Gay Poets (Part 1)

Roe

Canada6002 Posts

January 16 2012 06:10 GMT

I've always been interested in poems and literature, and I thought it may be inspiring to find out the great many literary figures that were gay. After searching and searching, the list I found was more than I could handle! As I decided to chisel away at and find some of the more interesting and pertinent poets and writers, their lives became more grande and intertwined than I thought. And unfortunately, there will always be poets not known to us. Of those that we do know, there remains a daunting task of encapsulating them. The first part ended up as a story of three Victorian men, from humble beginnings to scandal through the seedy London underground, that ends with sadness and bitterness only lovers could understand.

"Aesthete of Aesthetes!
What's in a name!
The Poet is Wilde
But his poetry's tame"

Oscar Wilde was an Irish playwright, poet and essayist born in 1854. He was especially known for his libertarian lifestyle and I think of him more as a man of living life than of writing. Wilde went to Trinity College in Dublin with a royal scholarship in classical literature (Greek), and later went to Oxford. While there he was tutored by John Ruskin and Walter Pater, two important philosophers of the aesthetic movement. After graduating he rented a room in London, and became a lecturer on the classics. At 27 he wrote his first book of poetry which he self-published, but wasn't very well received. He always believed one should always be working towards becoming a piece of art, or wearing a piece of art. Bored by the usual prospect of becoming a dried up oxford don, he set out to be famous, and notorious.

To get into the best society nowadays one has to either feed people amuse people, shock people, that is all.
A man who can dominate a London dinner table can dominate the world.

In Oscar's view, celebrity should come first, with accomplishments later. He always kept every audience at their seat's edge, and became one of those people whom anyone important knew. In 1882 he went to America at the behest of Gilbert and Sullivan, where he would give lectures on the aestheticism. While there he spent time with miners and woodworkers and gained their respect for his skills in drinking and smoking. He admired America for its openness and ambition. From it, he learned if you wanted to become something, you simply do it. Regardless of the compunctions of others.

He came back to London with a new mindset, put on a new outfit, and prepared for a new stage in his life. While in London Oscar met a rich young woman named Constance Lloyd. After a few years, Oscar proposed to her, and they had two sons. Two years after their marriage, Wilde realized his disgust of his pregnant wife, wiping her kisses off his lips. There was something boy-like in her old figure, which had now become fat and bloated. Soon Wilde would find friendship with a young, romantic Robert Ross and the two had an affair. Ross, the 17 year old, had fallen in love with Wilde and was determined to seduce him.

Robert Ross at 24

Robert Ross was born in Tours, France and moved to London to go to Cambridge University. He was constantly bullied for his sexuality which he made no attempt to hide. Ross found work as a journalist and a literary critic. He allegedly had sexual relations with two boys of age 14 and 15. The 14 year old also admitted to having a sexual encounter with Lord Alfred Douglas while he was a guest at Ross' house. The parents of the kids were persuaded not to go to the police, since, at that time, their sons might be seen not as victims but as equally guilty and so face the possibility of going to prison.

Oscar went ahead with journalism and editing The Lady's World magazine. He promptly renamed it The Woman's World and raised its tone, adding serious articles on parenting, culture, and politics, keeping discussions of fashion and arts. He decided to make it a magazine about what women thought. He soon became bored of the commuting, office life, and administration and started new creative work, leaving the magazine after its second volume.

To drift with every passion till my soul
Is a stringed lute on which all winds can play

For the next few years he worked on exploring the aesthetic, and wrote essays and dialogues and short fiction. One of his most famous pieces was written in 1890, called The Picture of Dorian Gray. The story begins with a man who sells his soul for eternal youth. With each immoral deed, his portrait becomes older and uglier while he stays young. When Gray, who has a "face like ivory and rose leaves" sees his finished portrait he breaks down and stabs the portrait in a last attempt at being absolved. Reviewers and critics saw it as technically mediocre, and an unclean allusion to homosexuality. He would later add in 6 chapters and take out the homo eroticism and decadence. For Wilde, the purpose of art would guide life if beauty alone were its object.

