phati'tude Literary Magazine Vol. 2, No. 2

V O L. 2 || N O. 2 || S U M M E R 2 0 1 0 a publication of The Intercultural Alliance of Artists & Scholars, Inc.(IAAS) a New York nonprofit organization

Timothy Liu INTRODUCTION TO THE LAVENDER ISSUE: LGBT LITERATURE TODAY

Gabrielle David Editor-in-Chief

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Jennifer Bacon Associate Editor Timothy Liu Guest Editor Jon Sands Editor Lorraine Miller Nuzzo Art Director Angela Sternreich Program Director Michelle Aragón Director, Marketing Communications

David Bergman THE GAY & LESBIAN PRESENCE IN AMERICAN LITERATURE

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Nikita Hunter Director of Curriculum and Instruction

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BOARD OF DIRECTORS Gabrielle David, Chair Angela Sternreich, Secretary Lynn Korsman, Treasurer Shirley Bradley LeFlore Stephanie Agosto Michelle Aragón Naydene Brickus Nikita Hunter Advisory Board Kenneth Campbell Robert Coburn Andrew P. Jackson (Sekou Molefi Baako) Special Advisor for the IAAS Board

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AnaLouise Keating GLORIA ANZALDÚA: QUEER THEORY’S OTHER MOTHER & LOVER

phati’tude Literary Magazine is published quarterly (Winter, Spring, Summer and Fall), ISSN: 1091-1480; ISBN: 1453688919; EAN13: 9781453688915. Copyright © 2010 by The Intercultural Alliance of Artists & Scholars, Inc. (IAAS). All rights reserved. Printed and bound in the U.S.A. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical without permission in writing from the Publisher. The views expressed by authors do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the editors of phati’tude Literary Magazine, the Board of Directors of the IAAS, donors or sponsors. Single issue: US$18; Annual subscriptions: US$65; Int’l-Canadian: US$75; Institutional US$110. We offer special discounts for classes and groups. The Publisher cannot guarantee delivery unless notification of change of address is received. Visit our website at www.phatitude.org. Manuscripts with SASE, letters to the editor and all other correspondence to phati’tude Literary Magazine, P.O. Box 4378, Grand Central Station, New York, NY 10163-4378; or email editor@phatitude.org. Cover Design: Michelle Aragón; Cover Art: Ruben Acosta (see p. 120).

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C O N T E N T S DEPARTMENTS 4 12

EDITOR’S NOTE BOOK REVEWS Featuring reviews by Mary Meriam, Peter Covino, Devi K. Lockwood, Aram Saroyan

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POETS WITH PHATI’TUDE THE FINAL WORD Richard Kostelanetz CONTRIBUTORS COVER ART Ruben Acosta

ARTICLES ESSAYS 22

TIMOTHY LIU Introduction to THE LAVENDER ISSUE: LGBT LITERATURE TODAY

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DAVID BERGMAN The Gay & Lesbian Presence in American Literature

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N S Self-)translation : an expropriation of intimacies

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ANALOUISE KEATING Gloria Anzaldúa: Queer Theory’s Other Mother, and Lover

FEATURES 25 56

ART SCENE TODAY Competition Winners & Finalists PHATI’TUDE LAUNCH PARTY @ THE BOWERY POETRY CLUB

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TOM CAREY From Small Crimes

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POETRY

BRANE MOZETIC 65 from New Banalities

JOHN BARTON 33 Bicyclists

EILEEN MYLES 87 My Box

NATASHA CARTHEW 32 All The Girls All the Time

ANGELO NIKOLOPOULOS 67 Description 68 Fisting: Treading the Walls

PETER COVINO 30 Built on the Foundation of What Isn't True 31 Rain Delay CHRISTOPHER DAVIS 43 A Face On A Milk Carton Filled With Ants 44 A Poem Containing Frailty, Not History 45 My South, Rising EDWARD FIELD 47 In The Rambles DAVID GROFF 103 Same Old Same Old FABIAN O. IRIARTE 37 Damn X JOHN KEENE 58 Elegy: Boston JANE LEVIN 86 Odd Girl Out DEVI K. LOCKWOOD 103 Voices Amplified PHILLIP MATTHEWS 59 The Tourists 59 The Crossover 63 Being in Love With My Brother MARY MERIAM 86 Portrait of a Woman Revealing Her Breasts

SUZANNE PARKER 35 Henna 35 Waiting for the 4th in Washington Heights 36 Jesus on the Ass JEFFREY PERKINS 71 Natural History Museum 71 After Victory 72 At the Monkey Bar ROBIN REAGLER 73 Air Ships 73 As I / As / I 74 Everybody’s Autoerotica 75 Call It “Her Becoming” 76 A Blue That’s Almost Blue 76 Something Like A Spine BRAD RICHARD 79 Butcher’s Sugar 79 This is the Real One 80 Narcissistic BOYER RICKEL 89 Surrender Ode ROBERTO TEJADA 105 from Full Foreground MICHAEL TYRELL 104 Five from Phantom Laundry

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“In a historical sense, literature as we understand it is a fairly new innovation, and the current concept of homosexuality is even fresher from the cultural oven. It’s no great surprise, then, that gay literature — or even gay characters in literature — are so relatively new as to still be shiny.”

— Kilian Meloy, “Influential Gay Characters in Literature” (AfterElton.com)

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am vver er ed about THE LA VENDER ISSUE eryy e exxcit cited LAVENDER ISSUE, it‘s something I’ve wanted to do for a very long time. Today, with the

increased visibility and acceptance of gays juxtaposed with the ongoing struggle for equality through gay marriage, I feel that THE LAVENDER ISSUE is more relevant than ever. As we face new challenges in terms of discrimination against lesbians, gays,

Gabrielle David, founder and editor of phati’tude Literary Magazine, is a writer and multimedia artist who has worked as a desktop publisher, photographer, visual artist, video editor and musician.

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bisexuals and the transgender communities, the idea behind THE LAVENDER ISSUE stems not only from the desire to raise awareness but also the hope that literature can serve as a conduit of understanding.

First let’s talk about the context in how and why we’re using LGBT. We’re using this collective term for literature produced by, or involving characters, plot lines or themes concerning the LGBT community. I should point out that while some circles refer to this designation as GLBT, and others add the “Q” at the end (for “queer”), I decided to use the more common term LGBT and not use the “Q,” simply because the term “queer” was initially an

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anti-gay epithet. And while it has been reclaimed in some circles as an endearing term, since I am not a lesbian, I don’t feel comfortable using it.

As in African, Asian, Latino and Native American literatures, in order to make it mainstream and conventional, the LGBT designation places several groups of people into one neat and tidy package . . . or so it would seem. While there is a strong political and social component that ties these groups together, this LGBT designation overlooks the separate and distinct histories each group has and what makes them unique to each other.

One of the reasons I looked forward to doing THE LAVENDER ISSUE is that I was curious to find out more about LGBT literature. But instead of getting answers to my many questions, I found more questions. LGBT literature has so many twists and turns, trying to get a straight answer (no pun intended) proved quite daunting.

Although many might argue that the concept of a distinctively gay or lesbian identity is relatively recent, literary texts with same-sex themes have been in existence for centuries.

Early Greek myths contain references to gender morphing gods and the surviving fragments of Sappho’s poetry are considered the first written evidence of same-sex literature, but were referred to as “gay” to include both men and women.

By the end of the 19th century, sexual definitions had been codified to the extent that gay men and lesbians began to appear in literature as codes for one another. To add to this confusion, men and women, gay and straight, wrote stories using gay themes, making it difficult to ascertain whether the works fall under the LGBT rubric. And since men have historically defined the standards for what is respectable in love, sex and family relationships, including those

where men are not present, some scholars believe the idea of lesbianism really didn’t become a valid expression of sexuality until the 20th century.

In fact, for years, men wrote much of the lesbian literature. During the 19th century, lesbianism became almost exclusive to French literature and was based on male fantasy and the desire to shock bourgeois moral values. Only when the English poet and author, Radclyffe Hall (born Marguerite Radclyffe-Hall), published the lesbian classic, The Well of Loneliness, in 1928, that women really be-

gan to author their own thoughts and literary works about lesbian relationships. Even the idea of a unique tradition of gay-male writing is relatively recent and it wasn’t until the early 20th century that gay men began to write more honestly about themselves.

LGBT literature and its writers began to surface in the mainstream after World War II. By the 1950s, organizations acted as a social venue and advocate for LGBT rights (e.g., Mattachine Society, One Incorporated, and Daughters of the Bilitis)

that promoted works by producing periodicals, despite the McCarthy era.

In 1956, the publication of James Baldwin’s novel, Giovanni’s Room, Allen Ginsberg’s Howl, and Jeannette Howard Foster’s pioneering bibliography of fiction and poetry in the United States, Sex Variant Women in Literature, along with the early fiction of Tennessee Williams and Truman Capote, were groundbreaking and set the stage for serious gay and lesbian literature that would later become widely read.

