Outside the Lines: Talking with Contemporary Gay Poets

Timothy Liu

Timothy Liu Timothy Liu is arguably one of the nation’s most proli‹c lyric poets under the age of forty. He’s the author of six books and editor of the seminal Word of Mouth: An Anthology of Gay American Poetry (2000). Liu’s recent books include Of Thee I Sing (2004) and E Pluribus Unum, a.k.a. Kamikaze Pilots in Paradise (2005). Since his ‹rst book, Vox Angelica (1992), Liu has stunned readers with lyrics of cracked syntax and a hypereclectic vocabulary. He’s most noted for daringly graphic poems that often mercilessly join religion and sexuality. (Liu was raised a Mormon.) Liu writes a line of poetry that is tense, visceral— but at times enticingly mysterious , as well. In the title poem of his book Hard Evidence (2001), he writes: “Desire seen cavorting with the yes inside the no. / A soul kiss swimming solo in an open wound. / The self as church where the whores now gather in.” In his interview, Liu talks about the importance of collage to his project as a poet. “The way that something is put together by a method of collection feels like an approximation of consciousness,” he 194 %© William Fridrich says. Yet Liu’s more recent work seems to be opening up to a new accessibility, especially in poems about the death of his mother and in decidedly sharp-tongued lyrics that indict a hypocritical culture and an intolerant society: Must God compete with America’s indigenous sublime?—Gideon Bibles taking root in ditches on both sides of the road while condoms in suburbia erupt—clover tendrils choking off Kentucky grass where catamites now lay spread-eagle in the shade. Sodomy hotter than a burning cross as dusk draws near—receiving in themselves recompense of their error which was meet. (“Triptych in Black Lipstick,” from Of Thee I Sing) Liu explores his complicated relationship with the lyric form, arguing that the poet is a “lens.” For Liu, “whether or not you put the word ‘I’ in a poem, . . . the poem is voiced through a sense of self, even if the self is not disclosing any personal history.” Liu views poetry as “a confessional art” and describes lyric poetry as “an obsessive form.” His own poems are often searingly candid in their depiction of gay lust and love, of tricks, ex-lovers, and anonymous sex. Liu candidly discusses how he confronts these topics and how his life experiences in›uence his work. He also speaks about editing Word of Mouth, insisting that a “wide-angle lens” should be used for considering contemporary American poetry and arguing for its continual reinvigoration. Liu’s Hard Evidence and Say Goodnight (1998) were both ‹nalists for the Lambda Literary Award. Vox Angelica won the Poetry Society of America’s Norma Farber First Book Award. He published Burnt Offerings in 1995. His poems have been included in more than twenty anthologies. Liu served as the Distinguished Visiting Writer at the University of North Carolina in Wilmington and recently taught at the University of Michigan. He is currently an associate professor at William Paterson University. Liu spoke via telephone on two separate occasions—in 2001, prior Timothy Liu 195 5 to the publication of Hard Evidence, and in 2003, before Of Thee I Sing was released. %5 Christopher Hennessy: In Of Thee I Sing, there’s this thread of song woven throughout—beginning with the ironic title of the collection , to the Linda Gregg epigraph (“The world does not sing, / but we do”), to opera and Maria Callas “verging on disaster,” to of course the musicality of many of the poems themselves. What pleasures—or challenges —attract you to the ideas and effects of music in your work? Timothy Liu: Maybe it would help you to know that I listen to opera most every day. Music, opera in particular, is not an appreciation but a condition. When I was growing up, opera was often on in the Liu abode. Eileen Farrell or Leontyne Price singing Verdi. Not knowing Italian, I nevertheless understood what was going on. It had to do with emotional pitch. I expect that from poetry in some way. That’s why I usually turn to the lyric over narrative or epic poetry. Lyric poetry is an obsessive form. Picture the shape of a spiral, dwelling on something over and over (“he loves me, he loves me not, he loves me, he’s dead, oh woe is me!”) until you manage to spin out all...