry has featured via its Poem-a-Day newsletter (as well as a smattering of straight poets who have addressed such themes in their work). These poems were all featured this past fall. Enjoy!
Tasting the Last of the Ice Age by Susan McCabe
On Reading Allen Ginsberg's "Homework" by Andrea Carter Brown
Men Who Think I Am One of Them Speak by Stacey Waite
The Art of Shooting in the Dark by Denice Frohman
Barnes & Noble, 1999 by Jesus I. Valles
Singing Funeral by Fei Hernandez
My thanks to all Bookmen who responded to my recent survey about our meeting time and venues. Effective with our Jan. 4, 2023, meeting, our starting time will be 7 p.m. instead of 7:30. In addition, first Wednesday meetings will now take place at the Cleveland Park Library (3310 Connecticut Ave. NW) in the second-floor conference room, where we used to meet in the Before Times, rather than the DC Center. We will continue to meet via Zoom on third Wednesdays, also at 7 p.m. Kindly mark your brand-new calendars and appointment books accordingly. 😀
Today's "Book World" section of the Washington Post includes a page devoted to "The 15 best book covers of 2022." One of them is a Picador Press double-decker combining Michael Cunningham's The Hours with the Virginia Woolf novel that inspired it, Mrs. Dalloway. I found that selection particularly serendipitous because I, along with several other Bookmen, attended Regal Cinema's simulcast of "The Hours," the Metropolitan Opera production based on Cunningham's novel, just this past Wednesday. Alas, my new computer won't let me download the book's cover here, but just click on the above link to see why the Post raved about it.
Several years ago, we began incorporating non-LGBTQ books into our reading list on a roughly quarterly basis. That experiment has largely been successful. However, as I pointed out in a recent email to the group, one unintended consequence of that expansion is that it now takes us longer to finish the main titles on our list, because there are fewer dates on which to schedule discussions.
With that in mind, I have proposed that, effective in January, we discuss non-LGBTQ literature on fifth Wednesdays—or add those books to the rotation of anthologies and short works that we discuss on third Wednesdays (which means we will read fewer of them each year). If you’re a member of our merry band, please consider weighing in on this; thanks.
Toward that end, I received the following response from Patrick Flynn which he has authorized me to share here and now:
"I am not sure a non-LGBTQ selection has value (though I am enjoying The Satanic Verses). I would prefer we use that extra day to work on our nomination/selection criteria. What, after all, does the rubric mean, particularly for literature that was written before the terms were invented and/or people and characters came out in numbers? To illustrate, does the book The Secret Dublin Diary of Gerald Manley Hopkins, meet our criteria or not? I think you would say yes. But do his poems?"