The weakening of censorship and the relaxation of social control in the 1960s contributed to the greater visibility of gays and lesbians in American life. Although the Stonewall Rebellion of 1969 serves as a convenient marker of the beginning of gay liberation as a mass movement, Stonewall itself was the culmination of decades of activism, and the emergence of gays and lesbians as a self conscious minority was a gradual process.

The 1960s also witnessed another phenomenon that added to the visibility of gays and lesbians, the appearance of books and articles attempting to explain the gay world to the general public. Emerging poets such as John Ashbery, Chrystos, Cheryl Clarke, Judy Grahn, Marilyn Hacker, Audre Lorde, Eileen Myles.

Harold Morse, Edward Field, James Merrill, Richard Howard, Minnie Bruce Pratt, Adrienne Rich, Muriel Rukeyser, James Schuyler and May Swenson, would write increasingly frank poetry in the ensuing decades.

Inspired by African American studies, women’s studies and similar identity-based academic fields, gay and lesbian studies originated during the 1970s. While the initial emphasis was on uncovering the suppressed history of gay and lesbian life; it also made its way into English classes and literary

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theory. “Queer theory” would soon develop, challenging the “socially constructed” categories of sexual identity.

Today, in the era of "Ellen,” “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy," “The L Word,” "Will & Grace" and “Brokeback Mountain,” you might say that it’s no surprise that LGBT literature has grown significantly in such a remarkably short period of time. Besides the rise of publishing houses, book and reading clubs, and bookstores; there is the development of professional LGBT organizations related to reading and publishing; and literary awards and conferences. And although for many years, LGBT books were marketed exclusively to the LGBT community, by the 1990s, certain books demonstrated crossover appeal, such as Michael Cunningham’s Pulitzer Prize winner The Hours, in which LGBT characters are central to a non-gay plot; and authors like Armistead Maupin, David Sedaris, Sarah Walters, Michael Thomas Ford and Augusten Burroughs, also managed to achieve crossover success and best-selling status.

Allan Hollingshurst snagged the Booker Prize for The Line of Beauty, bringing credibility to the genre, which had been looked upon as a niche market. E. Lynn Harris is probably the best example of crossover appeal. He authored ten consecutive books to make The New York Times Best Seller list, making him among the most successful African American and gay author of his era. Much of this can be attributed to gay and lesbian characters trickling into mainstream genres and stories that straight people can relate to.

Then there is LGBT teen literature, which has had its own coming out in recent years. Authors such as Tom Dolby, Robin Reardon, Julie Ann Peters and David Levithan and Martin Wilson have been hitting the scene with stories that are breaking silences and becoming survival tools for LGBT teens. However, even with these advances, LGBT literature still remains a hot button issue because it deals with sexuality, a topic that remains taboo in American society.

I believe that the thorny boundaries of LGBT literature will always challenge the relationship between sexual desire and literary expression. As I began reading, researching and tracking LGBT’s literary history, I ran into a slew of controversial and often vexing questions: Is les-

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bian, gay, bisexual, transgender literature simply literature written by someone who identifies as gay, for example, or does only writing specifically concerned with sexuality issues qualify? Can a heterosexual writer produce LGBT literature? By treating LGBT as a separate literature, are we in fact minoritizing the genre, as David Bergman suggests in his essay, so that the works are of minor importance in a major language? And by combining lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender literatures into one framework, are we marginalizing the work? Finally, how and to what degree is LGBT literature importantly distinct from the broader category of literature?

Many of these questions are not unique to LGBT literature, and some of the concerns raised herein can easily apply to ethnic literatures as well. Now that we have survived the cultural wars of the 1960s and 1970s, the multicultural wars of the 1980s and 1990s, and have arrived into the new millennium, I think many of us are now trying to figure out new approaches to the many ethnic categories that have developed in the past fifty years. However, in recognizing the unique interests of the LGBT community, as well as the numerous ways such interests intersect within, I have come to a better understanding of the social history, the rich heritage and literary traditions of LGBT literature.

For this issue, I asked Timothy Liu (Liu Ti Mo) to be PLM’s first guest editor. Since I was looking for someone who had a strong literary background, first and foremost, Timothy certainly fit the bill. An award-winning poet, Timothy is the author of Polytheogamy (Saturnalia Press, 2009); Bending the Mind Around the Dream’s Blown Fuse (Talisman House, 2009); For Dust Thou Art (Southern Illinois University Press, 2005); Of Thee I Sing (2004), selected by Publishers Weekly as a 2004 Bookof-the-Year; Hard Evidence (2001); Say Goodnight (1998); Burnt Offerings (1995); and Vox Angelica (1992), which won the Poetry Society of America’s Norma Farber First Book Award. Translated into ten languages, Timothy’s poems have appeared in such places as Best American Poetry, Bomb, Grand Street, AGNI Online, Kenyon Review, The Nation, New American Writing, The Paris Review, Ploughshares, Poetry and Virginia

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Quarterly Review. Timothy studied at Brigham Young University, the University of Houston, and the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and is currently an Associate Professor at William Paterson University and a member of the Core Faculty in Bennington College’s Graduate Writing Seminars. His journals and papers are archived in the Berg Collection at the New York Public Library.

I was very impressed that Timothy established himself as a respected poet in both the gay and straight literary communities. In the end, I wanted someone who truly understands writing and had a thorough knowledge of LGBT literature to shepherd the issue along. As we think about ways to both inform and surprise PLM readers, the notion of having a guest editor seemed like a good one and having it be him, even better.

Timothy candidly points out in his introduction the concerns I raised about publishing “clits and dicks” literature. I certainly was not hanging onto the persistent myth that all LGBT literature is pornographic, rather, I didn’t want THE LAVENDER ISSUE to appear marginalized with works based solely on stereotypes. Also, as a multicultural publication that is being used as a teaching tool (high school and up), all things being equal, I wouldn’t publish “clits and dicks” literature regardless of whether the author is gay or straight; it’s simply not part of our mission. At the same time, PLM will not allow itself to be held hostage by any particular dogma. Daring and different? Yes! Challenging our readers’ senses and expectations? Absolutely! So it’s our privilege to have Timothy guest edit our first LGBT issue.

When it came to the selection process, Timothy chose a wide range of poets: from well-established poets Eileen Myles and Edward Field; to qweda new generation of LGBT poets such as John Keene and Robin Reagler; to fresh upstarts like Angelo Nikolopoulos and Devi Lockwood. David Bergman’s classic essay “The Gay & Lesbian Presence in American Literature”; AnaLouise Keatings’ “Gloria Anzaldúa: Queer Theory’s Other Mother, and Lover”; and NS’s “Self-)Translation : An Expropriation of Intimacies,” shed some light on LGBT literature, providing what I believe is a pretty wellrounded out issue.

Since our cover artwork is an important part of the magazine, when it came to deciding what to use, we knew we didn’t want something that was trite or stereotypical, plus we wanted the cover to be done by an LGBT artist. Michelle Aragón, our Marketing and Advertising Director, had recently launched Art Scene Today (www.artscenetoday.com), an online site for emerging artists with juried competitions, and suggested we do a competition for the cover, and so we did. The competition, “The Lavender Issue: LGBT Art Today” was an exploration of what LGBT artists are doing today — what inspires, what motivates and what still needs to be expressed.

Artists from all over the world participated, and it was judged by Jeina Morosoff, a lesbian Canadian artist and curator whose award-winning work has been shown nationally and internationally. The first place winner, Ruben Acosta, a sculptor from California (see page 120), won the competition and his work, “Thinker” was selected for the front cover. Second place winner, Alyssa Jones and third place winner, Kurt Kain, are also featured prominently, along with the finalists to Art Scene Today’s juried competition on pages 25-29.

As for the future, while the ongoing debate continues as to what constitutes LGBT literature and if it remains relevant in the 21st century, I believe that there is still work that needs to be done, including scholarship, research and criticism that will bring more clarity to the LGBT rubric. And while some LGBT works have managed to mainstream into the public’s consciousness, it doesn’t mean that there aren’t any more boundaries to be crossed. In other words, even though we’ve been “Will and Grace-ified,” a large part of American society remains intolerant of the LGBT community.

One way to overcome intolerance is for non-LGBT entities such as ours, to publish and promote the literature so that the fictionalized histories and personal accounts of these writers engender a greater understanding and appreciation for a group integral to our larger community.

LGBT literature is so rich and varied, that’s why we’ve featured these great writers within these pages of phati’tude Literary Magazine. I hope you enjoy the experience.

ARTWORK BY: Carl Gopalkrishnan

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Our mission is to increase interest in reading by providing cool, short book recommendations in poetry, fiction and nonfiction. This month’s book reviews feature EDITOR’S PICKS of LGBT anthologies; and SUMMER READING from the poets and writers who have contributed to phati’tude Literary Magazine: Mary Meriam, Peter Covino, Devi Lockwood and Aram Saroyan. Happy reading!

