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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U.S. Rep. Mike Collins, Republican of Georgia, is under fire after praising University of Mississippi students, some wearing American flag outfits, mocking a Black woman protester by making monkey sounds and shouting, “lock her up.”
“Counter-protestors at the University of Mississippi made racist remarks — including monkey noises and comparisons to Lizzo — towards a Black woman who was part of a planned protest against the war in Gaza,” Los Angeles Magazine reported Friday.
Collins, who tried to defund Vice President Kamala Harris’ Office in November, declared his support for the counter-protesters at “Ole Miss,” as the University is called.
“Ole Miss taking care of business,” he wrote on social media, atop the video (below).
The counter-protesters, as evidenced in the video, appear to be mostly white.
A large number of users on the social media platform X responded, accusing the Congressman and the counter-protesters of racism.
“When is the inevitable ‘I don’t have a racist bone in my body’ tweet coming,” wondered Rewire News Group editor-at-large Imani Gandy.
“Which part is your favorite, Mike?” asked Fred Wellman, the former executive director of The Lincoln Project. “Is it the white kid acting like a monkey at the black woman or the white security guy acting like she’s a threat? I’m trying to figure out which flavor of racism has you all excited the most?”
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Harvard Law Cyberlaw Clinic clinical instructor Alejandra Caraballo responded to the Georgia GOP congressman, “Thanks for confirming you’re a massive racist piece of sh*t.”
Mississippi Free Press news editor Ashton Pittman wrote: “Rep. Mike Collins, R-Georgia, praises a video showing a University of Mississippi frat boy dancing like a monkey and making monkey noises near a Black woman student who was protesting for Palestine while other frat boys chant ‘lock her up.'”
In a separate post describing a separate video taken of the same group Pittman wrote: “Frat bros at @OleMiss chant, ‘Lizzo! Lizzo!’ and shout, ‘F**k you fatass, f**k you b*tch’ at a Black woman who was protesting for Palestine. Do people really think these counterprotestors are doing it to support Jews?”
Journalist John Harwood did not mince words, writing, “Congressman proud of the racism.”
“Okay, Mike. We get it,” wrote podcast host, documentary director, and author W. Kamau Bell. “You want to be famous for being a racist. Fine. I’ll help you become a famous racist. You’re welcome.”
The original video is here.
See Rep. Collins’ post and the video below or at this link.
Caution: the video is disturbing.
Ole Miss taking care of business. pic.twitter.com/JiL9hs2pHz
— Rep. Mike Collins (@RepMikeCollins) May 3, 2024
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A spokesperson for Noem “seemed to concede that the Kim story was false Thursday night,” and notified her publisher, Politico’s Ryan Lizza reported in his exclusive.
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The list of Republican “special guests” includes U.S. Senators Marco Rubio, Tim Scott, and J.D. Vance, Rep. Elise Stefanik, North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum, and South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem.
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NBC News, which says Rep. Donalds is also under consideration, on Friday added there will be “a fundraising retreat that could serve as a screening session” for potential vice presidential running mates.
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Over the weekend independent 2024 presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. spoke at a fundraiser for a far-right anti-government group in Erie County, New York – a slice of the country that had a large proportion of residents arrested and charged for crimes related to the January 6 insurrection. Kennedy, a conspiracy theorist and vaccine denialist, increasingly is embracing the far-right.
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The Southern Poverty Law Center includes the Constitutional Coalition of New York State (CCNYS) on its page of anti-government groups. Political Research Associates, which detailed the high proportion of January 6 residents arrested and charged, included the Constitutional Coalition of New York State in its February report on “The Rise of the Far Right in Western New York.”
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One of Kennedy’s goals in traveling to New York was to get on the ballot for the November presidential election. Various polls show him taking votes from both President Joe Biden and ex-president Donald Trump, but Kennedy currently has only qualified to be on the ballot in three states, Utah, Michigan and Hawaii, the newspaper reported.
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“’They can only blame themselves,’ a Trump-aligned strategist told The Daily Beast, requesting anonymity to speak candidly about private conversations about the risk Kennedy poses, ‘because they cozied up to him and thought it was funny.’”
Watch WIVBTV’s report on Kennedy’s trip to New York below or at this link.
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