Gaytude by Albert Russo & Adam Donaldson Powell

GAYTUDE-Critical Analysisby Santosh12

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January 08, 2009: GAYTUDE-Critical Analysis
Santosh Kumar


Albert Russo and Adam Donaldson Powell?s Gaytude, a poetic journey around the world, makes it evident that the gay poems always have a distinctive voice, because a gay poet suffers from a sense of ostracism, of being excluded by others due to difference. The tradition of celebrating Platonic friendship with a boy has always been there in world poetry. Gay poetry from Sappho to Michelangelo has always idealized homoerotic world. Catullus (ca 84-54) loved sex with young men. Shakespeare?s sonnets have been described as gay sonnets by several critics. It is well known that Derek Jarman?s film The Angelic Conversation (1985) shows gay elements in Shakespeare?s sonnets. Lord Alfred Douglas?s gay poems appeared in 1896 in English and French translations. In the twentieth century two great poets W..H. Auden and Ginsberg wrote gay poems. The publication of The Penguin Book of Homosexual Verse (1983) reveals its popularity and marketing need. It is difficult to agree with the critics who condemn Whitman?s gay poetry. The Boston Intelligencer declared that Whitman deserved no better reward than the lash for vulgarity and violation of decency.?Both Whitman?s Leaves and Emerson?s laudation had a common origin in temporary insanity? (Bucke 201). ?Walt Whitman is as unacquainted with art as a hog with mathematics? (Canby 327). One should never forget that according to several biographers Whitman did not engage in sexual relation with man.

It is true that a poet?s gay identity does not quite fit into the traditional morality of the world. This is the main reason behind vituperative hostility towards homoeroticism and gay-themed poems But one may remember Nietzsche?s assertion that sexuality extends upto the very pinnacle of the soul. The queerness of Russo and Powell both to stand at a different angle to the universe, their desire for an outsider image, and a subversive quality to overthrow conventions makes Gaytude a classic. Taboo creates its own power and energy in a creative work like Gaytude. This is also true about other gay writers like Walt Whitman, Elizabeth Bishop and James Merrill. Russo is a great poet with a passionate impulse, and he expresses it with a natural intensity devoid of any kind of laborious artistry;

I shall spoil you as no lover
Ever has or will
(SURPRISE PARTY, 35).

As we made love
Our bodies were on fire
You were insatiable
I was submissive
(ONE-NIGHT STAND, 102)

Russo does not hanker after limited joy but for the illimitable in loveliness of human body. Due to his ardor, he bursts for joy:

Our bodies commingle
In a Pacific splash of ecstasy
(UNDERCURRENTS, 42).

Russo tries to forget the stern realities of life, and the idealized love seems to be the only permanent reality for him On the altar of passion, he has chosen to ?fall off the cliff? though there are several obstructions:

There?s his age, you see
And there?s my career, too
Then there?s that awesome responsibility
Towards my class
Towards society
And I am highly respected by my peers
Yet, my attraction to him is gravitational
One of these days,
I shall fall off the cliff
NO TRESPASSING, 51

The above lines are a testimony to the fact that Russo arrives at the complexity by...