The Gay & Lesbian Review Worldwide articles from September 2005

The Gay & Lesbian Review Worldwide archives from September 2005

September-October 2005: "It's the Poetry Issue".(Editorial)
September 1, 2005... "Hear the voice of the Bard!" is the first line of William Blake's Songs of Experience, a yell for the reader to pay attention to what Blake himself and poets in general have to say. But this was written at a time (1794) when people still read...

The religious right's lewd little secret.(anti-gay Websites)
September 1, 2005... "Caution: Extremely gross and disgusting." Are these words of warning or enticement? When that's the disclaimer on sexually explicit gay-related material posted on right-wing websites, it's hard to know for sure. GLBT activists have long...

The plight of youth.(Correspondence)(Letter to the Editor)
September 1, 2005... To the Editor: In all the nuanced permutations of terms and self-images of gay and lesbian youth, Michael Amico has left out the single and most significant human need that drives GLBT people: the desire, the need, for love and to find a...

Objection, s'il vous plait.(Correspondence)(Letter to the Editor)
September 1, 2005... To the Editor: Thomas Armbrecht's article on France (May-June issue) is, to be polite, muddled: identity politics are hardly the invention of either queer theory or postmodernism, both of which have been deployed against certain notions of...

Where Burt ended it all.(Correspondence)(Letter to the Editor)
September 1, 2005... To the Editor: I was reading, and enjoying, Andrew Holleran's latest essay in The Gay & Lesbian Review ["Sex through the Ages." July-Aug. 2005]. One thing, though: the Burt Lancaster movie in which he commits suicide after an episode of...

Correction.(Correction Notice)
September 1, 2005... Due to editing errors, two mistakes occurred in George De Stefano's "Southern Italy: Puglia gets a gay president" in the July-August 2005 issue. The article stated that Nicola Vendola's win in Puglia "did not signify a victory for gay culture...

Brief boycott.(Ford Motor Co., boycott call by Christian organization)(Brief Article)
September 1, 2005... It took ten years for the American Family Association (AFA) to lift its boycott of the Disney Corporation, but it took only one week for the Christian fundie group to revoke its boycott of Ford Motors. The Disney ban was finally lifted because...

It can't happen here.(BTW)(two American men were married to each in Halifax, Nova Scotia)(Brief Article)
September 1, 2005... Two American men were legally married to each other at Canadian Forces Base Greenwood in Halifax, Nova Scotia, on June 14, in what is believed to be the first gay wedding on any military base in North America. The marriage of a sergeant and a...

Visit Fallwell.com.(BTW)(Brief Article)
September 1, 2005... No, it's not the website of professional bigot Jerry Falwell, whose name has one less "I" than that of this dotcom. It's actually an anti-Falwell site dedicated to exposing the televangelist's lies about homosexuality, and its owner is fighting...

The Times has noticed.(BTW)(Brief Article)
September 1, 2005... The journal of record went on record with two articles that delved into the quirky world of sub-subcultures on the socio-sexual landscape: One widely discussed piece addressed the question of bisexuality. While in Times fashion it treated...

Ex-gay crime watch.(BTW)(Brief Article)
September 1, 2005... Of the many humiliations endured by the "ex-gay" movement, a few of which have been noted here--sightings of prominent "ex-gay" leaders at gay bars or renting porn--outright criminality had not been too prevalent; but allegations of kidnapping...

Calling all social conservatives.(BTW)
September 1, 2005... You've heard of cramming, slamming, and ramming as methods of stealing your long-distance phone service. Well now there's damning, as in calling people up and condemning rival companies for their sinful ways to convince them to switch. A...

Ten ways of looking at gay poetry.(SURVEY)
September 1, 2005... RECENTLY, a first-of-its-kind book, Outside the Lines: Talking with Contemporary Gay Poets was published by the University of Michigan Press, a collection of interviews with some of the most prominent poets alive who also happen to be gay. On...

David and Jonathan.(Poem)
September 1, 2005... Jonathan, your pale touch, motives concealed in the mourning clothes. In my bursting forehead veins respect for the moon or starry gold! You become the heavens, brilliant friend. I've seen the real world in rivers, lazy or a great...

Re-experiencing Thom Gunn.(ESSAY)
September 1, 2005... MY FIRST ENCOUNTER with Thom Gunn (1929-2004) did not go well. It happened in Chicago in the late 1970's. After sitting for hours in a smoke-filled bar, I wandered down Broadway and found him in a bookstore and took him back to my hotel--two of...

Eileen Myles' song of the self.(ESSAY)
September 1, 2005... "That a woman, unwriting herself, flooding the world with her details, standing in such an endangered place, could be free." --Eileen Myles, "The Lesbian Poet" (a talk given at St. Mark's Poetry Project in New York's East Village) ...

Kindling.(Poem)
September 1, 2005... She loves silence on all subjects, sex in the morning, small things found while walking, and the shape of teeth. I could compose an impressive likeness from memory, only one hair angling against an urban Sun, Pile up...

Manly love: Whitman, Ginsberg, Monette.(ESSAY)
September 1, 2005... IN PLATO'S Symposium, Phaedrus maintains that love is the quality "most powerful to assist men in the acquisition of merit and happiness, both here and hereafter." In gay American love poetry, one does find happiness, even in a world determined...

Young poets on the state of the craft.(PANEL DISCUSSION)(Interview)
September 1, 2005... Three young poets who have published their first books of poetry in the last year participated in a "virtual panel," moderated via e-mail, in early summer. In it, they tackled such slippery questions as whether there's a "gay aesthetic" and the...

