Gay love poetry

Cafe Society
1

I’m often irritatingly conscious of a sort of unreality perceived in gay relationships. As James Baldwin put it, “People…do not believe there can be tears between men. They think we are only playing at a game and that we do it to shock them.”

The greatest extent to which it can often be understood is only as a sort of mirror image or semi-defective replacement for straight relationships, not as a thing in itself.

For obvious reasons, this is getting more important to me now. I had to actually train myself to be able not to feel silly saying, “Excuse me, that is my husband you are talking to!” Hey, it helps to have it in reserve.

Anyway, for this reason, I’ve been collecting gay love poetry, and I’m amazed at the beautiful stuff I can find. I have to say my current favourite is one by Richard Barnfield, an early 17th century poet:

Additions?

2

Well, there is of course Sapho from the isle of Lesbos.

Gotta mention her.

http://www.sappho.com/poetry/sappho2.html

3

I’d like to contribute the original draft, dated 1925, of Walt Whitman’s Once I Pass’d Through A Populous City

4

When I was in my late teens/early 20s, I loved a poet named Peter McWilliams. I noticed that none of his poems referenced the gender of the person he was writing about, but didn’t really think about it. A couple of years later, the owner of the company I worked at told me that McWilliams had been a roommate of his in college, and was gay. Duh. Why didn’t I think of that?

One of my favorite lines of his:
When mankind is your religion
Care is a prayer
And sex is a sacrament

5

Shakespeare’s “Dark Lady” sonnets.
Oscar Wilde’s poetry (at least some of it).

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Catullus, Passion: to Iuventius.

Shakespeare, Sonnet XLVII.

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Marcus Valerius Martialis (Martial)

Pet Shop Boys, “Home and Dry”

Alexander Pushkin

8

Well, the Dark Lady sonnets are pretty heterosexual, aren’t they? :wink: Even if they present a pretty jaded take on the whole concept…

OTOH, most of the sonnets are addressed to a young man – this might be what you’re thinking of – although the speaker of the sonnets seems to not be sexually involved with him, if passages like this are any indication:

And for a woman wert thou first created,
Till Nature as she wrought thee fell a-doting,
And by addition me of thee defeated
By adding one thing to my purpose nothing:
But since she pricked thee out for women’s pleasure,
Mine be thy love, and thy love’s use their treasure.

It’s certainly fair to say that many of the sonnets have intensely homoerotic undertones, too – I have read, actually, that Shakespeare and Barnfield (referenced in the OP) are the only Elizabethan poets to write love sonnets addressed to men. I have not verified this independently. :wink:

(Renaissance attitudes toward sexuality, in any case, are really complicated, but also off-topic. ;))

9

More Shakes as Matt said it would be okay:

Sonnet XVII

The ‘Sex Sonnet’ (XX):

One of the ‘S&M Sonnets’ (LVIII):

And something non-Shakes, which I always thought was kinda hot:

Walt Whitman, I Sing the Body Electric.

On preview, I see Katisha beat me to Sonnet XX, but I’d like to point out that it’s traditionally thought of as the sonnet with the most honest expression of sexual desire; Elizabethans believed man-boy love to be something above all of that icky stuff, something far more spiritual than that. However, Sonnet XX explicitly mentions his lover’s prick, although as chastely as he could’ve managed. Shakes touches on the more earthy aspects of the relationship with his boylove many times throughout his sonnets. When he’s not obsessing over death, that is.

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Sunshine upon your face my
Dreams of you near me
Love is still asleep in
Drive me to confirm truth that
Soft repose that eases
Flesh touches flesh not
Worries you refuse to
Wispy phantasms in my
Confess to me even now
Imaginings of impossible love

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mutters Okay the poem cut off in the middle, but I’m feeling far too annoyed at the server hamsters to finish it off. Just part of a very annoying day.

12

Moving this to Cafe Society.

