Cottonwood River Anthology

COTTONWOOD RIVER ANTHOLOGY

Gay Midwestern Realism:
The Death Throes of Romanticism #4

“one of the last romantics; 
and already her poetry seems 
to us a poetry of the past,
swiftly receding into history”
—Joyce Carol Oates
“The Death Throes Of Romanticism: 
The Poetry of Sylvia Plath”
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The moral assumptions behind gay poetry—
Had condemned for such a long time

But such moral predicaments weren't as—
Pathological as one might think

After all, conformity to a tacky—
Sick society is really a sign of Normality

It was hard to speak very clearly—
A language I could understand as gay

Saying what men have been saying—
For many centuries, though not so frank 

Trying to be sensitive as one can—
Without sickening with hatred for humanity

Sublimating does wonders for Acculturation—
Resulting in wondrous Achievements of Art

With all us fags coming and going—
Discussing the male wonders of Michelangelo

Let us assume that Gay Midwestern Realism—
Isn’t like the deathliness of str8t consciousness

The corrupting hell of the Renaissance ideal—
With "I"-ness, hetero and distinct from us

Not a masculine, combative ideal of "I"—
Struggling against all other "I's" in our Society

Rather a more hermetic contemplation—
Of a God-centered universe with gays

Is gay Midwestern Realism Goth enough—
Stoic Red State Republican-esque enough?

Looking beyond outmoded dying concepts—
Revisiting once-vital Renaissance ideals

Can we gay Midwestern poets be diagnosed—
As a fading genre of the last Romantics?

Is our GLBT poetry already dead—
A poetry past, swiftly receding into history?