Great Gay Poets Friday! Oscar Wilde and Hart Crane
Last Friday, in honor of National Poetry Month, we began our weekly tribute to great gay poets, thanks to guest blogger Julia Garbowski. In “Celebrate National Poetry Month With Great Gay Poets!,” Julia shared two of her favorites, Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman. This week, Julia looks at several poems by the very well-known Oscar Wilde, and the far less well-known but highly respected Hart Crane.
National Poetry Month Continues….
It was my intention to read and find out about one or two additional gay poets this week and to rejoice in their great works. I celebrate, but I also feel some sadness. I had been thinking about Oscar Wilde because I loved his stories as a child. I remember listening to Basil Rathbone narrating “The Happy Prince†and others on the LP record that I played over and over. I knew that Wilde wrote poetry and plays as well, and that he had been imprisoned for homosexuality on a charge of “indecency†from 1895-1897. Clearly the dramatic historical event of his imprisonment is a reminder of a cruelness in society. I remember an Oscar Wilde quote: “We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.â€
La Mer (The Sea)
A white mist drifts across the shrouds,
Gleams like an angry lion’s eye
Out of a mane of tawny clouds.
The muffled steersman at the wheel
And in the throbbing engine-room
Leap the long rods of polished steel.
The shattered storm has left its trace
For the thin threads of yellow foam
Float on the waves like ravelled lace
Great English playwright, poet, and author Oscar Wilde’s life was shortened (he died three years after prison release, in 1900, age 46) by the unjust social demands of his time and country. Wilde’s prison cell number C33, was the basis for the first published poem of 20th century poet Hart Crane when Crane was a mere 17 years old.
C33
He has woven rose-vines
And vented his long mellowed wines
Of dreaming on the desert white
With searing sophistry.
And he tented with far truths he would form
The transient bosoms from the thorny tree.
O Materna! to enrich thy gold head
From penitence, must needs bring pain,
But you who hear the lamp whisper through night
Can trace paths tear-wet, and forget all blight.
Crane went on to write a very influential body of work in a very short amount of time, but never seemed to find his way in the world. He moved back and forth between Ohio and New York several times, had somewhat erratic financial support from his father, struggled with alcoholism and depression. He worked at his father’s candy factory, in advertising, and even as a secretary to a stockbroker among other things.
Like Oscar Wilde, he married and had children. He had a benefactor for a time and he even won a Guggenheim which enabled him to go to an artist colony in Mexico to write. He was attracted to sailors and supposedly was beaten after making advances to a sailor on a ship coming back from Mexico. He committed suicide by jumping off that same ship in April of 1932, age 33.
Of those that I have read so far, my favorite Hart Crane poem is “Chaplinesque†from The Bridge poems. In it he describes a man naïve to the negative forces around him; it is a reference to Chaplin’s character the Little Tramp.
Chaplinesque
We make our meek adjustments,
Contented with such random consolations
As the wind deposits
In slithered and too ample pockets.
A famished kitten on the step, and know
Recesses for it from the fury of the street,
Or warm torn elbow coverts.
Dally the doom of that inevitable thumb
That slowly chafes its puckered index toward us,
Facing the dull squint with what innocence
And what surprise!
More than the pirouettes of any pliant cane;
Our obsequies are, in a way, no enterprise.
We can evade you, and all else but the heart:
What blame to us if the heart live on.
The game enforces smirks; but we have seen
The moon in lonely alleys make
A grail of laughter of an empty ash can,
And through all sound of gaiety and quest
Have heard a kitten in the wilderness
For more see “Oscar Wildeâ€Â by Richard Ellman (Vintage Books; 1988)
and “Voyager: A Life of Hart Crane†by John Unterecker (Farrar, Straus &Giroud; 1969)
(Images: top: Emily Dickenson, bottom: Oscar Wilde)
Julia Garbowski lives in Royal Oak, MI and has returned to writing after 25 years of running a farm and market in Door County WI. She grew up in Sag Harbor, NY. Her B.A. in Communications is from the University of Wisconsin. She belongs to the Michigan Literary Network and her twitter name is @driftnotes.
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Maine Democratic U.S. Senate nominee Graham Platner is under fire after releasing a video declaring that new allegations against him are false, yet he is “taking time to reflect” on a path forward.
Politico on Monday afternoon reported that a woman who dated Platner, Jenny Racicot, “says he forced her to have sex with him nearly five years ago despite her repeated objections, an allegation Platner denies.”
“Racicot said she had an on-and-off relationship with Platner,” Politico reported, “for more than two years before he entered her rural Maine home uninvited one night in late 2021, deeply intoxicated, and forced himself on her while she repeatedly told him to stop. She said she cut off contact with him after telling him the encounter was not consensual.”
In a video posted to social media eleven minutes after the Politico story dropped, Platner says, “I wanted to directly address the troubling, serious, and false allegations against me. Any accusation of nonconsensual behavior is categorically false.”
He said he and his supporters “were united in a love of Maine, a belief that our politics must change, in a focus on defeating Susan Collins.”
“So, regardless of the inaccuracy of the reporting, but mindful the political reality will inflict, we are taking the time to reflect on the best path forward for the state that I love, the people that I love, the movement I belong to, and the goal of defeating Susan Collins.”