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More Walt Whitman:

When I heard at the close of the day how my name had been receiv’d with plaudits in the capitol, still it was not a happy night for me that follow’d,

And else when I carous’d, or when my plans were accomplish’d, still I was not happy,

But the day when I rose at dawn from the bed of perfect health, refresh’d, singing, inhaling the ripe breath of autumn,

When I saw the full moon in the west grow pale and disappear in the morning light,

When I wander’d alone over the beach, and undressing bathed, laughing with the cool waters, and saw the sun rise,

And when I thought how my dear friend my lover was on his way coming, O then I was happy,

O then each breath tasted sweeter, and all that day my food nourish’d me more, and the beautiful day pass’d well,

And the next came with equal joy, and with the next at evening came my friend,

And that night while all was still I heard the waters roll slowly continually up the shores,

I heard the hissing rustle of the liquid and sands as directed to me whispering to congratulate me,

For the one I love most lay sleeping by me under the same cover in the cool night,

In the stillness in the autumn moonbeams his face was inclined toward me,

And his arm lay lightly around my breast–and that night I was happy.

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I hope the OP won’t mind if I point you in the direction of his own poem in Teemings. Damn, it’s good!
koee

15

I read the thread title in the voice of Mongo from Blazing Saddles.

“Gay love poetry!”

16

Indeed. This is what tends to get called “the cult of male friendship” in criticism – in this line of thought, male friendship was idealized precisely because it was an ostensibly nonsexual love between equals. (The obvious modern literary example of such a friendship would be Frodo and Sam in Lord of the Rings.) However, nowadays you also see some critics who argue that this whole notion is overstated, as a way to explain away homoerotic undertones in early modern poetry and especially, I think, in Shakespeare. (One nineteenth- or early twentieth-century critic dealt with the uncomfortable fact that some of Shakespeare’s most beautiful love poetry is addressed to a man by arguing that it was, in fact, addressed to Queen Elizabeth, who was an honorary man! This theory is, of course, absurd.)

And sometimes he does both simultaneously (this is where the metaphorical meaning of “death” comes in). :wink:

But then, too, the sonnet in question, as I said before, indicates that the speaker isn’t sexually involved with the youth – hence that line “And by addition me of thee defeated” – that said, the expression of desire is still there. (Even though I’d contend Shakespeare is much earthier when talking about the Dark Lady! :wink: I’m not sure you can comfortably place him on either side of the sexual-orientation fence, especially not based solely on his poetry.)

I probably should mention, too, that the idea of sexual orientation would have been foreign to Shakespeare, and to people of his day; the Elizabethans had, I think, a more fluid concept of sexuality. Though this is not to say that sexual orientation didn’t exist until we invented it, or for that matter to negate the homoeroticism of a lot of the sonnets. Of course, this is getting off-topic, as this thread asked for poetry, not dissertations on Renaissance conceptions of sexuality as reflected in Shakespeare’s sonnets, but I can’t resist a chance to prattle about Shakespeare, and anyway it’s always good to know this stuff when reading the sonnets. :wink:

17

Ah, no, not nonsexual per se, it was more that it was considered somehow unseemly, that one should be above such things and that a gentleman should be able to control his baser desires when it came to boys, although he was fully expected to have the baser desires in the first place. So the aspiration was to one of this spiritual desire, something that Shakespeare wrestles with throughout both the sonnets and a large portion of his dramatic works. The sexual jealousy and intimations of bed-sharing throughout the sonnets suggests that the relationship was consumated, although this has no basis on orientation, you’re right. Apparently Oscar Wilde was happily married and enjoyed a healthy sexual relationship with his wife, it’s a modern eye who decides to see him as queer in any sense. We’ll take what we can get, though, and writing love poetry complete with mentions of the boy’s cock is gayer than many things I’ve ever managed :slight_smile:

18

Um, do you mean “gay in any sense”? One presumes if he was lusting after Bosie to begin with, being married wouldn’t make him heterosexual either, but bisexual.

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And sorry about putting this in the wrong forum. I looked in Cafe SOciety, but none of the threads on the front page were about literature, but about the movies and TV.

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Ah, my mistake, I’ve never met anyone who was bisexual who referred to themselves as Queer. It was an example: many of the poets/writers/artists etc that we all jump on in a ‘Look! They were gay, and talented, too!’ manner were probably bisexual rather than self-identified in any way as gay. Not that that’s particularly interesting or relevant to anything, really, especially not this thread. Sorry for hijacking your thread, bunny.