Some LGBTQ poets to get to know, Part II

Here are more LGBTQ poems (not all by LGBTQ authors, I should note), courtesy of the American Academy of Poetry's Poem-a-Day newsletter. Enjoy!

I Sought the Wood in Winter            by Willa Cather

Reinforcements                                by Marianna Moore

At the New York AIDS Memorial    by Stefania Gomez

Femme Futures                      by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha

Much Later                                       by Gertrude Stein

Pastoral                                            by Djuna Barnes

Divorce Song                                    by Jameson Fitzpatrick

from "The Land"                              by Vita Sackville-West

Mercy                                               by Jose Antonio Rodriguez  

Guitarrero!                                        by Cyrus Cassells

Some LGBTQ poets to get to know, Part I

About a year ago, I began a periodic 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). I've fallen seriously behind on that project, so here are two catch-up compilations featuring those poems, which were disseminated between December 2021 and now. Enjoy!

three Black poems from August        by Danez Smith

(Note: We read his second poetry collection, Don't Call Us Dead, back in 2019.)

Root Systems                                     by Kay Ulanday Barrett

Vaccinated                                         by Jericho Brown

Farewell                                             by Federico Garcia Lorca

Having a Fight with You                   by Patrick Phillips

Euler's Equation                                by Bino A. Realuyo

February                                            by Tamiko Beyer

As I Grew Older                                by Langston Hughes

Shadow                                              by Bruce Nugent

Drift                                                  by Alicia Mountain

Romance is in the air...

I found this New York Times article, "'I Just Want Something that's Gay and Happy': LGBTQ Romance Is Booming," both informative and uplifting. There's even a local angle, for the article title comes from this paragraph: 

"People want to see themselves," said Laynie Rose Rizer, the assistant store manager at East City Bookshop in Washington, D.C. "Customers will come in and say, 'I just want something that's gay and happy.' And I'm like, 'I have 10 different options for you.'"

RIP, Richard Stevenson Lipez

When I first encountered Death Trick (1981), the first novel in Richard Stevenson's Donald Strachey mystery series, I devoured it, and the next several installments, as soon as they came out. Even though I didn't sustain that interest over the 17-book series, it wasn't because of any disaffection with Lipez's writing, which by all accounts remained masterful until the end. Richard Stevenson Lipez (his full name) passed away on March 16 at the age of 83. In addition to the Strachey series, Lipez regularly reviewed mysteries for the Washington Post. Here are obituaries from the Post and the New York Times.

25 Queer Must-Reads

My thanks to Octavio Roca for sharing this article from Esquire, "25 Must-Read Books by Queer Authors." I winced when I realized that we've only read three of these as a group, but felt slightly better when I took another look and saw we've read other books by several of the authors listed. How many of them have you read?