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2013
LITERATURE & CRITICISM / GAY & LESBIAN INTEREST
“A powerful living archive of the great stakes and pleasures of
contemporary queer poetry. Reading these pages often feels like a lucky
and enriching eavesdropping.”
—Michael Snediker, author of
Queer Optimism
From Walt Whitman forward, a century and a half of radical experimentation
and bold speech by gay and lesbian poets has deeply influenced the American
poetic voice. In
Our Deep Gossip
, Christopher Hennessy interviews eight gay men
who are celebrated American poets and writers: Edward Field, John Ashbery,
Richard Howard, Aaron Shurin, Dennis Cooper, Cyrus Cassells, Wayne Koes-
tenbaum, and Kazim Ali. The interviews showcase the complex ways art and life
intertwine, as the poets speak about their early lives, the friends and communi-
ties that shaped their work, the histories of gay writers before them, how sex and
desire connect with artistic production, what coming out means to a writer, and
much more.
While the conversations here cover almost every conceivable topic of interest
to readers of poetry and poets themselves, the book is an especially important,
poignant, far-reaching, and enduring document of what it means to be a gay art-
ist in twentieth- and early twenty-first-century America.
Christopher Hennessy
is the author of
Outside the
Lines: Talking with Contemporary Gay Poets
and a
collection of poems,
Love-In-Idleness
, which was a
finalist for the Thom Gunn Award for Gay Poetry.
He is associate editor for
The Gay & Lesbian Review-
Worldwide
and lives in Boston, Massachusetts.
PAPERBACK ORIGINAL
NOVEMBER
LC: 2013015069 PS
272 PP. 5 ½ × 8 ¼ 8 B/W PHOTOS
E-BOOK $16.95 ISBN 978-0-299-29563-9
“
Our Deep Gossip
isn’t just smart. It
isn’t just a color-rich collection of
interviews with eight amazing gay
poets. And it isn’t just a compelling
record of their personalities,
processes, and engagement with
desire. It’s a landmark in which
Hennessy never misses the mark.”
—Jim Elledge, editor of
Who’s Yer Daddy
Of re l at ed int e re s t
Edited by Jim Elledge and David Groff
“As these writers pay homage to their
‘daddies,’ readers will revel in their sheer
love of letters and the centrality of the
written word to constructing meaning and
identity for all of us.”—Beth Breau,
Fore-
Word Reviews
PUBLISHED JANUARY 2013
LC: 2012015510 PS 312 PP. 5 ½ × 8 ¼
E-BOOK $16.95 T ISBN 978-0-299-28943-0
Terrace Books
Rhea Becker
