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Article: Manly love: Whitman, Ginsberg, Monette.(ESSAY)
- Article from:
- The Gay & Lesbian Review Worldwide
- Article date:
- September 1, 2005
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2005 Gay & Lesbian Review, Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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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 to undermine all expression of joyous gay union. We find renegade love poems and those about settling down with one life partner. Recently we see poems delineating the many challenges of interracial gay relationships. And we find, as Assoto Saint reminds us in The Road Before Us: 100 Gay Black Poets, "sensual paeans to defiant sex and love in the era of AIDS."
If poetry anthologies are any indication of what various ...