Always humorous and farcical, Oscar then decided to criticize the stuffy, restrictive, Victorian society on its own terms. Lady Windermere's Fan was a comedy performed for the cream of London. It was witty on the surface but below it asked them to soften their harsh social codes in favor of a more nuanced view. Most importantly it satirized their morals on the issue of marriage.

Douglas at 33

Lord Alfred Douglas was a pretty selfish and mean fellow, unknown to his receivable portrait. He was his mother's favourite child, she called him Bosie. He had a rough childhood: when his grandfather commit suicide, his grandmother moved the family to Paris. His uncle, Lord James Douglas, had some kind of mania and was so attached to his twin sister he drank himself into depression and commit suicide. Another of his uncles, Lord Francis Douglas, died in a mountaineering accident. His father, the Marquess of Queensberry, was mentally unstable and hit and abused his family.

Oscar met Lord Alfred Douglas in 1891. It was with Douglas that he discovered the gay London underground filled with prostitution and began his dangerous escapades that cost him everything. Though he was not without some sort of style: Wilde would meet boys, offer them gifts, then dine privately and end up in a hotel room together. By now Wilde and Douglas were inseparable, and Wilde took to using Douglas' childhood nickname "Bosie". Wilde was prepared to give everything and feared no risks for his love. The two would always be living in hotels and having breakfast together. His answer to his wife was that he needed time alone to work on his writing.

In 1894 Wilde wrote his greatest play, The Importance of Being Earnest. He revisited the theme of double lives, having the two main protagonists maintain alternate personae in the country and city to escape social obligations. He poked fun at the hypocrisies and masks of London upper class, all the while making the audience feel witty, and smart. The play was above all satirizing the seriousness of the institution of marriage. On opening night, Douglas' father planned to present Wilde with a bouquet of rotten vegetables and disrupt the show, but Wilde was tipped off and Queensberry was refused admission.

Wilde and Douglas

On 18 February 1895, the Marquess Queensberry left his calling card at Wilde's club, the Albemarle, inscribed: "For Oscar Wilde, posing somdomite". Egged on by Douglas and against the advice of his friends, Wilde made a charge of criminal libel against Queensberry. To avoid the charge, Queensberry needed to show that his claim of Wilde being a homosexual was true.

I prefer the version with Robert Morley, and unfortunately this clip cuts off right as tension builds up and Wilde breaks down

In his opening speech for the defense, Edward Carson announced that he had located several male prostitutes who were to testify that they had had sex with Wilde. On the advice of his lawyers, Wilde dropped the prosecution. Queensberry's acquittal rendered Wilde legally liable for the considerable expenses Queensberry had incurred in his defense, which left Wilde bankrupt.

After Wilde left the court, a warrant for his arrest was applied for on charges of sodomy and gross indecency. Robert and Wilde's butler pushed for him to leave for France immediately, while his mother told him to stay and fight like a man. Caught up in indecision, he was arrested and put on trial for "gross indecency" under Section 11 of the Criminal Law Amendment Act 1885, a term meaning homosexual acts not amounting to buggery.

The jury ended up being unable to reach a verdict, and Wilde went into hiding with one of his friends. Edward Carson approached Frank Lockwood QC, the Solicitor General and asked "Can we not let up on the fellow now?". Lockwood answered that he would like to do so, but feared that the case had become too politicized to be dropped. At the final trial Wilde was convicted and sentenced to two years of hard labour.

Wilde on trial

Oscar suffered much from his time in prison, as he was so accustomed to a lavish and comfortable life. He collapsed from illness and hunger, tearing his right ear. Richard B. Haldane, the Liberal MP and reformer, visited him and had him transferred to Reading, west of London. As he was transferred, a crowd jeered and spat at him on the platform. He was not, at first, even allowed paper and pen but Haldane eventually succeeded in allowing access to books and writing materials.

When he left prison, he was alone, bankrupt, and unable to see his children. He went to Naples and arranged a meeting with Douglas, but after a few months they separated. The last few years of his life were spent in poverty and misery, living in Paris under a secret identity. He ended up begging for money from friends. He wrote The Ballad of Reading Gaol (pronounced jail) in spirit of his experience being incarcerated.

Yet each man kills the thing he loves
By each let this be heard,
Some do it with a bitter look,
Some with a flattering word,
The coward does it with a kiss,
The brave man with a sword!