EDITOR’S PICKS

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N SUR VEYING THE LANDSCAPE OF LLGBT GBT ANTHOL OG IES SURVEYING ANTHOLOG OGIES IES, these three books caught my attention: Gay & Lesbian Poetry in Our Time, The Word in Us, and Fifty Gay and Lesbian Books Everybody Must Read. What makes this collection of anthologies interesting is they reflect a period from 1988 to 2009 that provides a rich historical context in which the literature was written.

The works do not speak in one voice, or in one style, although there are common themes of isolation, AIDS, love relationships, coming out and ethnicity. The works are also as diverse as they are expressive, ranging from classic forms to spoken word.

Some may find these anthologies unnecessary, because after all, a writer is just a writer, and shouldn’t be categorized by whom they sleep with — in fact, it shouldn’t be an issue at all. Yet what each of these anthologies prove is that while sexual orientation may not determine a uniform identity, it does encompass a wealth of shared experiences. Admirably, each anthology contains works that vary extensively in tone, voice and subject, which find common ground in the pain and triumph that comes with being marked, marginalized and often reviled because of sexual orientation. If you have a passion for good literature, these anthologies are worthy of anyone’s library collection. — G. David

Gay and Lesbian Poetry in Our Time Edited by Carl Morse and Joan Larkin St. Martin’s Griffin, 1989 (us.macmillan.com/smp) $15.95; 432 pp.; ISBN: 0312038364

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UBLISHED IN 1 988, Gay and Lesbian Poetry in Our 1988, Time brings together 100 multigenerational groups of men and women from different cultural heritages, mainly from the U.S. and Canada. Many of the writers who appear in this collection, literary lions, both living and dead, are a good mix of both well-known and lesserknown poets: Antler, Gloria Anzaldúa, James Baldwin, Chrystos, Edward Field, Beatrix Gates, Allen Ginsberg, Marilyn Hacker, Joy Harjo, Essex Hemphill, Langston Hughes, June Jordan, Maurice Kenny, Audre Lorde, Cherríe Moraga, Eileen Myles, Adrienne Rich, Muriel (cont’d pg. 16)

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The World in Us: Lesbian and Gay Poetry of the Next Wave Edited by Michael Lassell and Elena Georgiou St. Martin’s Press; 2001; (us.macmillan.com/smp) $17.95; 420 pp.; ISBN: 0312273339

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Y THE TIME THE WORD IN US was published in 2000, the world of gay and lesbian literature had

changed dramatically since the publication of Gay and Lesbian Poetry in Our Time in 1988. No longer considered taboo, “gay and lesbian” was reinvented as LGBT land its literature has grown into a viable force that speaks to a new generation.

The Word in Us is a substantial collection of LGBT poetry features 46 poet of esablished voices and emerging talents. Marilyn Hacker, JD McClatchy, Eileen Myles, Rafael Campo, Letta Neely, Mark Wunderlich, Timothy (cont’d pg. 16)

Fifty Gay and Lesbian Books Everybody Must Read Edited by Richard Canning Alyson Books; 2009 (www.alyson.com) $16.95; 288 pp.; ISBN: 1593501196

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OMETIMES IT‘S DIFFICUL T TTO O determine what DIFFICULT constitutes LGBT poetry and fiction. Some texts certainly lend themselves to easy categorization, such as coming out or AIDS stories, but if sexual orientation is not relevant to the plot, it can be really hard to say.

Nevertheless, Fifty Gay and Lesbian Books Everybody Must Read is a collection of essays written by some of today’s outstanding critics, public figures and authors who comment, review, and/or assess what is considered 50 gay and lesbian texts. Beginning with the King James Version of the Bible (Book of Solomon) and ending with (cont’d pg. 16)

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Surpassing the Love of Men: Romantic Friendship and Love Between Women from the Renaissance to the Present

SUMMER READING

by Lillian Faderman Alyson Books, 3rd Ed.; 2010 (www.alyson.com) $17.95; 496 pp.; ISBN-10: 1593501927 Reviewed by Mary Meriam

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HO DEFINES THE LITERAR Y CANON? LITERARY Surely, there is nobetter example than Lillian Faderman, the groundbreaking scholar and author of Chloe Plus Olivia: An Anthology of Lesbian Literature from the 17th Century to the Present. Her aesthetic sense is flawless; her love for lesbian literature is palpable; her prose is exquisitely clear; and her scholarship is open and exciting.

As a lesbian poet, I was starved for Chloe Plus Olivia.

I needed an anthology to act as a guide and teacher. I (cont’d pg. 17)

Talk Poetry

by Mairead Byrne Miami Univ. Press, OH 2007 (www.orgs.muohio.edu) $10; 83 pp., ISBN 1-881163-49-0 Reviewed by Peter Covino

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AIREAD BYRNE’S SMAR T AND SASS Y TALK SMART SASSY Poetry overflows with brash energy, wry quips, and engaged critiques of the often vacuous and overinflated language of American consumerism. This skillful abcedarium, which starts with a caustic look in (the first poem) “America” at misappropriated, musical, poetic, and historical facts, riffles through the alphabet at breakneck speed through subjects as diverse as cultural assimilation, eating pancakes, single motherhood, popular movies, and Irish history. While the structure of this collection of prose poems is carefully (cont’d pg. 17)

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Orlando

by Virginia Woolf Mariner Books, 1st Edition; 1973 (www.houghtonmifflinbooks.com/mariner) $14.00; ISBN: 015670160X Reviewed by Devi K. Lockwood

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OW OFTEN DOES this happen to you? You’re reading a novel. The character is well, for lack of a better word: static. Yes, they struggle. Yes, they strive and fail and live and love. They interact with their landscape, changing as it may be. You turn the last page and sigh.

Well, doesn’t all that seem a bit formulaic?

Virginia Woolf knows no literary formulas. In her signature work entitled Orlando, Woolf explores the boundaries of gender and time within the context of one individual. This delicate play between biographer and (cont’d pg. 18)

The Rainbow

by D.H. Lawrence Penguin Group (USA); 2007 (us.penguingroup.com) $11; 528 pp.; ISBN: 0141441380 Revied by Aram Saroyan

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HE RAINBO W , THE NO VEL B Y D. H. LA WRENCE RAINBOW NOVEL BY LAWRENCE published in 1913, begins as a Victorian evocation of a family, the Brangwens, that has lived for generations in an English mining village. Although childless himself, Lawrence had grown up in the large family of a coal miner and was finely attuned to the dynamics of closeknit family life as it plays on its individual members.

One sees in the first half of the novel two successive Brangwen generations, the family en masse a kind of lumbering organism moving through the years with its births, marriages and deaths. (cont’d pg. 18)

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hen I w as ask ed tto o guest edit THE LAVENDER was asked ISSUE of phati’tude, I was admonished (more than once) to avoid choosing work that had “dicks and clits” in it. What a sad state of affairs, I thought to myself, that the word "lavender" for some immediately summoned phallic visions as if that were the primary source of linguistic pleasure for queer writers, as if the hetero literary world were somehow “above” such lewd tastes.

Yet let me be the first to admit that when sending out my own orphan poems to find respective homes, I have on more than one occasion gone on “dick patrol,” making sure that the “clit quotient” in each of my submissions didn’t rock (too hard) whatever editorial boat. I remember a fellow peer in my undergraduate days at Brigham Young University who said to me after a particularly sexed-up text had been up for workshop, “Dude, you've got to get laid more often!” So I’m pleased to report that in this particular gathering of glitterati, plenty of these writers must be getting laid as their libidos have been channeled into lush terrains and rich conversations beyond the merely anatomical and into historical and cultural awareness.

Do Ask and Definitely Tell rules the day. Spunky. Wanton.

Irreverent. Keep in mind those depraved/deprived souls trapped in Provo, Utah, looking for a way out of received conventions and tired tropes. So I offer this up as an antidote.

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ART SCENE TODAY LGBT 1st Place: Ruben Acosta THINKER

AR TIST ST ATEMENT ARTIST STA The Thinker represents man’s ability to reclaim itself.

As a gay man, who is dedicated to promoting wellness in the gay community, this piece embodies the uniqueness, strength and integrity of men who love men.

http://salvageconcepts.com

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C O M P E T I T I O N 2nd Place: Alyssa Jones

BEST FRIENDS

AR TIST ST ATEMENT ARTIST STA If I had to use one word to describe my work, I would choose “raw.” I find beauty in the factual, realistic, flawed, unsubtle, and unrestrained. I am constantly motivated and inspired by the individuals in my life, and I feel, as an artist and member of the LGBT community it is my duty to create powerful imagery that shows the unrefined and sometimes painful beauty of the LGBT world, and the individuals that reside there. www.iknowalyssajones.com

3rd Place: Kurt Kain THINKER AR TIST ST ATEMENT ARTIST STA My entry relates to the LGBT theme through an exploration of the beauty of the human body, in this case a male body.

