Paul Monette and the Ethics of AIDS Poetry 49
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
UCLA UCLA Electronic Theses and Dissertations Title The AIDS Poets, 1985-1995: From Anti-Elegy to Lyric Queerness Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/0vt3d1gr Author Gorelik, Aaron Bradley Publication Date 2014 Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA Los Angeles The AIDS Poets, 1985-1995: From Anti-Elegy to Lyric Queerness A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy in English by Aaron Bradley Gorelik 2014 © Copyright by Aaron Bradley Gorelik 2014 ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION The AIDS Poets, 1985-1995: From Anti-Elegy to Lyric Queerness by Aaron Bradley Gorelik Doctor of Philosophy in English University of California, Los Angeles 2014 Professor Arthur Little, Chair This dissertation argues that the AIDS crisis produced a sudden radical shift in intellectual and activist conceptions of “homosexuality” (from identitarian to poststructuralist) in the United States because of, in large part, the generic concerns of early AIDS poetry, which insist on the ethical priority of mourning over militancy. The untenable nature of the abject, isolated, and melancholic lyric AIDS speaker, however ethical, further led these poets (particularly Paul Monette, Thom Gunn, Tim Dlugos, Timothy Liu, Essex Hemphill, Melvin Dixon, Reginald Shepherd, Tory Dent, Rafael Campo, Henri Cole, Gil Cuadros, Richard McCann, and Mark Doty) to place pressure on the boundary between lyric voice, dramatic monologue, and ii performance as well as foster an aesthetic and political philosophy that employed the indeterminacy of direct address to problematize the cultural binaries of presence and absence, self and other, and abjection and subjectivity. As a result, early AIDS poetry (from 1985 to 1995) helped give rise to the quasi-poststructuralist praxis of “queer theory” and form a new, long- lasting era in American poetics and politics geared toward preserving the specifics of experience while also tending to the exigencies of the sociopolitical present. iii The dissertation of Aaron Bradley Gorelik is approved. Helen Deutsch Harryette Mullen Dorothy Wiley Arthur Little, Committee Chair University of California, Los Angeles 2014 iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This dissertation is dedicated to Arthur Little and my family (my parents and siblings especially); how can I ever repay you for what you have freely given me? I would like to thank Helen Deutsch in particular for her efforts, guidance, and for—as I once told her—helping me to understand what I love. I gratefully acknowledge Christopher Baswell for introducing me to the notion of AIDS poetry and encouraging me to study it. Thank you to Harryette Mullen and Dorothy Wiley for their years of generous support and invaluable suggestions. Thank you to Joseph Bristow, Robert DeMott, Marsha Dutton, Erin Belieu, Lynn Philyaw, Jillian Cuellar, all my former colleagues at UCLA Special Collections, Steven Blau, Tanya Brown, Peter Kassel, James Babl, David Groff, and my close friends for what I see as the palpable ways they have assisted me in writing this dissertation. Finally, let me express my everlasting gratitude to the poets whose works I discuss here as well as Ryan Thill for—to paraphrase the end of Love Alone’s third poem—seeing us through. v TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction 1 Chapter One: Paul Monette and the Ethics of AIDS Poetry 49 Chapter Two: AIDS Poetry and the Problem of Containment 110 Chapter Three: Black Gay AIDS Poetry and the Lyric Self 164 Chapter Four: The Emergence of Lyric Queerness 226 Appendix: Major AIDS Poetry Volumes 288 Endnotes 289 Works Cited and Consulted 347 vi CURRICULUM VITAE: Aaron Bradley Gorelik EDUCATION PhD Candidate in English, University of California, Los Angeles (2014) CPhil in English, University of California, Los Angeles (2010) MA in English, University of California, Los Angeles (2008) BA in English, Ohio University, from The Honors Tutorial College, Summa Cum Laude (2004) AWARDS The Academy of American Poets’ Fred Weld Herman Memorial Prize (2013) Co-Winner. UCLA English Department Dissertation Research Fellowship (2012-2013) Recipient. The Academy of American Poets’ Fred Weld Herman Memorial Prize (2012) Honorable Mention. UCLA Shirle Dorothy Robbins Creative Writing Award (2011) Co-Winner. UCLA English Department’s Teaching Excellence Award (2007-2008) Recipient. UCLA’s Dean’s Del Amo Fellowship (2004-2005 and 2007-2008) Recipient. UCLA Graduate Division’s Summer Research Mentorship Fellowship (2005) Recipient. Ohio University’s Outstanding English Graduate of the Honors Tutorial College (2004) Ohio University Honors Tutorial College’s Outstanding Honors Thesis in