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161 David Groff Yeah, Walt Whit­ man. Yeah, W. H. Auden. Yeah, Frank ­ O’Hara. Yeah: great grand­ daddy, grand­ daddy, daddy, along with a bunch of other sperm do­ nors gay and ­ straight. But as a queer poet, I think my true daddy is Bette Mid­ ler. I con­ fess that my knowl­ edge of the Mid­ ler ­ oeuvre is ­ highly in­ com­ plete, and that her voice can make my skin crawl—­ though not as much as ­ Barbra’s. My diva gene is, sadly, re­ ces­ sive. But Bette en­ com­ passes for me two of the three per­ so­ nas of the queer sen­ sibil­ ity, as­ sum­ ing that there is such a thing as queer sen­ sibil­ ity. (As ­ critic Jeff Wein­ stein once said, “There is no such thing as a gay sen­ sibil­ ity, and yes, it has an enor­ mous im­ pact on the arts.”) In our cul­ ture as in our lives, there is the Bette of So­ phie ­ Tucker jokes—bawdy, ­ ironic, take no pris­ on­ ers, sub­ ver­ sive, trans­ gres­ sive. There is also the Bette who is CC Bloom in the movie­ Beaches, all em­ bod­ ied pas­ sion, syrup, and need—the woman who ­ bleats about the wind be­ neath her wings. Now, blend the DNA of So­ phie and CC with that of the cu­ ra­ tor of the West­ ern cul­ ture mu­ seum—say, Ca­ vafy but with­ out all that sexy nos­ tal­ gia—who ­ winces del­ i­ cately at men­ tions of bod­ ily func­ tions like sex, but whose bow­ tie spins when he be­ holds great art. Now you have the ­ triune god of gay­ ness—and gay­ poetry, or so I al­ ways ­ thought. My Rad­ i­ cal Dads David Groff 162 As a poet I have long wres­ tled with my mad moth­ ers So­ phie ­ Tucker and CC Bloom, as well as that crys­ tal­ line, im­ pec­ cable if in­ fer­ tile­ dad-curator. The great gay poets loom and lower, too. I have been bom­ basted by Whit­ man, got­ ten my face ­ ground into the grit by James­ Merrill’s Wee­ jun, ­ coughed as Auden ­ puffed his dis­ mis­ sive cig­ ar­ ette my way, felt the spit­ tle of gro­ pey Allen Gins­ berg, been ­ dissed at the gal­ lery open­ ing by the pas­ sion­ ately droll Frank ­ O’Hara, found my­ self ­ teased and ­ tongue-tied by Ash­ bery at din­ ner, and ­ judged my­ self un­ worthy to lick Thom ­ Gunn’s boots. My dad­ dies all de­ mand dif­ fer­ ent, contra­ dic­ tory du­ ties. If my heart be­ longs to daddy, which one? Even ­ though I had done the MFA thing, I came of age not in the­ poetry scene but in the New York ­ book-publishing world. Ex­ cept for re­ mote fig­ ures like Whit­ man and Auden, I ­ wasn’t read­ ing that many gay poets—or ­ rather, I ­ wasn’t ed­ u­ cated to read them as par­ tic­ u­ larly gay. In grad ­ school, one ­ straight pro­ fes­ sor ­ avowed that Whit­ man died a vir­ gin—that his men were meta­ phors of yearn­ ing, his car­ nal­ ity ­ thwarted, theo­ ret­ i­ cal. Only later, as I loi­ tered look­ ing for sex on the same down­ town New York ­ streets that Whit­ man wan­ dered, did I re­ al­ ize that here was a man who had done a lot of ­ hands-on re­ search. Like me, he even kept lists of his ­ tricks. As for any pa­ ter­ nal fairy dust waft­ ing onto me from en­ coun­ ter­ ing real live gay poets in New York, I might as well have been in Iowa. I never met Gins­ berg, Ash­ bery was a face on West 22nd­ Street, and Mer­ rill was the elfin and im­ pos­ sibly eru­ dite ­ reader of poems at the 92nd ­ Street Y. James ­ Schuyler might as well have lived in Mar­ ra­ kech­ rather than in the Chel­ sea Hotel that I ­ glimpsed from my bed­ room win­ dow. With the ex­ cep­ tion of ­ straight male teach­ ers like Stan­ ley ­ Plumly, Ste­ phen Berg, and Larry Levis, I was find­ ing most of my ex­ em­ plars gay and ­ straight on the page—Auden, Wal­ lace Ste­ vens, Louis Simp­ son, Eliz­ a­ beth ­ Bishop, and maybe a...

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