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ART SCENE TODAY LGBT

Maya Just Maya WISH UPON A STAR

Maya Just Maya SPRING QUEEN

Kirk Kain EARLY MORNING

Eric Killen SOUL MATES

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Zarembski HEAVY METAL

Ruben Acosta QUEERSCAPE1

Ruben Acosta TIN MAN

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Ruben Acosta GREEN TUBE

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Maya Just Maya RAINBOW BIRTH Kirk Kain DANCER Kirk Kain RAINBOW HANDS

Alyssa Jones BECK

Zarembski BLUE1

Alyssa Jones EYES LIKE A TEACHER

KyleTaylor HOPE

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nlik e African American lit erature or Asian American nlike literature

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literature or even Jewish American literature, the teaching of lesbian and gay literature does not necessarily require opening the canon to new authors. It does require, how-

ever, opening our eyes to what is already there. I can’t imagine teaching a course in American literature that entirely eliminated all lesbian and male homosexual writers. How could one get through a course completely silent about Walt Whitman, Henry James, Henry David Thoreau, H.D., Herman Melville, Elizabeth Bishop, James Baldwin, Countee Cullen, Langston Hughes, Tennessee Williams, Edward Albee, Hart Crane, Allen Ginsberg, Gertrude Stein, Audre Lorde, and Adrienne Rich? I suspect that all teachers of American literature assign at least some of these writers because the story of American literature can’t be told without acknowledging lesbian and gay writers, although it has often been told by ignoring that they were gay and lesbian and by omitting works that speak most clearly about their sexual orientation. The late Thomas Yingling wrote that gay male writers were permitted to speak but not to tell.

It is also true of teachers of American literature we speak about these authors, but often we do not tell. Why this silence?

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— Gloria Anzaldúa “To(o) Queer the Writer — Loca, escritora y chicana”

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orn in the Rio Grande Valle alleyy of south Texas to sixthgeneration mexicanos, Gloria Anzaldúa (1942-2004) was punished in grade school for her inability to speak English yet went on to become an internationally acclaimed author whose work is often taught in English, composition, and many other high school and college classrooms. Today, Anzaldúa is probably best-known for Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza, a collection of essays and poems that defies easy classification yet can perhaps best be described as cultural autobiography. Anzaldúa also edited or co-edited three multicultural, multigenre feminist anthologies (This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color, Making Face, Making Soul/ Haciendo Caras: Creative and Theoretical Works by Feminists of Color, and this bridge we call home: radical visions for transformation) and, with this work, played an instrumental role in challenging narrow views of feminism and social-justice work. (cont’d pg. 54)

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GLORIA ANZALDÚA (cont’d from pg. 53) Although Anzaldúa chose to work outside the university system (except for occasional teaching engagements and conference speaking gigs), her impact on many academic disciplines — including American studies, composition studies, cultural studies, ethnic studies, feminism/feminist theory, literary studies, and women’s studies — has been immense. Anzaldúa’s broad redefinition of Chicana/o identities, her innovative use of code-switching (linguistic shifts between standard and working-class English, standard Spanish, Chicano Spanish, Tex-Mex, Nahuatl-Aztec, and other languages), and her sophisticated explorations of border issues and mestizaje identities have significantly influenced contemporary thought. Her writings, which are

Interconnectivity is key and serves as Anzaldúa’s theoretical framework for social change. We are interdependent and interrelated with all existence. Anzaldúa draws on this radical interconnectivity as she develops new strategies for survival, resistance, and transformation. frequently anthologized and cited, have challenged and expanded previous views in American studies, composition studies, cultural studies, ethnic studies, feminist theory, and women’s studies. As editor or co-editor of the three multicultural anthologies mentioned above, Anzaldúa also played a vital role in developing an inclusionary feminist movement.

Despite this academic attention, scholars and activists rarely recognize Anzaldúa’s leading-edge role in helping to shape Queer Theory. (Indeed, sometimes I wonder if Queer Theor y has yet caught up with Anzaldúa!) Even in the early 1980s, Anzaldúa was using the word “queer;” theorizing in the fluid, boundarychallenging ways generally associated with Queer Theory; exploring transpeople’s crucial contributions to identityrelated issues; and proposing alternatives to conventional definitions of lesbian/gay identity. Perhaps not

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surprisingly, given the fact that her own same-sex desires could align her with the lesbian category, Anzaldúa was especially critical of the term “lesbian.” Although she occasionally used this label to self-identify, she preferred to describe herself and her work as “queer.”

As she explains in her 1991 essay, “To(o) Queer the Writer — Loca, escritora y chicana,” because the term “lesbian” has often been used in ethnocentric ways, to refer exclusively to ‘white’-raced women, it erases her specific identity and desires. Instead, she claims the ambiguity of the term “queer,” with its working-class roots, or Spanish terms like “patlache,” “tortillera,” and “mita’ y mita.’”

Even in the early 1980s, Anzaldúa was offering an expansive definition of queer identity. She refused to focus exclusively on sexuality (or on any other single identity category) but instead moved relentlessly among multiple identity components and issues — including, but not limited to, class, color, gender, language, physical (dis)abilities, religion, belief, and sexuality. Whereas some authors and theorists associated with Queer Theory tend to focus primarily, if not exclusively, on sexuality (and sometimes gender), Anzaldúa refused to examine sexuality/gender in isolation. Instead, she locates and anchors these identity components in a multiplicity of additional overlapping categories, such as culture, race/ethnicity, class, spirituality. Creating a complex, interwoven identity, Anzaldúa challenges conventional western concepts of personhood as well as contemporary forms of identity politics which tend to reify monolithic, narrow identity formations. Through this nuanced approach, Anzaldúa offers one of the earliest and most complex articulations of interconnectivity as a new platform for identity.

I attribute Anzaldúa’s innovative, radical Queer Theory to her inclusionary, holistic worldview — her belief that “every cell in our bodies, every bone and bird and worm has spirit in it” (Borderlands/La Frontera 58).

Drawing on indigenous philosophies, Anzaldúa posits a type of fluid cosmic spirit/energy/force that embodies itself throughout — and as — all existence. She uses this spiritualized worldview to synthesize social activism with spiritual vision, creating what she elsewhere describes as spiritual activism.(1) Spiritual activism is a visionary yet practical form of activism based on the belief in our radical interconnectedness. Unlike conventional forms of activism or religion, spiritual activism does not impose authority on individuals through external texts, standards, and/or leaders. Instead, spiritual activism locates authority within each individual and links inner transformation with outer change.(2)

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Anzaldúa’s spiritual activism includes a theory of relational selfhood that offers an important alternative to the traditional forms of hyper-individualism which too often inform Queer Theory. By defining each human being as part of a cosmic whole, Anzaldúa develops theoretical justification and motivation linking self-reflection and self-change with social transformation. And, by locating each individual within this larger context, she forges commonalities that do not ignore the many differences among us. As I explain elsewhere,(3) Anzaldúa’s relational approach to commonalities and differences challenges individual and collective identity categories based on simplistic understandings of gender, ethnicity/‘race,’ class, sexuality, and other social labels. Take, for example, her theory of El Mundo Zurdo, which she describes in her autohistoria (autobiographical essay) “La Prieta”: The rational, the patriarchal, and the heterosexual have held sway and legal tender for too long. Third World women, lesbians, feminists, and feminist-oriented men of all colors are banding and bonding together to right that balance. Only together can we be a force. I see us as a network of kindred spirits, a kind of family.

We are the queer groups, the people that don’t belong anywhere, not in the dominant world nor completely within our own respective cultures. Combined we cover so many oppressions. But the overwhelming oppression is the collective fact that we do not fit, and because we do not fit we are a threat. Not all of us have the same oppressions, but we empathize and identify with each other’s oppressions. We do not have the same ideology, nor do we derive similar solutions. Some of us are leftists, some of us practitioners of magic. Some of us are both. But these different affinities are not opposed to each other. In El Mundo Zurdo I with my own affinities and my people with theirs can live together and transform the planet. (50) In this passage, and in her work more generally, Anzaldúa models an inclusionary communal subject formation based on commonalities. By offering a framework composed of commonalities, rather than sameness, El Mundo Zurdo represents a potentially empowering, transformative space of relational differences.

Interconnectivity is key and serves as Anzaldúa’s theoretical framework for social change. We are inter-

dependent and interrelated with all existence. Anzaldúa draws on this radical interconnectivity as she develops new strategies for survival, resistance, and transformation. Those of us who do Queer Theory have much to learn from Anzaldúa’s theory and praxis of interconnectivity. Her relational selfhood, her theory of El Mundo Zurdo, and other aspects of her thought offer instructive lessons for those of us working in LBGTQ Theory in the twenty-first century.

References Anzaldúa, Gloria E. Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza. 1987. San Francisco: Spinsters/Aunt Lute, 1999.

—. Interviews/Entrevistas. Ed. AnaLouise Keating.

New York: Routledge, 2000.

—. “La Prieta.” 1981. The Gloria Anzaldúa Reader.

Ed. AnaLouise Keating Durham, NC: Duke UP, 2009.

38-50.

—. “To(o) Queer the Writer—Loca, escritora y chicana.” 1991. The Gloria Anzaldúa Reader. Ed. AnaLouise Keating Durham, NC: Duke UP, 2009. 16375.

