Customer Reviews

A Day for a Lay: A Century of Gay Poetry

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"A Day for a Lay" came first to my attention as an "underground" poem by WH Auden. My friend, the Late Cade Ware, a Gay Activist in Washington, DC, brought it to me and we marveled at its wonderful images and sensual awareness. How we longed for more gay poets. Well, there are gay poets of great passion. Not sentimental boy meets boy, or the the bathos of death poets, but poets that give us insight to power of life!

Gavin Geoffrey Dillard, a remarkable Gay poet himself, edited "A Day for a Lay -- A Century of Gay Poetry." As clear in his introduction, Dillard wrote that he "...leaned toward intimacy versus politics" in this centennial anthology. He maintained that intimacy "is more authentic, more timeless, and bucks the masculinist agenda." The poets included are Edward Carpenter, Constantine Cavafy, Lord Alfred Douglas, Federico Garcia Lorce, WH Auden, Tennessee Williams, Harold Norse, Allen Ginsberg, Ian Young, Antler, Vytautas Pliura, Jim Corey, Mark Doty, Timothy Liu, and Kirk Read to name just a few of this powerful gathering of great Gay writers.

Mutsuo Takahashi's introductin to his "Ode," he says so sacredly: In the name of man, member, and the holy fluid, AMEN.

This is the heart of this gathering of Gay poets.

To me this is one text I want on my bedside table to read just before going to sleep. The power in these words says that "being a Gay man is a mystic, marvellous being."

The amazing thing about this anthology is that it combines poets who were born before our Civil War here in the USA and baby boomers poets. This is a remarkable international gathering of poets, from France, Genet; from England, Edward Carpenter; Japan, Takahashi; Spain, Lorca; ...to name a few. I learned a lot about gay poets from this anthology and I searched for more poems in other collections from my two favorite poets in this collection, Lorca and Carpenter; and really enjoyed what I found. It was this collection that opened up the world of gay poets to me and I thank Gavin Dillard for the care he took in assembling this volume. I am very excited to have been included in this volume, and would like to hear from others who have been included in these pages, and Readers who like what they see here in this book. I thank Amazon.com for providing this network for those interested in the world of literature. I would like to thank Michaud for his poem, "How To Watch Your Brother Die" a poem that deeply touched me. I am out of the closet in this reveiw as far as my e-mail goes, people wishing to connect with me can do so at: vytautasp@aol.com

This is not a review, I already submitted a review on the 30th of May, 2000 But I wanted to sumit a correction in the body of my review. I mentioned the poem "How to watch your brother die" and I attributed it to the wrong poet, the poet is Lassell, NOT Michaud. Thank you for letting me suggesting this correction in the body fo the review. And I understand that it best to let readers rate the number of stars in the rating system......forgoing contributors in this anthology, who may be biased. Thank you...for this opportunity to reach out in your space here at Amazon.com

This collection of poetry written by gay authors is a collaboration of the sensual, the emotional, the controversial, and the satisfying aspects of everyday life as a homosexual. Some of the poems deal with heavy emotions of love and rejection, while others regail past experiences that leave the author feeling relieved and the reader feeling exhuberant. There are poems that will uplift you, poems that will make you go "Ugh!" and poems that will make you think about their content, analyzing it until you can only think about the personal meaning behind every line. This collection is brilliantly composed by Gavin Geoffrey Dillard, who also includes some of his poetry, and he has done a masterful job of giving us a collection that inspires pride and emotion is everyone who reads it. Don't miss this book!