Some kill their love when they are young,
And some when they are old;
Some strangle with the hands of Lust,
Some with the hands of Gold:
The kindest use a knife, because
The dead so soon grow cold!

***

For they starve the little frightened child
Till it weeps both night and day:
And they scourge the weak, and flog the fool,
And gibe the old and grey,
And some grow mad, and all grow bad,
And none a word may say.

Each narrow cell in which we dwell
Is foul and dark latrine,
And the fetid breath of living Death
Chokes up each grated screen,
And all, but Lust, is turned to dust
In Humanity's machine.

The wild poet died at the age of 46 of cerebral meningitis(1900), with his first love Robert Ross at his side.

Art is individualism, and individualism is a disturbing and disintegrating force. There lies its immense value. For what it seeks is to disturb monotony of type, slavery of custom, tyranny of habit, and the reduction of man to the level of a machine.

At Wilde's Funeral, Douglas and Ross apparently had some kind of quarrel or argument. From that point Douglas and Ross would always be at odds with each other. As a result of his faithfulness to Wilde even in death, Ross was vindictively pursued by Lord Alfred Douglas, who repeatedly attempted to have him arrested and tried for homosexual conduct.

Robert Ross at 42

In 1901, Robert Ross salvaged the writings of Wilde and began a revival of his works. Soon enough, Europeans were reading Wilde more than any other writer except Shakespeare. During the first world war, Ross mentored a group of young poets which included Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen (writer of Dulce et Decorum Est).

In early 1918, during the German Spring Offensive, Noel Pemberton Billing, a right-wing Member of Parliament, published an article entitled The Cult of the Clitoris, in which he accused members of Ross' circle of being at the centre of 47,000 homosexual traitors who were betraying the nation to the Germans. Maud Allan, an actress who had played Wilde's Salome in a performance authorized by Ross, was identified as a member of the "cult". She unsuccessfully sued Billing for libel, causing a national sensation in Britain. The incident brought much embarrassing attention to Ross and his associates. Ross died while traveling to Australia to open an art exhibition in 1918, at age 49.

Alfred Douglas soon married Olive Custance, a poet, and had one son: Raymond Wilfred Sholto Douglas. Sadly he was diagnosed with a schizo-affective disorder at the age of 24 and died in a mental hospital. Olive died from a cerebral hemorrhage at the age of 67.

In 1923, Douglas was found guilty of libeling Churchill and was sentenced to six months in prison. Douglas had claimed that Churchill had been part of a Jewish conspiracy to kill Lord Kitchener, the British Secretary of State for War. Kitchener had died on 5 June 1916, while on a diplomatic mission to Russia: the ship in which he was traveling struck a German naval mine and sank west of the Orkney Islands. In spite of this libel claim, Douglas wrote a sonnet in praise of Churchill in 1941. Through the 1930s and to the end of his life, Douglas became close friends with Bernard Shaw and Marie Stopes. Alfred Douglas died of congestive heart failure in 1945, at age 72.

Sweet youth,
Tell me why, sad and sighing, thou dost rove
These pleasent realms? I pray thee speak me sooth
What is thy name?' He said, 'My name is Love.'
Then straight the first did turn himself to me
And cried, 'He lieth, for his name is Shame,
But I am Love, and I was to be
Alone in this fair garden, till he came
Unasked by night; I am true Love, I fill
The hearts of boy and girl with mutual flame.'
Then sighing, said the other, 'Have thy will,
I am the love that dare not speak its name.'

***

Alfred Edward Housman was born in Worcestshire 1859. He went to school in Birmingham where he won prizes for his poetry. Housman won a scholarship to Oxford just one year before Oscar Wilde would leave the university. Housman spent his time there studying the classics just as Wilde did. The pleasures Housman enjoyed included gastronomy, flying in aeroplanes, and frequent visits to France, where he read "books which were banned in Britain as pornographic". A fellow don described him as being "descended from a long line of maiden aunts"

As withdrawn and introspective and shy as he was, Alfred became good friends with two of his roommates, Moses Jackson and A.W. Pollard. He was particularly fond of Jackson, and soon fell in love with him. Alfred was first in his class, but immersed himself in textual analysis while neglecting ancient history and philosophy, so much that he failed to complete his degree. There were a variety of reasons: indifference to philosophy, overconfidence in his preternatural gifts, a contempt for inexact learning, and enjoyment of idling away his time with Jackson, conjoined with news of his father's desperate illness as the more immediate and germane causes. The failure left him with a deep sense of humiliation, and a determination to vindicate his genius.