—, ed. Making Face, Making Soul/Haciendo Caras: Creative and Critical Perspectives by Women of Color.

San Francisco: Aunt Lute Foundation, 1990.

Anzaldúa, Gloria E. and AnaLouise Keating, eds. this bridge we call home: radical visions for transformation. New York: Routledge, 2002.

Keating, AnaLouise. “Shifting Perspectives: Spiritual Activism, Social Transformation, and the Politics of Spirit.” EntreMundos/Among Worlds: New Perspectives on Gloria E. Anzaldúa. Ed. AnaLouise Keating. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005. 241-54.

Moraga, Cherríe and Gloria Anzaldúa, eds. 1981. This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color.

New York: Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press, 1983.

Footnotes 1. See her Interviews/Entrevistas and “now let us shift.”

2. For an extensive discussion of spiritual activism, see my “Shifting Perspectives: Spiritual Activism, Social Transformation, and the Politics of Spirit.”

3. See my “Shifting Perspectives.”

ANALOUISE KEATING is the author of Teaching Transformation: Transcultural Classroom Dialogues (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007); and Women Reading Women Writing: Self-Invention in Paula Gunn Allen, Gloria Anzaldúa, and Audre Lorde (Temple UP, 1996). She has been Professor of Women’s Studies, Texas Woman’s University since 2006.

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THEFINALWORD I T’ S N O T W H O Y O U K N O W B U T W H A T Y O U K N O W

A Minority’s Minorities

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er haps because I descend from a intramixed Jewish erhaps marriage, so to speak, I've always been aware of the exclusion of Sephardic or Spanish Jews from the exclusively Ashkenazic histories of the American Jewish experience. Quite simply, too many books say nothing, absolutely nothing, about Jews who came to America speaking not Yiddish but archaic Richard Kostelanetz is a writer-artist who has published extensively since 1961, contributing poems, stories, articles, reviews, and experimental prose to hundreds of magazines both here and abroad.

Spanish, commonly called Ladino or Judeo-Spanish, or Levantine French, as in the case of my grandparents. The word Sephardic sometimes doesn't even appear in these books' indices, which likewise lack Jewish names ending in vowels, to recall an Italian American friend's advice on quickly identifying Mediterranean monikers.

The only Sephardic writer included in Abraham Chapman's Jewish American Literature: An Anthology (1974) is the nineteenth century poet Emma Lazarus. I can't find any Sephardim in Daniel Walden's On Being Jewish, an anthology likewise from 1974 (Fawcett). Look at the Prairie Schooner Anthology of (cont’d pg. 112)

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THE FINAL WORD (cont’d from pg. 111) Contemporary Jewish-American Writing (1998) and you'll find only one surname ending with a vowel Harvey Shapiro's — and he's not Sephardic. Of the 75 writers meriting individual entries in Joel Shatsky and Michael Taub's Contemporary Jewish-American Novelists: A Biocritical Sourcebook (1997), the only name terminating in a vowel is Max Apple's, which sounds like an abbreviation of a name that isn't Sephardic either. When

“Remembering that a few years ago, I characterized Sephardic Jewish writers as a minority within a minority that is lamentably invisible to the majority of the minority, I regret that this anthology of Jewish American Literature perpetuates unnecessary misfortune.”

David Rosenberg invited thirty-seven Jewish “Contemporary Writers Read the Jewish Bible” for his Congregation (1987), none were Sephardic. In Steven J. Rubin's Telling and Remembering: A Century of American Jewish Poetry (1997), there is Emma Lazarus, a token in more ways than one nowadays, and not two but three Shapiros — Harvey, Karl, and Alan — but no other Sephardim. Need I go on documenting unfortunate omissions? Does recurring neglect reflect a general Ashkenazi snobbery toward all people, gentile as well as Jewish, whose names end in vowels?

With this grievance in mind, I approached Jewish American Literature: A Norton Anthology (2001), initially with relief, as the first entry is authored by “Abraham de Lucena, et al., ” who are identified in the headnote as “leading Sephardic merchants in Amsterdam . . . among the first colonists to settle in the New World.”

So far, okay, I felt, remembering my parochial search.

So I moved on through the book's large pages, with more than 500 words to each leaf, and found on p. 70 a single poem by Penina Moïse (1797-1880), who is identified in the headnote as descending from “a Sephardic Jewish merchant family in Charleston, South Carolina.”

Need I note that the adjectives are redundant, as no

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Christians or Moslems are Sephardic. Around p. 101 Emma Lazarus appears with a few poems.

I continued to turn this book's pages, finding the common Ashkenazic names of Roth, Stein, Stern, Schwartz, Marx, Asch, Shapiro, Levin, Levine, Fuchs, Glatstein, Gold, Bloom, Lewisohn, Reich, Rothenberg, Doctorow, Freidman, Sondheim, Spiegelman, Mirsky, and Pinsky-so familiar as to be the monikers of law firms or medical partnerships.

Only by turning every page did I discover at p. 671 Emma Adatto Schlesinger (b. 1910), her maiden name nearly buried before a German surname. The head notes to his contribution reflect the sentiments of editorial tokenism: “We have included Schlesinger's autobiographical narrative, “La Tía Estambolía” for its vivid depiction of an extraordinary woman, Madame Vida de Veisí, who, in the 1920s and 1930s, imparted to the young Schlesinger a wealth of Sephardic traditions.” These remarks, so reminiscent of how a Jewish writer might have been introduced within a predominantly gentile anthology of a century ago, indicates that Ms. Adatto appears not for literary value but for some sociological information. More than 400 pages later, on p. 1111 (that's four 1s, not three), is an excerpt from Miriam Israel Moses' Survivors and Pieces of Glass (apparently not-yet-published) that, its remarkably strong prose notwithstanding, is, to quote the headnote, introduced as focusing on “cultural traditions, which Moses, as a Sephardic Jew, is careful to underline as different from than of the larger Ashkenazic community.”

Doesn't this distancing epitomize tokenism again?

Who's missing? Consider, among other Jewish American writers, Victor Perera, Edouard Roditi, Andre Aciman, Michael Castro, Ammiel Alcalay, Victor Perera, Emile Capouya, Ruth Knafo Setton, Victor di Suvero, Rae Dalven, Max Ascoli, Jean-Claude van Itallie, Jordan Elgraby, Robert Vas Dias, Alan Rosenus, Gini Alhadeff, Ralph de Toledano, Mark di Suvero, Joseph Mazo, Michel Benamou, Benjamin de Casseres (a lost treasure), Jane Mushabac, and Jacques Derrida (if you classify him as American for teaching here so much of every year), many of their names ending in pesky vowels, not to mention yet other contributors to Diane Matza's pioneering anthology, Sephardic-American Voices (1997). Remembering that a few years ago, I characterized Sephardic Jewish writers as a minority within a minority that is lamentably invisible to the majority of the minority, I regret that this anthology of Jewish American Literature perpetuates unnecessary misfortune.

[For an example of comparable short-sightedness in other contexts, consider that a decade or so ago an exhibition of Greek-American artists at the Queens Museum in NYC failed to include any artists of Greek-Jewish de-

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scent whose work, for quality alone, belonged, beginning with the videographer Peter Campus, including my cousin the painter Micaela Amato. A more recent anthology of Greek-American poetry failed to include Ms. Dalven (1905-1992), also prominent in her time as a translator of Greek-poetry, who descended from the small Romaniote sect, unique to northwest Greece-a miniscule Jewish minority that is neither Sephardic or Ashkenazi and thus exclusively Greek for millennia.

[Acknowledging De Casseres, whose deviant work and Sephardic background made him unacceptably different to other Jewish writers, I'm reminded of a question I've posed to those familiar with American Yiddish literature. Could there have been a Yiddish writer similarly so innovative that his or her work was scarcely published and never anthologized? My hunches. reflecting my sense of literary politics in America, are that this more experimental writer was more likely female than male, perhaps Lesbian, and that she was influenced by Gertrude Stein whose work, gender, and social class made her work unacceptable to male Jewish critics writing in English. Who was she?]

What else is missing from this Norton Anthology?

Consider writing composed by Jewish Americans in languages other than English or Yiddish-multicultural this book is not. Consider that nothing here acknowledges poetry in Russian by Joseph Brodsky, among others Russian Jews residing here; in French by Raymond Federman, likewise among others; in Spanish by Latin-American Jews residing here, among them Ilan Stavans teaching at Amherst, Isaac Goldemberg, a Distinguished Professor at CUNY, and Marjorie Agosin, a Chilean teaching at Wellesley; nothing initially in German, by Hans Sahl and Stefan Heym, among other Holocaust refugees long resident in the US; or in medieval Hebrew by Ezekiel Hai Alberg, reportedly last living in Encino, CA; etc. Nothing here was initially written in Italian by, among others, Lorenzo da Ponte (1749-1838, yes him, born Emanuele Conegliano), who, after collaborating with W. A. Mozart, spent the last three decades of his life in America, teaching Italian at times at Columbia University. Only one contributor to this book wrote initially in Hebrew. A few years ago I tried to get a grant for “The Other Poetries of New York City� that would include selections of poems written in a variety of languages other than English, but no one would support what is not commonly known to exist-minorities' literary minorities. The ultimate fault of this mammoth Norton anthology is closing down our sense of the multi-lingual Jewish literary experience in America, rather than opening it up, not out of malice, to be sure, but, apparently, thoughtless ignorance.