“Those were the goals when we launched this campaign. And they remain my goals today.”
“Throughout it all, you never turned your back on me. And I will not turn my back on you now. Every one of you deserves to see that vision come to fruition and see Susan Collins defeated. And we will use every tool at our disposal to do so.”
The Bulwark’s Tim Miller, a political commentator who served as the communications director for the Jeb Bush 2016 presidential campaign, blasted Platner.
“I’m sorry but ‘we are taking time to reflect on the best path forward’ is not an option on the table,” Miller wrote. “Either it’s false and you campaign with vigor or it’s true and you get out / apologize to everyone you let down.”
Journalist Ryan Grim, commenting on Platner’s video, noted that Platner “strongly suggests he is considering dropping out. Already Troy Jackson and Chellie Pingree, both gubernatorial candidates, are being kicked around in Maine circles as potential replacements.”
Several others, including Puck News’ Peter Hamby, predicted Platner will be dropping out.
Platner had postponed several campaign events before the Politico story was published.
— Graham Platner for Senate (@grahamformaine) July 6, 2026
President Donald Trump is facing backlash after posting a video of children — including showing their unblurred faces — graduating from kindergarten, with some of the girls purportedly wearing hijabs.
“President Trump posted a captionless video of graduating kindergarteners on Truth Social on Monday, goading his supporters into verbally attacking little children simply for being Muslim,” The New Republic reported. “The clip is from Gateway STEM Academy, a majority-Black K-8 public charter school in St. Paul, Minnesota. It shows about 21 children in caps and gowns on stage singing a song together. Most of the girls are wearing hijabs.”
The original post of the video which Trump reposted reads: “Public school in St. Paul, Minnesota. Every girl is in a hijab … in kindergarten.”
Trump did not add any comments. TNR called the post “Islamophobic, weird, and creepy,” while noting that the comments section of Trump’s post was filled with calls “by racist, xenophobic MAGA supporters” to “deport the children and ban hijabs.”
TNR also noted that it “should come as no surprise that Trump isn’t above attacking children who just learned how to read, but this post is still particularly discomforting—and will certainly contribute to the already potent level of anti-Muslim sentiment in the U.S. and in Minnesota.”
Critics blasted Trump.
“There is something deeply unsettling about the president of the United States—the most powerful person in the world—going after kindergarten schoolchildren in Minnesota because they wore hijabs, as Trump has done this morning on his website,” The Bulwark’s Sam Stein wrote.
One social media commentator wrote, “Trump posted an unblurred video of more than a dozen Muslim kindergartners to Truth Social, exposing the children’s faces while targeting them for their religion.”
Another added, “Trump is a bigot. The president took to Truth Social to attack kindergarteners in hijabs. These are little kids. The president isn’t just a bigot, he’s also a coward.”
The original video was posted to the X social media platform in June.
U.S. Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) at the time commented, “If you are in a public school in America, you should be speaking english.”
Image via Reuters
President Donald Trump’s apparent efforts to delay releasing the $5.8 million civil judgment to E. Jean Carroll are being met with a warning by the journalist’s legal team, who suggest there could be a legal maneuver for Trump to employ to forgo paying the judgment in either of the two cases he lost.
According to The Guardian, on July 4, U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan ordered Trump to release the $5.8 million judgment, which is in escrow, to Carroll by this coming Tuesday — or explain why he would not do so.
Carroll’s attorneys think Trump may be trying to buy time to mount another legal strategy, telling the judge that Trump’s request for an extension “appears to be little more than yet another play for time.”
“The case is separate from Trump’s appeal of a Manhattan civil jury’s 2024 award of $83.3m to Carroll for defamation,” The Guardian explains. “But her lawyers have suggested a legal scenario in which the president might seek to conjoin the cases and further delay payment of both.”
Carroll’s attorney Roberta Kaplan (no relation to the judge) wrote, “We can only assume that defendant is seeking … to buy time so he can try to concoct some new basis to put off paying plaintiff presumably in connection with his forthcoming petition and motion for a rehearing.”
Trump’s former attorney, Justin Smith, in one of his final acts, wrote to the Supreme Court suggesting that his client would be appealing the $83.3 million civil judgment.
Smith argued that the Supreme Court “may wish to consider the petitions together,” given they involve the same parties.
The larger judgment case involves possible questions of presidential immunity, and that has Carroll’s attorneys concerned.
“A conjoined case, Carroll’s lawyers fear, could result in both judgments being wiped out,” The Guardian reports.
The president has also made clear he is no fan of Judge Kaplan, after the jurist made several rulings that “angered” Trump.
“What else can you expect from a Trump Hating, Clinton appointed judge, who went out of his way to make sure that the result was as negative as it could possible be,” Trump wrote on Truth Social in 2023, “speaking to, and in control of, a jury from an anti-Trump area which is probably the worst place in the US for me to get a fair ‘trial’.”
Image via Reuters
Platner Scorched Over ‘Taking Time’ Video After New Accusation
Trump Sparks Fury Online After Posting Unblurred Video of Muslim Kindergartners in Hijabs
One Legal Maneuver Threatens to Undo Everything E. Jean Carroll Won
Inside the Group Helping MAGA Voters Walk Away — And What Finally Pushed Them
