The Gay & Lesbian Review Worldwide articles from May 2008

The Gay & Lesbian Review Worldwide archives from May 2008

May-June '08: "American Originals".(Editorial)
May 1, 2008... This is a biographical issue that focuses on a half-dozen "American Originals" who lived their lives outside of or opposed to the so-called "mainstream" American culture. The subtitle "long strange trips" will remind readers both old and young...

On Jasper Johns and the canvas closet.(GUEST OPINION)
May 1, 2008... SOON AFTER taking in Jasper Johns: Gray at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NYC (February 5-May 4, 2008), I attended a "Sunday at the Met" event with lectures by major Johns scholars. I was once again dumbfounded by the fact that the speakers...

Jonathan Williams, mountain poet, dies at 79.(IN MEMORIAM)(Obituary)
May 1, 2008... Jonathan Williams, who died on March 16 at age 79, was known for many things, but dullness was never one of them. Photographer, poet, essayist, folk art aficionado, and founder of the Jargon Society--an enterprise devoted to publishing...

Texas v. Rosenthal.(BTW)(Brief article)
May 1, 2008... It's hard to believe it was only four years ago that the Supreme Court banned anti-sodomy laws in the U.S. once and for all. The year was 2004--the last big election year; the case was Lawrence v. Texas; and the Defense was represented by the...

Exclusive excusado.(BTW)(Brief article)
May 1, 2008... How jokes and such translate cross-culturally is one of those eternal mysteries, so make what you will of a recent incident in Argentina. It was actually more of a discovery on the part of a gay couple who decided to spend the day at a beach on...

Other countries' crazies.(BTW)(Brief article)
May 1, 2008... It's reassuring to know that the U.S. isn't the only country with religious leaders who say that natural disasters are caused (among other things) by gay rights laws. It was actually an Israeli member of parliament, Shlomo Benizri of the...

A tale of two dildos.(BTW)(Brief article)
May 1, 2008... Progress can be reported on two fronts in the battle to put sex toys into the hands of any adult who wants to own them. The stories unite two places, Texas and Sweden, that would seem to occupy opposite poles on some imaginary spectrum of civic...

Touched therapy.(BTW)(Brief article)
May 1, 2008... It was bound to happen: a "therapist" in the "ex-gay" movement has been convicted of sexual assault for practices directly related to the "treatment" he administered to a gay man undergoing "conversion therapy." (Okay, we'll stop with the...

Allan Berube's gift to history.(ESSAY)(In memoriam)
May 1, 2008... THE OBITUARY OF ALLAN BERUBE that appeared in The New York Times began with a reference to his MacArthur Fellowship and then moved on to Coming Out Under Fire (1990), his groundbreaking history of gay men and lesbians during World War II. Such...

Praise the Word: Audre Lorde Is Still Alive!(Poem)
May 1, 2008... Praise the Word: Audre Lorde Is Still Alive! I'm telling you, man, I'm telling you Audre Lorde is still alive! Who would've ever thought she'd live here right smack on 300 W. Schuster by Mesa in the Williamsburg apartments second...

The dancer and the dance.(ESSAY)(Rudolf Nureyev: The Life)(Book review)
May 1, 2008... Rudolf Nureyev: The Life by Julie Kavanagh Pantheon. 782 pages, $37.50 IN APRIL 1962, Rudolf Nureyev was convicted under Soviet article N43 of treason against the state. Traitor number 50,888 was not present to defend himself...

'I Picked a Daisy'.(Poem)
May 1, 2008... 'I Picked a Daisy' Age 12. Breakfast. Grape jelly on my toast. Coffee (in a glass, not in a cup). I always turned--first thing--to the Post-- Dorothy Kilgallen's column. What was up? One morning--I recall the sharp sensation,...

A spirit of the 60's.(Essay)
May 1, 2008... IN 1967, a number of us with same-sex feelings moved from the East Coast to the San Francisco Bay area. We were young and the sky wasn't big enough to measure our dreams. Some of us went West because we were disillusioned and some of us were...

The Moth She Noticed.(Poem)
May 1, 2008... The Moth She Noticed She tells you she's written a poem about the moth on her window pane-- that she worries using the image reveals the depth of her longing. You visualize that moth's wings. They tap that rhythm on the glass....

Lesbianism transfigured.(ESSAY)(Excerpt)
May 1, 2008... Following is the introduction to the forthcoming book, Sex Variant Woman: The Life of Jeannette Howard Foster (Da Capo Press). Reprinted with permission. IN THE EARLY 1950's, Alfred Kinsey's Institute for Sex Research received an enormous...

Bette at the bathhouse.(ESSAY)(Bette Midler)(Biography)
May 1, 2008... FULL DISCLOSURE: I came of age in the 90's and always thought of Bette Midler as that middle-of-the-road star of Beaches who sang the movie's treacly theme song, "Wind Beneath My Wings." Sure, she had her brassy broad routine, but this...

Heath Ledger and the idolatry of dying young.(ART MEMO)(In memoriam)
May 1, 2008... ON THE AFTERNOON of January 22, 2008, actor Heath Ledger was found dead in his Manhattan apartment, having taken, it was later learned, an overdose of prescription medications. The Australian native was 28. His masseuse discovered him after...

Sebastian's Nocturnal Dream Shows.(on The Cockettes)(Essay)
May 1, 2008... THOSE OLD ENOUGH will recall the classic photograph of the blond young man sticking flowers into the rifle barrels of soldiers who were there to defend America against the hippies who had vowed to levitate the Pentagon in a massive...