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CONTRIBUTORS M E E T W H O

T H E P O E T S M A K E I T

& W R I T E R S H A P P E N!

Jennifer Bacon is Associate Editor of phati’tude Literary Magazine. The founder of Black Women Writing, she received her PhD in Curriculum and Instruction from the University of Maryland. Bacon is a recipient of the 2010 Book In A Day writing fellowship in Florence, Italy, the 2009 recipient of Poetry Alive and the 2008 recipient of the Pursue the Dream: Chris Mazza Award for Poetry Therapy. Her writing and research interests include social justice, poetry, culturally responsive pedagogy, global education, African American culture, gender studies and adolescent identity and development; and has published literary works in phati’tude Literary Magazine and Returning Woman.

John Barton is a Canadian poet that has published nine books of poetry and five chapbooks, including, Hymn (Brick Books, 2009), Hypothesis (House of Anansi Pr., 2001), Designs from the Interior (House Of Anansi,1998)) and Sweet Ellipsis (Ecw Pr., 1998). As co-editor of Seminal: The Anthology of Canada’s Gay-Male Poets, he has won three Archibald Lampman Awards, an Ottawa Book Award, a CBC Literary Award, and a National Magazine Award. His poems, essays and book reviews have been published in more than 80 magazines and anthologies in Canada, the United States, Australia and the United Kingdom. He was co-editor of the Canadian publication Arc Poetry Magazine from 1990 to 2003, and now lives in Victoria, BC, where he edits The Malahat Review, and is poetry editor for Winnipeg’s Signature Editions.

David Bergman received his B.A. from Kenyon College, and his M.A. and Ph.D. from The Johns Hopkins University, and specializes in Victorian literature, modern American poetry and gay literature. He is the author or editor of more than a dozen books, including poetry, literary and cultural criticism, children’s books, textbooks and collections of essays, short fiction and autobiography. Bergman’s recent works include Gaiety Transfigured: Gay Self-Representation and American Literature (Univ. of Wisconsin Pr., 2009) chosen as an Outstanding Book of the Year by Choice magazine; and The Violet Hour: The Violet Quill and the Making of Gay Culture (Columbia Univ. Pr., 2004). The recipient of the Lambda Book Award and the George Elliston Prize, Bergman’s poems and articles have appeared in such journals as The American Scholar and American Literary History. He is an English professor at Towson University in Maryland and serves as coordinator of the Cultural Studies Program.

Tom Carey, born in Los Angeles, studied acting with Jack Garfein and Stella Adler, and moved to New York in 1977. He has appeared in several feature films and TV shows, among them Plaza Suite, The Day of the Locust, and The Blue Knight. During the 1970s and 1980s, he fronted for the punk rock band, “The Beeks,” and was literary assistant to poets James Schuyler and John Ashbery. He earned a degree in Spanish at Columbia University and in 1988, became a Franciscan brother of the Society of St. Francis, an Anglican religious order. He served for thirteen years at St. Elizabeth’s Friary in Bushwick, Brooklyn, and was ordained an Episcopal priest in 2003. While living in Brooklyn, he ran a theater program for inner city kids for six years, taught poetry in New York City’s public schools for a decade, and worked with youth and young adults at Episcopal parishes in Queens. His book of poems Desire (Painted Leaf Pr., 1997) was a Lambda Literary Award finalist. He is currently moving to Los Angeles, where he will be a priest at Epiphany Episcopal Church in Lincoln Height, CA. Natasha Carthew was born and raised in Cornwall, UK. Her work has appeared in numerous publications including Diva, Velvet, Gertrude, Read These Lips and Sinister Wisdom. She has published three books of poetry, the latest being Flash Reckless, published by the internationally acclaimed Lesbian/Feminist publisher Onlywomen Press, in 2002. Carthew is currently working on her first work of fiction, and her poetry collection, Cabin Fever, is forthcoming. http://natashacarthew.tripod.com Peter Covino is an Italian immigrant and former social worker who is the author of the poetry collection, Cut Off the Ears of Winter (Western Michigan Univ./New Issues Pr., 2005), a finalist for the Publishing Triangle Thom Gunn

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T H E L A V E N D E R I S S U E:: L G B T L I T E R AT U R E T O D AY Award. His chapbook, Straight Boyfriend (2001), won the Frank O’Hara Poetry Prize; and his poems, translations, and reviews have been published widely both in America and Italy in such places as American Book Review, Colorado Review, Columbia, Interim, The Paris Review, Talisman, tutteStorie, Verse, and The Penguin Anthology of Italian-American Writing, among others. Covino is a founding editor of the literary press, Barrow Street Inc. and Barrow Street Books, where he helps supervise fundraising, development and editorial efforts. He is currently Assistant Professor of Literature with Creative Writing at University of Rhode Island.

Gabrielle David, Editor-in-Chief of phati’tude Literary Magazine, is a multimedia artist that has worked as a desktop publisher, photographer, artist, video editor and musician. David has published several essays on multicultural literature and published the poetry collections: this is me, a collection of poems & things (CCI Books, 1994); and spring has returned & i am renewed (CCI Books, 1995). Her work has published in Paterson Literary Review, Journal of New Jersey Poets and AIM Magazine. She is the Executive Director of the Intercultural Alliance of Artists & Scholars, Inc. (IAAS), a NY-based nonprofit organization that promotes multicultural literature and literacy, which pubishes phati’tude Literary Magazine.

Christopher Davis received a B.A. in English from Syracuse University and an M.F.A. from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where he was a Teaching-Writing Fellow in 1985. He has published A History of the Only War, (Four Way Books, 2005); The Patriot (Univ. of Georgia Pr., 1998); and The Tyrant of the Past and the Slave of the Future (Texas Tech Univ. Pr., 1990), winner of the 1988 Associated Writing Programs award. His poems have appeared in numerous periodicals such as American Poetry Review, Denver Quarterly, Massachusetts Review,Volt; and in anthologies such as Word of Mouth: An Anthology of Gay American Poetry, The Best American Poetry 1990 and Red, White and Blues: Poets on the Promise of America. Since 1989, he has taught creative writing and contemporary poetry in the English Department at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte.

Edward Field received a Lambda Award for Counting Myself Lucky, Selected Poems 1963-1992 (Black Sparrow Pr., 1992). His most recent books are a memoir, The Man Who Would Marry Susan Sontag, and Other Intimate Literary Portraits of the Bohemian Era (Univ. of Wisconsin Pr., 2007); a new collection of poems, After the Fall, Poems Old and New (Univ. of Pittsburgh Pr., 2007); and a travel diary, Kabuli Days, Travels in Old Afghanistan (World Parade Books, 2010). He lives in New York City with his partner Neil Derrick, with whom he collaborated on a four-generation historical novel of Greenwich Village, The Villagers, which will soon appear in a third edition. www.edwardfield.com Carl Gopalkrishnan (a/k/a Gopal) is a self-taught painter. Born in the UK, he is currently based in Perth, Western Australia, where he works in acrylic, mixed media and photography. Combining research, reflection and intuitive practice, his paintings are often inspired by history, literature and mythology. Since 2006, he has integrated digital processes such as photographs and hand stencils, screen printing and aerosol spray with more traditional painting methods. In his recent works he has been inspired by street art, old subway film posters and 1960s airport paperback covers. His work appears in international magazines and journals of poetry, politics and culture; and he has exhibited at galleries around the world, including, Keith+Lottie Gallery, Perth, WA; Breadbox Gallery, Perth, WA; Three Rivers Arts Festival Gallery (TRAF), Pittsburgh, PA; CUNY Graduate Center, New York City; and Bridge Gallery at the Maltings, Northbridge, WA. www.carlgopal.com David Groff is a poet, writer and independent editor. He graduated from the University of Iowa, with an M.F.A. and M.A., and has taught at University of Iowa, Rutgers University, NYU, and at William Paterson University. For the past eleven years, he has worked with literary and popular novelists, memorists, journalists and scientists whose books have been published by Atria, Bantam, HarperCollins, and other publishers; and served as an editor at Crown Publishing for twelve years. Groff has published in American Poetry Review, Chicago Review, Christopher Street, Confrontation, The Georgia Review, The Iowa Review, Men on Men 2000, Missouri Review, New York, North American Review, Northwest Review, Out, Poetry, Poetry Daily, Poetry Northwest, Prairie Schooner, QW, Self, and Wigwag.

Fabian O. Iriarte teaches English and American literature and Comparative literature at the Universidad Nacional de Mar del Plata. He has published several books of poetry: con sutiles artimañas (With Subtle Tricks) (2005); doble sentido (Two-Way) (2002); la intemperie sin fin (The Open Without End (2001); and guaridas de huir el mundo (Dens to Escape the World) (2000).