Jean Senac's Myth of Mediterranean Semen.(ESSAY)
September 1, 2005... THE MARTYRDOM of gay artists has become something of a cliche. Oscar Wilde, if not the first, is perhaps the most famous. But since then were Yukio Mishima, Reinaldo Arenas, and Pier Paolo Pasolini. To this list we could also add the name of...

A thousand words about a picture.(ART MEMO)
September 1, 2005... DURING A YEAR in my life when I spent a lot of time alone. I discovered in Somerville a somewhat forgotten, almost always empty bowling alley--actually candlepins, which is what we play here in Massachusetts--with a pool hall attached. I wiled...

Gay Asian-American male seeks home.(ESSAY)
September 1, 2005... "The West thinks of itself as masculine--big guns, big industry, big money--so the East is feminine--weak, delicate, poor... but good at art, and full of inscrutable wisdom--the feminine mystique... I am an Oriental. And being an...

More Wilde than we knew.(The Secret Life of Oscar Wilde)(Book Review)
September 1, 2005... The Secret Life of Oscar Wilde by Neil McKenna Basic Books. 539 pages, $29.95 THIS THOROUGH and harrowing book gives us the information we need to assess Oscar Wilde's place in the creation of modern Western culture and in the...

Life on the edge, 18th-century style.(Charlotte: Being a True Account of an Actress's Flamboyant Adventures in Eighteenth-Century London's Wild and Wicked Theatrical World)(Book Review)
September 1, 2005... Charlotte: Being a True Account of an Actress's Flamboyant Adventures in Eighteenth-Century London's Wild and Wicked Theatrical World by Kathryn Shevelow Henry Holt. 433 pages, $27.50 "I'M ALMOST THROUGH MY memoirs, and I'm here!"...

Love of the body in fearful times.(Eakins Revealed: The Secret Life of an American Artist)(Book Review)
September 1, 2005... Eakins Revealed: The Secret Life of an American Artist by Henry Adams Oxford Univ. Press. 583 pages, $40. IN 1890, Weda Cook, a 23-year-old singer, posed for the Philadelphia artist Thomas Eakins. Cook later reflected that the...

The tipping point of 'telling'.(Major Conflict: One Gay Man's Life in the Don't-Ask-Don't-Tell Military)(Book Review)
September 1, 2005... Major Conflict: One Gay Man's Life in the Don't-Ask-Don't-Tell Military by Jeffrey McGowan, MAJ, USA (Ret.) Broadway Books. 278 pages, $24.95 AT ONE TURNING POINT in this moving and romantic book, author Jeffrey McGowan, at the...

Lenny and his brothers.(The Five Books of Moses Lapinsky)(Book Review)
September 1, 2005... The Five Books of Moses Lapinsky by Karen X. Tulchinsky Raincoast Books. 496 pages, $15.95 CANADIAN WRITER Karen Tulchinsky is perhaps best known to American readers for her erotic short fiction, but this sprawling family drama...

One man's 'conservative' ...(Queer Wars: The New Gay Right and Its Critics)(Book Review)
September 1, 2005... Queer Wars: The New Gay Right and Its Critics by Paul Robinson University of Chicago Press. 192 pages, $25. PAUL ROBINSON states at the beginning of Queer Wars that "the emergence of gay conservatism as a political and intellectual...

Out of uniform.(Secrets of a Gay Marine Porn Star)(Book Review)
September 1, 2005... Secrets of a Gay Marine Porn Star by Rich Merritt Kensington. 468 pages, $15. (paper) THIS IS a gripping memoir by a man who spent his early life trying to be "the best little boy in the world." It's a quest that seems to be...

In heaven or the underworld.(Poem)
September 1, 2005... They met either in heaven Or in the underworld. Neither could remember. Smirks on their faces, They ordered two breakfasts In the early afternoon.

Gregg Araki: tackling the tough ones on film.(ARTIST'S PROFILE)(Interview)
September 1, 2005... FILM DIRECTOR Gregg Araki was born in Los Angeles on Dec. 17, 1959. The only child of Japanese parents, he grew up in Santa Barbara, eventually earning a masters degree in film production from the USC School of Cinema/TV. He currently lives in...

Mysteries of the 70's.(Fadeout)(Death Claims)(Book Review)
September 1, 2005... Fadeout by Joseph Hansen Univ. of Wisconsin/Terrace Books. 187 pages, $15.95 (paper) Death Claims by Joseph Hansen Univ. of Wisconsin/Terrace Books. 166 pages, $15.95 (paper) BEFORE THERE WAS John Morgan Wilson's...

Nigeria: organizing against persecution.(INTERNATIONAL SPECTRUM)
September 1, 2005... Following is a statement issued by the Alternative Lifestyle Foundation (LGBT Humanitarian Project) of Nigeria. This unsolicited report describes a dire situation for gay men and lesbians in one of the world's poorest countries, and announces...

Conferences/events.(Bulletin Board)(Brief Article)(Calendar)
September 1, 2005... Stonewall Democratic National Convention will be held Aug. 26-28 in San Diego. Early registration only $55. For more info or to register, e-mail the NSD at: field@stonewalldemocrats.org. Or phone: 202-625-1382. The National Gay & Lesbian...

Idaho at fifteen.(FILM)(My Own Private Idaho)(Movie Review)
September 1, 2005... My Own Private Idaho Directed by Gus Van Sant NEAR THE END of Gus Van Sant's 1991 film My Own Private Idaho, Scott Favor, played by a young Keanu Reeves, looks out from a limousine window to see his friend Mike Waters, played by River...