Jackson got a job as a clerk in London, and arranged to get Housman a position as well. The two lived together with Jackson's brother until Housman moved out to live on his own. Jackson moved to India, only to return briefly to get married and move back, with Housman never knowing of the marriage until they had already left. He continued pursuing his studies in the classics until he gained such a great scholarly reputation that he was offered a professorship of Latin at University College London. While in London he composed a cycle of 63 poems, named A Shropshire Lad. After being turned down by several publishers, he self-published in 1896.

Loveliest of trees, the cherry now
Is hung with bloom along the bough,
And stands about the woodland ride
Wearing white for Eastertide.

Now, of my threescore years and ten,
Twenty will not come again,
And take from seventy springs a score,
It only leaves me fifty more.

And since to look at things in bloom
Fifty springs are little room,
About the woodlands I will go
To see the cherry hung with snow.

It makes me feel very sombre. It reminds us of our little time on earth, and all the beauty we can embrace. In later parts there's much pessimism, and more worrying about death and the little religious consolation he feels. After the trial of Oscar Wilde, Housman felt the need to write about injustice towards homosexuality:

Oh who is that young sinner with the handcuffs on his wrists?
And what has he been after that they groan and shake their fists?
And wherefore is he wearing such a conscience-stricken air?
Oh they're taking him to prison for the colour of his hair.

'Tis a shame to human nature, such a head of hair as his;
In the good old time 'twas hanging for the colour that it is;
Though hanging isn't bad enough and flaying would be fair
For the nameless and abominable colour of his hair.

Oh a deal of pains he's taken and a pretty price he's paid
To hide his poll or dye it of a mentionable shade;
But they've pulled the beggar's hat off for the world to see and stare,
And they're haling him to justice for the colour of his hair.

Now 'tis oakum for his fingers and the treadmill for his feet
And the quarry-gang on Portland in the cold and in the heat,
And between his spells of labour in the time he has to spare
He can curse the God that made him for the colour of his hair.

Poetry was for him a "morbid secretion, as the pearl is for the oyster". The desire, or the need, did not come upon him often, and it came usually when he was feeling ill or depressed; then whole lines and stanzas would present themselves to him without any effort, or any consciousness of composition on his part. Sometimes they wanted a little alteration, sometimes none; sometimes the lines needed in order to make a complete poem would come later, spontaneously or with 'a little coaxing'; sometimes he had to sit down and finish the poem with his head. He described it as a long and laborious process.

Housman died at age 77, in 1936. By his grave was planted a cherry tree in memory of his poetry. After his death, Laurence Housman published some of his brother's poems including De Amicitia.

Because I liked you better
Than suits a man to say
It irked you, and I promised
To throw the thought away.

To put the world between us
We parted, stiff and dry;
Goodbye, said you, forget me.
I will, no fear, said I

If here, where clover whitens
The dead man's knoll, you pass,
And no tall flower to meet you
Starts in the trefoiled grass,

Halt by the headstone naming
The heart no longer stirred,
And say the lad that loved you
Was one that kept his word.

Intermission time!

hersenen

Belize176 Posts

January 16 2012 07:04 GMT

Gay poets? Isn't that a little redundant?

User was temp banned for this post.

EatThePath

United States3943 Posts

January 16 2012 07:31 GMT

Thanks for a cool blog!

Nice job mods. =)

Jealous

10111 Posts

January 16 2012 07:39 GMT

On January 16 2012 16:04 hersenen wrote:
Gay poets? Isn't that a little redundant?

Say of poets what you ignorantly will,
But how darest thou raiseth thy quill,
Against a man who in one post wrote,
More than your whole history can tote?

For the time he has sacrificed,
Only a thorough response will suffice,
Yet you approach with stereotype,
With you sir, I have a gripe.