AnaLouise Keating is the author of Teaching Transformation: Transcultural Classroom Dialogues (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007); and Women Reading Women Writing: Self-Invention in Paula Gunn Allen, Gloria Anzaldúa, and Audre Lorde (Temple UP, 1996), selected by Choice as a 1996 Outstanding Academic Book. She also edited The Gloria Anzaldúa Reader (Duke Univ. Pr., 2009); Entre Mundos/Among Worlds: New Perspectives on Gloria Anzaldúa (Palgrave Macmillan, 2008); this bridge we call home: radical visions for transformation, Gloria Anzaldúa (Routledge, 2002); and Interviews/Entrevistas Gloria E. Anzaldúa (Routledge, 2000). Her essays have appeared in numerous

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journals and books, including Cultural Sites of Critical Insight: Philosophy, Aesthetics, and Native and African American Women’s Writings (SUNY Pr., 2007); and Innovative Women Poets: An Anthology of Contemporary Poetry and Interviews (Univ. of Iowa, 2006). Keating received her M.A. and Ph.D from Literature at University of Illinois, Chicago, and has been Professor of Women’s Studies, Texas Woman’s University since 2006.

John Keene is the author of the award-winning novel Annotations (New Directions, 1995), and of the poetry collection Seismosis (1913 Pr., 2006), with artwork by Christopher Stackhouse. He has published fiction, poetry, essays and translations in a wide array of journals, including African-American Review, AGNI, Encyclopedia, and Gay and Lesbian Review. His honors include a 2005 Whiting Foundation Award in Fiction and Poetry, and a 2008 Fellowship for Distinguished First Collection from the inaugural Pan-African Literary Forum. A longtime member of the Dark Room Writers Collective of Cambridge and Boston, and a Graduate Fellow of Cave Canem, he was Northwestern’s inaugural Simon Blattner Visiting Assistant Professor in 2001. In 2006, he received the Northwestern University Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences’ E. Leroy Hall Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching, and has served as Director and Honors Director of the Writing Major Program.

Richard Kostelanetz is a writer-artist who has published poetry, stories, articles, reviews, and experimental prose in hundreds of magazines in the U.S. and abroad. He has written more than fifty books of criticism, cultural history, and creative work, in addition to editing over three dozen anthologies of art and exposition. Among his recent books are, SoHo: The Rise and Fall of an Artist’s Colony (Routledge), 3 Canadian Geniuses (Colombo), More Wordworks (Talisman), and second editions of A Dictionary of the Avant-Gardes (Schirmer/Routledge) and Conversing with Cage (Routledge). The recipient of numerous scholarships and grants, he has been a Visiting Professor of American Studies and English at the University of Texas and a Visiting Professor of graduate theater at Hunter College, CUNY. www.richardkostelanetz.com Jane Levin is a retired psychologist, community worker and a survivor of ovarian cancer. Her poetry has appeared in over two dozen publications, including Coping with Cancer, Cosmopsis Quarterly, Flutter Poetry Journal, Talking Stick 16 and Dust & Fire; and the anthologies Trail Guide, Drash: Northwest Mosaic, County Lines, Illness & Grace/Terror & Transformation and The Talking Stick. Levin is the recipient of a Jerome Foundation/Intermedia Arts Poetry Mentorship and a Howard B. Brin Jewish Arts Endowment grant; and her chapbook, Legacy (Moonflower Pr., 2008) was a finalist in the Writer’s Circle of Durham Region Chapbook Contest.

Timothy Liu, Guest Editor of THE LAVENDER ISSUE, was born in San Jose, California to parents from the Chinese mainland. He studied at Brigham Young University, the University of Houston, and the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. He is the author of For Dust Thou Art (Southern Ill. Univ. Pr., 2005); Of Thee I Sing (2004), selected by Publishers Weekly as a 2004 Book-of-the-Year; Hard Evidence (2001); Say Goodnight (1998); Burnt Offerings (1995); and Vox Angelica (1992), which won the Poetry Society of America’s Norma Farber First Book Award. He also edited Word of Mouth: An Anthology of Gay American Poetry (Talisman House, 2000). His poems have appeared in numerous magazies, journals and anthologies and he is currently an Associate Professor at William Paterson University and on the Core Faculty at Bennington College’s Writing Seminars. www.timliu.org Devi K. Lockwood is an avid unicyclist, poet, and rower. A senior at Phillips Exeter Academy, she plans to attend Harvard University as a member of the lightweight rowing team. Her passions include languages, human rights, minty tea, and West African drumming. This summer she hopes to compete in her first triathlon and keep on writing.

Philip Matthews is a poet from eastern North Carolina and is currently in the Writing Program at Washington University in St Louis. His work has appeared in Tulane Review and Apple Valley Review. He currently serves as the poetry co-editor of Arch.

Mary Meriam is a poet from rural New Jersey with an M.F.A. from Columbia University and B.A. from Bennington College. Her poems and essays are published or forthcoming in Literary Imagination, American Life in Poetry, Sentence, Alimentum, Praxilla, Mezzo Cammin, Rattle, The Raintown Review, The Gay & Lesbian Review, Bridges: A Jewish Feminist Journal, Journal of Lesbian Studies and Sixty-Six: The Journal of Sonnet Studies. Her chapbook, The Countess of Flatbroke (afterword by Lillian Faderman), was published by Modern Metrics/Exot Books and received an award from the Astraea Lesbian Foundation for Justice. Another chapbook, The Poet’s Zodiac, was a finalist in the 2009 Robin Becker contest at Seven Kitchens Press. She is currently editing an anthology of sonnets for Exot Books and working as Poetry Editor for Soundzine. home.earthlink.net/~marymeriam/index.html Brane Mozetic is a poet, writer, translator and editor who graduated in comparative literature from the University of Ljubljana. He is the author of twelve poetry collections and three works of prose, having more than 20 books translated into other languages. His two poetry collections, Butterflies (Meeting Eyes Bindery, 2004) and Banalities (Meeting Eyes Bind-

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T H E L A V E N D E R I S S U E:: L G B T L I T E R AT U R E T O D AY ery, 2007); and a book of short stories, Passion (Talisman Hse., 2005) published in the United States. He has translated works from the French by Rimbaud, Genet, Foucault, Guibert and a number of contemporary authors. He has also edited two anthologies of homoerotic literature in Slovenian and an anthology of contemporary European gay poetry. Mozetic, who is active in the gay movement in Slovenia, lives in Ljubljana, where he directs two literary collections.

Eileen Myles, a native Bostonian and graduate of UMass (Boston), is widely known in writing, art and queer circles as a poet, novelist, essayist, playwright and performance artist. Myles recently published the poetry collections, Sorry, Tree (Wave Books, 2007), Skies (Black Sparrow Pr., 2001); On My Way (Faux Pr., 2001); School of Fish (Black Sparrow Books, 1997); Maxfield Parrish: Early and New Poems (Black Sparrow Pr., 1995); and Not Me (Semiotext(e), 1991). In 1995, she edited with Liz Kotz, The New Fuck You/Adventures in Lesbian Reading, published by Semiotext(e), and also published the autobiographically inspired, Chelsea Girls (Black Sparrow Books, 1994). Her novel Cool for You, was republished by Soft Skull Press in 2008. She contributes to a wide number of publications including Parkett, aNother Magazine, the Believer, H.O.W journal and this year’s Provincetown Arts.

Myles recently published a collection of travel essays, The Importance of Being Iceland: Travel Essays in Art (Semiotext(e), 2009). She is a Professor Emeritus of Writing and Literature at UCSD where she taught from 20022007; and teaches in the summer at the Naropa Institute in Boulder, CO. She recently served as the Hugo Writer at University of Montana for Spring 2010.

Angelo Nikolopoulos is a former high school teacher who recently completed his Master’s degree in Literature and Creative Writing at New York University. His work has appeared in Boxcar Poetry Review, Ganymede, Gay & Lesbian Review and Los Angeles Review. He currently lives in New York City, where he hosts “The White Swallow,” a queer reading series in Manhattan.

Lorraine Miller Nuzzo has been Curator, Art Director of phati’tude Literary Magazine and phati’tude-related projects since 1997. While pursuing her professional career, Nuzzo studied painting with Mary Nagin and Carole Jay in New York; and with Tim Holden in Italy. She has held exhibitions at MIB and BJ Spoke Gallery; and is also a former partner of “hotshots unlimited photography,” which held an exhibit at the Langston Hughes Library. She holds a Master’s degree in Industrial/Organizational Psychology from Hofstra University and a Bachelors Degree in Psychology with a minor in Art from SUNY, Empire State.

