May 4, 2022

The Anniversary

Breakfast with the hearty breakfasters at 5 Points. It happens maybe twice a year, and that’s plenty. 

DB writes from Baltimore: 

Your latest book is a marvel, and I am considering writing a review for it, but also including references to your work as a whole. The Ones with Difficult Names possess some problems. You say it is not a collection of your latest books and you say it draws from poems written over decades.  It seems to me that the book strikes often a new note.  You seem to be writing by the seat of your pants.  There is an even greater freedom and audacity to some of these poems.  A much easier campy humor.  I think I can guess what are some of the older poems.  My guess is that they are the more formally controlled.  The other problem I face is identifying you in the tradition of other queer mystical poets such as Whitman, Crane, Robert Duncan or even William Blake.  You've been very careful in dealing with your sexuality in your poems, and I don't want to say anything that would disturb you.   I would be writing the review for the Gay and Lesbian Review.

I read your account of being in Hopkins.  We must have both taken Wasserman's course.  The course I was lost in was Holland's American Literature.  Reading five James novels in five weeks was impossible. I think I made it through only because I started therapy with a wonderful analyst.