Banned in Milan!(ESSAY)(Art and Homosexuality: From von Gloeden to Pierre and Gilles)
May 1, 2008... IN AN ESSAY titled "The Autumn in Florence," Henry James reflected on the physical changes in the city that had been, for a brief period in the 1860's, the capital of the newly formed Italian state. Writing in the early 1870's, James admired...

Before there was modern dance.(Electric Salome: Loie Fuller's Performance of Modernism)(Book review)
May 1, 2008... Electric Salome: Loie Fuller's Performance of Modernism by Rhonda K. Garelick Princeton University Press. 264 pages (illustrations), $35. LOIE FULLER (1862-1928) was a short, stout, unprepossessing American girl who electrified...

A (mostly homo) history of Arab sexuality.(Desiring Arabs)(Book review)
May 1, 2008... Desiring Arabs by Joseph A. Massad University of Chicago Press 453 pages, $35. JOSEPH A. MASSAD, an associate professor of modern Arab politics and intellectual history at Columbia University, does not shy from controversy. His...

Just how sexy were the Greeks?(The Greeks and Greek Love: A Radical Reappraisal of Homosexuality in Ancient Greece)(Book review)
May 1, 2008... The Greeks and Greek Love: A Radical Reappraisal of Homo-Sexuality in Ancient Greece by James Davidson Weidenfeld & Nicolson 656 pages, [pounds sterling]30. ANCIENT GREEK Homosexuality is an enigmatic subject. A few years ago in...

If Capote had a conscience ...(Capote in Kansas: A Ghost Story)(Book review)
May 1, 2008... Capote in Kansas: A Ghost Story by Kim Powers Carroll & Graf. 304 pages, $25. FOR A TIME, Truman Capote was fading from our collective memory. When discussed at all, he was quickly and safely caricatured into a long scarf and a...

Dear doctor ...(Queer Lives: Men's Autobiographies from Nineteenth-Century France)(Book review)
May 1, 2008... Queer Lives: Men's Autobiographies from Nineteenth-Century France Edited and translated by William A. Peniston and Nancy Erber University of Nebraska Press. 270 pages, $27.95 THIS NEW BOOK of readings assembles eight...

Black power on film.(The Witch's Flight: The Cinematic, the Black Femme, and the Image of Common Sense)(Book review)
May 1, 2008... The Witch's Flight: The Cinematic, the Black Femme, and the Image of Common Sense by Kara Keeling Duke University Press. 209 pages, $22.95 AT FIRST GLANCE, this scholarly analysis of the impact of cinema and television on "common...

In praise of vice.(Sex and Isolation and Other Essays)(Book review)
May 1, 2008... Sex and Isolation and Other Essays by Bruce Benderson University of Wisconsin Press. 208 pages, $24.95 BRUCE BENDERSON'S iconoclastic new novel minces no words when it comes to the present state of contemporary culture: he believes...

Harlem a clef.(Gentleman Jigger)(Book review)
May 1, 2008... Gentleman Jigger by Richard Bruce Nugent Da Capo Press. 352 pages, $16.95 (paper) RICHARD BRUCE NUGENT, one of the youngest members of the Harlem Renaissance, and the only openly gay one, seems poised for his own literary...

A sheath for all reasons.(The Humble Little Condom)(Book review)
May 1, 2008... The Humble Little Condom by Aine Collier Prometheus Books. 371 pages, $18.95 SHEATH, GLOVE, PROPHYLACTIC--whatever you call them, millions of people rely on those little round wonders for birth control, disease control, and at one...

Out in Africa.(Sundowner Ubuntu)(Book review)
May 1, 2008... Sundowner Ubuntu by Anthony Bidulka Insomniac Press. 286 pages, $15.95 ANTHONY BIDULKA'S Russell Quant novels offer an engaging variation upon the pattern established by Hansen and extended by writers like Michael Nava in the...

Can you get that?(Telephone Ringing in the Labyrinth)(Book review)
May 1, 2008... Telephone Ringing in the Labyrinth by Adrienne Rich Norton. 108 pages, $23.95 "MORE AND MORE I dread futility," confesses one of Adrienne Rich's speakers in Telephone Ringing in the Labyrinth. "Maybe I couldn't write fast enough....

Toby Johnson's journey into the gay heart.(AUTHOR'S PROFILE)(Critical essay)
May 1, 2008... TOBY JOHNSON is co-author, with Walter L. Williams, of Two Spirits: A Story of Life with the Navajo (2005), a historical novel that creatively recounts the brutal history of how Union soldiers mistreated the Navajo people in New Mexico just...

Standouts at Sundance 2008.(Movie review)
May 1, 2008... NEARLY THIRTY YEARS in the making, Sundance remains the world's most important film festival for showcasing independent films, including gay and lesbian films. Gregg Araki, Todd Haynes, Rose Troche, and many other notable filmmakers came up...

On Derby Station.(Poem)
May 1, 2008... On Derby Station You hug me unrevealingly. Emotion has ambushed me in its clandestine fashion and left me mute. Yet wording your devotion you substitute a homily for passion: Though at the risk of launching an obsession, desire...

Conferences/events.(Bulletin Board)(Calendar)
May 1, 2008... Equality Forum 2008 will take place April 28-May 4 in Philadelphia (see ad on back page). This year's focus is gays and lesbians in Muslim Countries. For info, visit: www.equalityforum.com. GLBT ALMS Conf.--that's Archives, Libraries,...

In your face.(All That I Will Ever Be)(Theater review)
May 1, 2008... All That I Will Ever Be Written by Alan Ball Directed by Serge Seiden Studio Theater, Washington, DC THERE'S A SCENE in Alan Ball's All That I Will Ever Be, as staged by director Serge Seiden last March at Washington's Studio...