If the vengeance of moderation
Sees your vile desecration,
I shall not be alone to rejoice,
Were you to lose your voice.

For on this internet website,
We do not bicker or fight.
Strive to appreciate your brother,
Lest contribution's fire you smother.

EDIT: Amen to the poster above.

EDIT 2: Happy 3000, Roe! Thanks for the interesting post ^^

AcrossFiveJulys

United States3612 Posts

January 16 2012 08:07 GMT

On January 16 2012 16:39 Jealous wrote:

Show nested quote +

Wow, impressive!

Rabbitmaster

1357 Posts

January 16 2012 09:44 GMT

On January 16 2012 16:39 Jealous wrote:

Show nested quote +

Haha, you made my day, sir. Well played.

UniversalSnip

9871 Posts

January 16 2012 09:54 GMT

The trial transcripts make for a great, if depressing, read. Wilde is very eloquent, and to me completely unconvincing. Reading his words inspires pained sympathy and deep pity.

The book I read on the subject described Wild as a 'romance addict' who tired of any relationship as soon as it became stable or safe.

Queensberry was famously bonkers and it's sad to think such a vile man was legally sanctioned in his efforts to inflict harm. Alfred Douglas also has a reputation as someone who was both personally contemptible and incredibly handsome*. A dangerous combination...

* Have to say I don't see it, but that's the general opinion.

Gay poets? Isn't that a little redundant?

that made me laugh :D

Subversive

Australia2229 Posts

January 16 2012 11:40 GMT

Nice post, happy 3000th. I remember reading a biography on Wilde. Fascinating guy and mostly not for his work. Although he lived a short life, he really packed a lot in. His time in America on the speaking circuit and meeting other greats like Walt Whitman was particularly interesting.

Roe

Canada6002 Posts

January 16 2012 17:03 GMT

On January 16 2012 20:40 Subversive wrote:
Nice post, happy 3000th. I remember reading a biography on Wilde. Fascinating guy and mostly not for his work. Although he lived a short life, he really packed a lot in. His time in America on the speaking circuit and meeting other greats like Walt Whitman was particularly interesting.

I can't believe I missed that! Especially as Whitman was supposedly gay/bi too.

JWD

United States12607 Posts

January 16 2012 17:08 GMT

#10

This post is awesome. I'm only halfway through and I already feel smarter. Thanks OP!

Edit: I never knew that Wilde had such a tragic life. Seems his pride was his undoing, in a sense (what was he thinking bringing that libel suit?).

Chef

10810 Posts

January 16 2012 17:37 GMT

#11

My favourite poem written by a man who was also gay is "Howl," by Allen Ginsberg.

ohsea.toc

Australia344 Posts

January 16 2012 17:40 GMT

#12

Incidentally, i visited the tomb of Wilde not two weeks ago in Paris.

The epitaph inscribed there is from his poem, written while in exile, The Ballad of Reading Gaol:

And alien tears will fill for him
Pity's long-broken urn,
For his mourners will be outcast men,
And outcasts always mourn.

The tomb itself is beautiful; it has this sort of modernist feel with a quasi-pharaonic twist:

[image loading]

Lovely and lovable man.

Edit: will W.H Auden feature in part 2?

SlimeBagly

356 Posts

January 16 2012 22:17 GMT

#13

Can't remember lines off-hand, but Walt Whitman was pretty explicitly gay in a lot of his poetry, Leaves of Grass especially as I recall

ohsea.toc

Australia344 Posts

January 16 2012 22:24 GMT

#14

On January 17 2012 07:17 SlimeBagly wrote:
Can't remember lines off-hand, but Walt Whitman was pretty explicitly gay in a lot of his poetry, Leaves of Grass especially as I recall

Dancing and laughing along the beach came the twenty-ninth bather,
The rest did not see her, but she saw them and loved them.

The beards of the young men glisten'd with wet, it ran from their long hair,
Little streams pass'd all over their bodies.

An unseen hand also pass'd over their bodies,
It descended tremblingly from their temples and ribs.

The young men float on their backs, their white bellies bulge to the
sun, they do not ask who seizes fast to them,
They do not know who puffs and declines with pendant and bending arch,
They do not think whom they souse with spray.

From Song of Myself, canto 11.