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timmy
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Has no life at all |
Location: UK, in Devon
Registered: February 2003
Messages: 13800
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A poet, many of whose poems were ambiguous enough to pass as heterosexual love poems. And yet, like havng gaydar, any gay man can spot what he is writing about
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Author of Queer Me! Halfway Between Flying and Crying - the true story of life for a gay boy in the Swinging Sixties in a British all male Public School
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Though I must be the only gay man not to have gaydar...
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timmy
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Has no life at all |
Location: UK, in Devon
Registered: February 2003
Messages: 13800
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Auden it is.
Author of Queer Me! Halfway Between Flying and Crying - the true story of life for a gay boy in the Swinging Sixties in a British all male Public School
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w00t! I know nothing about Auden at all, so I can't really give you any information of my own about him. Perhaps someone else would like to do that?
Here are a couple of links for your delectation, though:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._H._Auden
http://www.glbtq.com/literature/auden_wh.html
I was going to post a comment about
http://www.erzsebel.com/clock/clockarchives/002876.html
(someone's blog, including "Funeral Blues", perhaps his most famous poem) as it gives an interesting insight how someone's homosexuality changes people's opinions of their grief. And why should a straight person not love a member of their own sex, be it friend or sibling or parent, anyway?
Completely off topic, but will civil partners in the UK be legally allowed to refer to their partners as husbands?
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Deeej wrote:
> Though I must be the only gay man not to have gaydar...
Umm ...
(sticks hand up) me too.
Stewarding on Pride London yesterday, I was on the steps in Trafalgar Square before the march / parade got there. I found that I had no idea which of the assorted people I talked to/saw/gave directions to/ were gay, and which were 'just tourists'. Unless, of course, they'd labelled themselves with badges, T-shirts etc.
Actually, I found this lack of gaydar reassuring (perhaps for the first time). Because - and I think partly in the light of some of the recent threads on this board - I felt that it reaffirmed that gay men and lesbians are just people, and their sexual orientation is not necessarily a major part of the way they see themselves.
"The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. ... Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night devoid of stars." Martin Luther King
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timmy
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Has no life at all |
Location: UK, in Devon
Registered: February 2003
Messages: 13800
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I have an awkwardly favourite poem of his. Those of you who have read my life story will know why I love it and hate it at the same time:
Johnny
O the valley in the summer where I and my John
Beside the deep river would walk on and on
While the flowers at our feet and the birds up above
Argued so sweetly on reciprocal love,
And I leaned on his shoulder; 'O Johnny, let's play':
But he frowned like thunder and he went away.
O that Friday near Christmas as I well recall
When we went to the Charity Matinee Ball,
The floor was so smooth and the band was so loud
And Johnny so handsome I felt so proud;
'Squeeze me tighter, dear Johnny, let's dance till it's day':
But he frowned like thunder and he went away.
Shall I ever forget at the Grand Opera
When music poured out of each wonderful star?
Diamonds and pearls they hung dazzling down
Over each silver or golden silk gown;
'O John I'm in heaven,' I whispered to say:
But he frowned like thunder and he went away.
O but he was as fair as a garden in flower,
As slender and tall as the great Eiffel Tower,
When the waltz throbbed out on the long promenade
O his eyes and his smile they went straight to my heart;
'O marry me, Johnny, I'll love and obey':
But he frowned like thunder and he went away.
O last night I dreamed of you, Johnny, my lover,
You'd the sun on one arm and the moon on the other,
The sea it was blue and the grass it was green,
Every star rattled a round tambourine;
Ten thousand miles deep in a pit there I lay:
But you frowned like thunder and you went away.
The story is able to be read as if written by a girl, but it was written by a boy. And it shares the name of the boy........... And actually the way we treayed each other
Author of Queer Me! Halfway Between Flying and Crying - the true story of life for a gay boy in the Swinging Sixties in a British all male Public School
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 That is freaky. Just as I started reading Funeral Blues John Hanna started reading it in Four Weddings and a Funeral on C4
"I believe you can't control or choose your sexuality."
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Shawn
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Toe is in the water |
Registered: July 2004
Messages: 69
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I have a favorite poem by him also...
Funeral Blues
Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.
Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message He is Dead.
Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.
He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong.
The stars are not wanted now; put out every one,
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun,
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the woods;
For nothing now can ever come to any good.
-- W.H. Auden
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But I couldn't resist this one. A huge hint: it absolutely belongs in this thread because Auden married our famous gay. Here is a picture of them together. Auden is on the right. Who is on the left? (This should be really easy.)
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The paradox has often been noted that the United States, founded in secularism, is now the most religiose country in Christendom, while England, with an established church headed by its constitutional monarch, is among the least. (Richard Dawkins, 2006)
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Chester Kallman it is. Having usurped a turn I now fade back into the decor. 
The paradox has often been noted that the United States, founded in secularism, is now the most religiose country in Christendom, while England, with an established church headed by its constitutional monarch, is among the least. (Richard Dawkins, 2006)
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