Between: New Gay Poetry, edited by Jameson Currier; Chelsea Station Editions, $16
This Blue by Maureen McLane; Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $24
The Road to Emmaus by Spencer Reece; Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $24
Polari by John Barton; Goose Lane Editions, $19.95 paperback
Poetry, in all its varying forms, encompasses the art and grace of creating words with passion, of conveying a wave of intimate feeling with an economy of lines and phrasing. It's a niche market whose fans are legion. Here are a few books of new gay poetry not to be missed.
Chelsea Station Editions recently published Between , a collection edited by Jameson Currier featuring 60 gay poets reflecting on the relationships gay men have with other men. This specificity keeps the tone and theme masculine and uniform, and Currier's assemblage spotlights works from both better-known writers in our talented community and newcomers, with equal emphasis. With short author profiles preceding each poem, these pages delight with musings, reflections, opinions, and memories of gay men with their fathers, their "square-jawed, shaved-headed" gym crushes, doctors, first-time dinner guests who confess to having "only three dates in five years," old lovers, new bed partners, and even a carpenter who steals then breaks the author's faithless heart.
Lambda Literary Award finalist Maureen McLane's new collection This Blue beautifully demonstrates this highly regarded poet's talent for capturing atmosphere, nature, and feeling in a single page of verse. Her five-part volume paints the textures of such scenes as a country morning in the woods where the "rush of your mind/ plays against a rustle/ you could almost pitch"; and a tour of Europe replete with splendorous stops in Genoa, Andalucia ("'the rose' from Spain/ followed us west/ as if hot on the scent/ of tomato"), Parma, and Belfast. McLane's pieces are pristine, her words exact, chosen and evocative, whether describing a meadow north of Boston or the whispering of the forest, "that silvery sound/ that seemed to call/ not only to me."
Floridian poet Spencer Reece's 2004 debut poetry collection The Clerk's Tale won critical acclaim with a full-page spread in The New Yorker, a selection for the Bakeless Poetry Prize, and a film by James Franco based on the title piece about a store employee in the Mall of America. The time between his honorable debut and his new collection The Road to Emmaus was filled with the poet joining the Episcopal priesthood in 2011, and subsequently teaching in a Central American orphanage in San Pedro Sula, Honduras. That's a far cry from his roots as a salesman for posh Brooks Brothers clothiers.
Those lofty life ambitions are duly matched with this new collection of narrative poetry inspired by the Gospel of Luke, where Christ has been crucified and taken to the village of Emmaus. But fear not, Reece's 18 poems are not all religious in tone and scope. Some ponder the nature of grief, faith, desire, and dedication, and lushly describe places and people the author has encountered. The vividly rendered poem "Among Schoolchildren" is derived from Reece's work at the orphanage, and is as vital to the collection as other locations he visits, such as his place of birth, Hartford, Connecticut, "the city that never succeeded like Boston," or South Beach, where "everyone rearranges or expands their sexual parts." The West Village in Manhattan is at the core of a strikingly beautiful piece called "12:20 in New York," in which Reece describes a long-overdue visit with his brother, evoking lines about the passage of time: "Devotion becomes the most reasonable emotion as we age, we recognize it in contrast to the losses, and the losses can be defined only with time." About the nature of aging: "What do we do in this life when what we love does not come back?" Reece's sophomore poetry collection is startlingly real, an achievement to be savored.
Multi-award-winning Canadian writer John Barton, already with 10 books of poetry to his name, has produced Polari , perhaps the capstone to this spring's sprightly bundle of new poetry books. The title is fascinating in and of itself. From the Italian word parlare, meaning "to talk," Polari refers to the coded, argot language (considered a sociolect by some) used in London theatres, circuses, and fairgrounds, and more predominantly used within the gay subculture to cloak communications and personal identities at a time when homosexuality was illegal, as a means to evade the hostility of detractors. Though incrementally fallen from use by the mid-1960s, some Polari (or random forms of this lost language) has survived the ages and insinuated itself into contemporary speak, words like zhoosh, drag, butch, basket, and camp, for example. Barton's collection, written in lush language that is as entrancing to behold as Polari once was in a forgotten place and time, is a major accomplishment for its variety and poetic dexterity.
The errant fly in "An Insect's Life" may seem inconsequential to the heartbreak of a love lost in "La vie boheme" or the sensuality of "Shirtsleeve Weather," but Barton connects all of his themes with the satiny glow of glossy prose. "Closing the Gate of Sorrow" forms a fitting and somber tribute to the September 11 atrocities of "highjacked jets, payloads intent as they streaked/ Through frets of porous steel." "Marathon" nods to dedicated runners with "footfalls lifting sand, fleet, synchronous/ With the waves as they'd crash, turn ravenous." An onlooker's appreciation for the ocean animates "Watching the Whale." Then there are poem titles begging for a wry grin and a giggle, such as "If You Want Closure in your Relationship, Start with Your Legs."
"Polari," the ingenious title poem, is actually all 111 words of Gwendolyn Brooks' sonnet "Gay Chaps at the Bar" (first published in 1944) completely reassembled into a different poem. Barton's work is a brilliant example of grace on display, from a poet who continues to illuminate his literary powers for those of us who consider poetry as alive and essential as air and dance.