Gay Love Poetry

by Neil Powell

Book Overview

This wide-ranging and superbly entertaining anthology of poetry stretches from Catullus and Ovid through Marlowe and Michelangelo, on to Wait Whitman and Oscar Wilde, and finally to such modems as... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0786704691
• ISBN13: 9780786704699
• Release Date: July 1997
• Publisher: Carroll & Graf Publishers
• Length: 254 Pages
• Weight: 0.50 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 5.2" x 7.7"

Customer Reviews

"Let men say what they will."

This collection of poems of love, longing, sadness, rejection, and mourning for lost loves (those who have died, and those who have gone away...) is a very fine, but uneven, expression of the range of thought and emotion which can encompass relations between male and male -- on the erotic and the psychological level. The editor, Neil Powell, has divided the poems into six groupings under the titles: Nature Boys -- Street Life -- Lads' Love -- As It Is -- Borderlines -- In Memoriam. Within each grouping, the poets and their poems are presented in chronological order. As the editor points out, he has included poems going back as far as eighth century B.C. and has "allowed 'love' to encompass as wide a range of affectionate relation- ships as possible." Each grouping is preceded by an Introductory Note, which contains very interesting insights or thoughts to ponder. Here is something from the section titled "Lads' Love" -- "Love poetry -- regardless of sexuality -- has always had a natural inclination to celebrate the beauty and desirability of subjects who are significantly younger than their admiring authors (also regardless of the fact that the young are ignorant, vain, selfish, unreliable...)." That's certainly a surprising insight to share with readers of a collection of love poetry, espcially for a group, which as a whole, puts such a premium on youth, looks, and sensuality -- usually over sense. The poets include Theocritus, Virgil, Sir Philip Sidney, Christopher Marlowe, William Shakespeare, Walt Whitman, John Addington Symonds, Oscar Wilde, C.P. Cavafy, Wilfred Owen, Solon, Alcaeus, Catullus, Martial, Strato of Sardis, Michelangelo, Lord Byron, Homer, and Alfred, Lord Tennyson among the famous -- and a convocation of the lesser known, but no less feeling and thoughtful trekkers of the quest. To my own taste, some of the poems seem uneven in quality -- and the tone of many of them seems "artificial" -- stagey -- though some of them overcome that "staged-effect" quality to become quite humane, telling, and heart-felt. The poems of the classical authors are often presented with the translations by famous authors themselves, such as John Dryden as translator of Virgil's pastorals, Solon translated by J.A. Symonds. Each of the six sections may contain poems by previous poets in other sections, so the representations are fuller in giving voice to many facets of the same poets. All in all, this is an excellent collection, especially for the novice reader or even the more experienced reader and liver of male-love-related themes. "Catching up with each other halfway to where we're going / any day is a likelihood, and an unexpected extra." -- Peter Daniels. from: "Liverpool St." -- Robert Kilgore.

A lovely read

This is a great book that spans the spectrum of gay love. There are some incredible things in here and reading a sonnet, I could not contain myself, I was laughing and blushing in the bookstore. Well worth getting as a gift to yourself or anyone who needs to hear in great words the things they feel so well.