Suzanne Parker co-directs the creative writing program at Brookdale Community College where she is an assistant professor and teaches creative writing and literature. She is a winner of the Alice M. Sellars Award from the Academy of American Poets, was a Poetry Fellow at the Prague Summer Seminars and has received fellowships and scholarships from the Vermont Studio Center, Squaw Valley Community of Writers, Sarah Lawrence College Summer Writers Seminar and Prairie Schooner. Her poetry is forthcoming or has appeared in Connotations: An Online Artifact, Serving House, Poetry Daily, MacGuffin, Rattapallax, Cider Press Review, Poetry Motel, NYC BigCityLit, and A Gathering of the Tribes, and her creative non-fiction appears in the travel anthology Something to Declare (Univ. of Wisconsin Pr., 2009).

Jeffrey Perkins is an M.F.A. candidate at the Bennington Writing Seminars. This is his first published poem.

Margaret Randall is a feminist poet, writer, photographer and social activist. Born in New York City, she has lived in New York, Seville, Mexico City, Havana, Managua, Peru and North Vietnam and currently lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico. During the 1960s she co-founded and co-edited El Corno Emplumado / The Plumed Horn, a bilingual literary journal, which for eight years published some of the most dynamic and meaningful writing of an era. From 1984 through 1994 she taught at a number of U.S. universities, and currently travels widely to read and lecture. She has published more than 80 books, and her recent titles include First Laugh: Essays, 2000-2009 (Bison Books, 2011); the memoir (with photographs) To Change The World: My Years In Cuba (Rutgers Univ. Pr., 2009); the poetry collection (with photographs) Stones Witness, Their Backs To The Sea, (Univ. of Arizona Pr., 2007), and the poetry collection My Town (poetry, with photographs). Her latest poetry collection, The Empty Chair / Como si la silla vaciaon, is a limited edition, hand-sewn collection of poetry to be released by WingsPress, with Spanish translations by Leandro Katz and Diego Guerra.

Robin Reagler is Executive Director of Writers in the Schools (WITS), Houston, TX, and also heads the WITS Alliance, a national consortium of literary arts education groups. She earned an M.F.A. from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and a Ph.D. from the University of Houston Creative Writing Program. Her poems have been published in Ploughshares, American Letters & Commentary, Colorado Review, and many other journals.

Brad Richard is Chair of the Creative Writing program at Lusher Charter High School in New Orleans. Recipient of fellowships from the Surdna Foundation and the Louisiana Division of the Arts, he is the 2002 poetry winner in the Poets & Writers, Inc., Writers Exchange competition. Richard has published the poetry collection, Habita-

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tions (Portals Pr., 2000) and a limited edition chapbook, The Men in the Dark (Lowlands Pr., 2004). His poems have appeared in American Letters & Commentary, Bayou, Hunger Mountain Review, The Iowa Review, The Laurel Review, Literary Imagination, Prairie Schooner, The Massachusetts Review, Mississippi Review, New Orleans Review, Passages North, and other journals.

Boyer Rickel is the author of remanence (Parlor Pr., 2008), Taboo, essays (Wisconsin, 1999), arreboles (Wesleyan, 1991), and a poetry chapbook, reliquary (Seven Kitchens Pr., 2009). His poems have been published recently or are forthcoming in Antennae, CUE, Free Verse, The Laurel Review and Seneca Review. Recipient of poetry fellowships from the NEA and Arizona Commission on the Arts, Rickel has taught in the University of Arizona Creative Program since 1991. www.boyerrickel.com Jon Sands, an Editor of phati’tude Literary Magazine, has been a full-time teaching and performing artist since 2007. He is a recipient of the 2009 New York City-LouderARTS fellowship grant, and has represented New York City multiple times at the National Poetry Slam, subsequently becoming an NPS finalist. He is currently the Director of Poetry and Arts Education Programming at the Positive Health Project, a syringe exchange center located in Midtown Manhattan, as well as a Youth Mentor with Urban Word-NYC. Sands’ poems have appeared in decomP, Suss, The Literary Bohemian, Spindle Magazine, The November 3rd Club, and others. He is also one-fourth of the nationally acclaimed electricity-fest, “The SpillJoy Ensemble.”

Aram Saroyan is an internationally known poet, novelist, biographer, memoirist and playwright. His poetry has been widely anthologized and appears in many textbooks. Among the collections of his poetry are Aram Saroyan and Pages (both Random House); and Day And Night: Bolinas Poems (Black Sparrow Pr., 1999). Saroyan’s prose books include Genesis Angels: The Saga Of Lew Welch and the Beat Generation; Last Rites, a book about the death of his father, the playwright and short story writer William Saroyan; Trio: Portrait Of An Intimate Friendship; The Romantic, a novel that was a Los Angeles Times Book Review Critics’ Choice selection; a memoir, Friends In The World: The Education Of A Writer; and the true crime Literary Guild selection Rancho Mirage: An American Tragedy Of Manners, Madness And Murder. Selected essays, Starting Out In The Sixties, appeared in 2001, and Artists In Trouble: New Stories in early 2002. The recipient of two National Endowment for the Arts poetry awards, Saroyan is a past president of PEN USA West and a current faculty member of the Masters of Professional Writing Program at USC. www.aramsaroyan.com N S (Nathalie Stephens) writes l'entre-genre in English and French. Her books include We Press Ourselves Plainly (2010), Carnet de désaccords (2009), The Sorrow And The Fast Of It (2007), Je Nathanaël (2003/2006).

Other work exists in Basque and Slovene with book-length translations in Bulgarian. There is an essay of correspondence (2009) : Absence Where As (Claude Cahun and the Unopened Book), first published (2007) as L'absence au lieu. Also, a collection of talks, At Alberta (2008). She has translated Catherine Mavrikakis, Gail Scott, John Keene, Édouard Glissant. N S is the recipient of a 2002 Chalmers Arts Fellowship and a 2003 British Centre for Literary Translation Residential Bursary. Some of her work has been translated into Basque, Bulgarian, Portuguese, Slovene and Spanish, and on occasion, translates herself. N S lives in Chicago.

Roberto Tejada is the author of several poetry collections, including Mirrors for Gold (Krupskaya, 2006), and Exposition Park (Wesleyan Univ. Pr., 2010). He founded and continues to co-edit the journal Mandorla: New Writing from the Americas. Tejada is also the author of art histories that include National Camera: Photography and Mexico’s Image Environment (Univ. of Minnesota Pr., 2009); and Celia Alvarez Muñoz (UCLA/CSRC; Univ. of Minnesota Pr., 2009). He has published critical writings on contemporary U.S., Latino, and Latin American artists in Afterimage, Aperture, Bomb, The Brooklyn Rail, SF Camerawork, and Third Text.

Tamara M. Soban received her B.A. in English from the University of Ljubljana. Since 2002 she has worked as a translator and editor for the Museum of Modern Art in Ljubljana. While she primarily translates literary works published in anthologies of contemporary Slovenian prose.she has also translated the following books: Andrej Blatnik’s collection of short stories, Skinswaps (Northwestern Univ. Pr., 1998); Feri Lainšcek’s novel, For Whom Does the Flower Bloom (Ljubljana: Društvo slovenskih pisateljev/Slovenian Writers’ Association, 2002; Litterae Slovenicae); and Brane Mozetic’s collection of short stories, Passion (Talisman Hse., 2005).

Michael Tyrell has published over 50 poems in print and electronic journals, including Agni, Barrow Street, The Canary, Columbia, Fogged Clarity, The New England Review, The Paris Review, Ploughshares, and The Yale Review. His fiction has appeared in Ego, Konundrum Engine Literary Review, and the anthology Cool Thing (Running Pr., 2007). Tyrell co-edited with Julia Spicher Kasdorf, the anthology Broken Land: Poems of Brooklyn (NYU Pr., 2007), which was named a favorite New York Book by the Gotham Gazette. He teaches writing at New York University. His poems in this issue are from a book-in-progress, Phantom Laundry.

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C O V E R A R T Ev er since he could remember uben A costa picked things Ever remember,, R Ruben Acosta up: a broken motorcycle mirror in the alley, a rusted pipe from the back yard, a little red wagon some child left behind. Abandoned objects that possessed an unknown past, discarded present, and no relevant future. Working with what’s been identified as trash to some has become Ruben’s life passion.

Growing up in South El Monte – too close to gang activity, too familiar with drug and alcohol abuse, experiencing too many events of separation and despair – placed Ruben in an environment full of dysfunction and discard. Ruben searched for what he could salvage from within – looking at his own experience, his own existence, his own strength – and he found inspiration. Ruben’s embodiment of that very passion metamorphosed into his career as an artist.

Today his art work has been showcased in various Southern California fine art galleries, including LAAA/Gallery 825, and highlighted in periodicals such as A&U (Arts & Understanding), a national AIDS magazine.

Over the last 20 years Ruben has dedicated his life to preventing the spread of HIV, as he has seen firsthand the damages that can accrue when a person’s life is discarded as a result of an HIV or AIDS diagnosis. Homophobia, stigmatization and overall apathy towards people living with HIV are all key motivating factors in his work and art. Ruben derives continual inspiration through mixing the tangible discards of a community with his ability to “build art” – through a process called “salvageable concepts.” www.salvageconcepts.com.

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