English Literature (2004) Recipient. Ohio University Provost Undergraduate Research Fund (2004) Recipient. Virginia Woolf Prize in the Essay (2004) Honorable mention. Ohio University Honors Tutorial College Grant (2003) Recipient. Phi Beta Kappa (2003) Junior Year Inductee. Virginia Knecht Memorial Scholarship (2003) Recipient. Ohio University’s Dean’s Scholarship (2000-2004) Recipient. The Barbara June Patterson Award (2000) Scholarship Recipient. The Educational Theatre Award (2000) Scholarship Recipient. First Bank of Highland Park Scholar (2000) Scholarship Recipient. Ohio University Alumni Sesquicentennial Scholarship (2000) Scholarship Recipient. PUBLICATIONS Archival Processing: “Paul Monette’s Journals, 1971-1992” Online Archive of California (Fall 2013) Poems: “Orpheus 1,” “Orpheus 2,” and “Orpheus 3 or Another” Westwind (Fall 2013) “When I Was Straight” LIT (Spring 2004) “Love Poem” Sphere (2004) CONFERENCES & PRESENTATIONS Presenter: “Paul Monette’s Journals, 1971-1992” (Summer 2013) Delivered at UCLA Special Collections. vii Hammer Poetry Series (2011, 2012, and 2013) Poetry readings. “Paul Monette and the Ethics of AIDS Poetry” (Spring 2011) Delivered at the UCLA English Department’s quarterly Athenaeum. “Tim Dlugos and the Problem of Containment” (Spring 2009) The 20th Annual Southland Graduate Student Conference, UCLA. “Always Sex, Always a Knit of Identity: Queerness in Leaves of Grass” (Winter 2004) National Undergraduate Literature Conference, Ogden, UT. National Undergraduate Literature Conference, Ogden, UT (Winter 2004) Poetry reading. “Contradictions in ‘The Lotus-Eaters’” (Winter 2003) National Undergraduate Literature Conference, Ogden, UT. Co-Convener: The 17th Annual Southland Graduate Student Conference, UCLA (Spring 2006). Respondent: For James Landau’s “Queer Literary Epidemiologies” (June 2010) Mellon Sawyer Seminar Series, UCLA. TEACHING Teaching Fellow, UCLA: “AIDS and the Discourses of Art,” an upper division seminar of my own design, Spring 2011. Teaching Associate, UCLA: Fall 2008 to Spring 2010. Teaching Assistant, UCLA: Fall 2005 to Spring 2007. Instructor, UCLA: “Form and Desire,” a class of my own design, Spring 2006. Guest Lecturer, UCLA: Twelve two-hour lectures for Arthur Little’s Pre- and Post- Stonewall LGBT Literature courses, Fall 2006 to Winter 2014. RELATED EMPLOYMENT Archival Processor, UCLA: Hired by Special Collections to write synopses of Paul Monette’s thirteen private diaries as well as organize an addition to his papers and revise the collection’s online finding aid, Summer 2013 and Winter 2014. Academic Counseling Assistant, UCLA: Trained and served as an academic advisor in the College of Letters and Science and English Department, Fall 2010 to Spring 2014. Research Assistant, UCLA: For Professor Arthur Little, Winter 2007. Reader, UCLA: Six times for Professor Arthur Little’s Pre and Post-Stonewall LGBT Literature courses, Fall 2005 to Fall 2008. RELATED ACTIVITIES UCLA Queer Studies Conference (2010 and 2011) Volunteer and attendee. UCLA Graduate Student Mentor in Student Research Program (Winter 2009). UCLA Graduate Student Liaison for The Friends of English Program (2007-2008). Ohio University’s Pride Week (2002 and 2003) Two-time co-convener of an annual week-long festival of activities. Open Doors (2001-2003) Co-president of Ohio University’s oldest and largest LGBTQ organization. viii Introduction [. .] they lie who say it’s over Rog it hasn’t stopped at all are you okay does it hurt what can I do still still I think if I worry enough I’ll keep you near the night before Thanksgiving I had this panic to buy the plot on either side of us so we won’t be cramped that yard of extra grass would let us breath THIS IS CRAZY RIGHT but Thanksgiving morning I went the grave two over beside you was six feet deep ready for the next murdered dream so see the threat was real why not worry worry is like prayer is like God if you have none they all forget there’s the other side too twelve years and not once to fret WHO WILL EVER LOVE ME that was the heaven at the back of time but we had it here now black on black I wander frantic never done with worrying but it’s mine it’s a cure that’s not in the books are you easy my stolen pal what do you need is it sleep like sleep you want a pillow a cool drink oh my one safe place there must be something just say what it is and it’s yours —Paul Monette, “The Worrying” (ll.57-79)1 The poets I have come to call “The AIDS Poets” wrote at a crucial moment in the history of gay male literature in the United States, a transitional time between two regimes of thought surrounding the idea of homosexuality: what I call “gay liberationism” and what has become institutionalized in academia as “queer theory.” As critic David Bergman points out in the first paragraph