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Super Gay Poems

LGBTQIA+ Poetry after Stonewall
  • Stephanie Burt
Language: English
Published/Copyright: 2025
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About this book

Winner of the 2025 New England Book Award for Poetry

A major poet and literary critic leads an aesthetic adventure through poems about queer experience, by writers who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, queer, trans, nonbinary, gender fluid, and more.

A groundbreaking anthology edited by acclaimed poet, critic, and scholar Stephanie Burt, Super Gay Poems brings together fifty-one works encompassing the wide range of queer and trans verse after the Stonewall uprising of 1969. Since that galvanizing moment, poetry has served as both a vehicle for queer liberation and a witness to its sometimes fragile, sometimes ebullient flourishing, across the world.

The poems in this anthology represent the great variety of queer and trans life itself. They include near-sonnets, iambic couplets, and rhymed quatrains; skinny dimeters and shaped poems; chatty free verse and intentionally inaccurate translations; the demotic and the rococo. Arranged in chronological order, the selections trace queer culture’s recent evolutions. Frank O’Hara, Audre Lorde, Judy Grahn, James Merrill, Thom Gunn, Jackie Kay, Adrienne Rich, Chen Chen, essa ranapiri, and The Cyborg Jillian Weise—poets widely known and poets who deserve to be—share their alienation, their euphoria, and their encounters with a protean community as it discovers new solidarities and new selves.

Each piece is paired with a concise, eye-opening essay in Burt’s trademark style, with verve and an inimitable literary ear. A treasury of aesthetic experience and insight, Super Gay Poems points protestors, political organizers, poetry lovers, and LGBTQIA+ readers toward many beautiful tomorrows.

Reviews

Like many readers, I suspect, I have often found myself wondering whether overly obtuse or encoded poems are worth the effort. 'Just try' might be the operating mantra of this collection. Just try to understand what the poet is saying, Burt urges. Reading her essays is like sitting in class with your favorite English professor: Resistance is futile. Just try to dislike or dismiss the poems that she has chosen to investigate.
-- Dale Boyer Gay and Lesbian Review

This deft and thoughtful anthology of poems about queerness is a strong addition to any library collection.
-- Autumn West Library Journal

Well selected and compulsively readable…Burt’s insightful commentary draws throughlines between eras and poets, making this a valuable text for the classroom and a dynamic and comprehensive collection for casual readers of contemporary poetry.
-- Publishers Weekly

What a gift, this book, one I wish I had in my personal library and in my super gay life much earlier. Stephanie Burt is a vital thinker, offering witty, fun, aesthetically perceptive, and politically astute reflections on the work of an astonishing range of poets.
-- Chen Chen, author of Your Emergency Contact Has Experienced an Emergency

Stephanie Burt has woven a raucous rainbow flag from our contributions—the contributions of fags, dykes, enbys, trans folk, and queers—to poetry in the past four decades. This essential book needs to be on every poetry reading list and on every queer studies syllabus.
-- Rajiv Mohabir, author of Whale Aria

Stephanie Burt has given us not just a guide to queer poetry but a new way of thinking about beauty, passion, and the passage of time. Absolutely indispensable.
-- Charlie Jane Anders, author of All the Birds in the Sky

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  • Publicly Available

    Frontmatter

    i
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  • Publicly Available

    CONTENTS

    vii
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    Introduction

    1
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    Homosexuality

    11
    Frank O’Hara
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    Carol, in the park, chewing on straws

    17
    Judy Grahn
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    We Are Leaves

    22
    James Schuyler
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    Twenty- One Love Poems, XIII

    29
    Adrienne Rich
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    Manos karastefanis

    34
    James Merrill
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    Walking Our Boundaries

    39
    Audre Lorde
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    Bally Power Play

    45
    Thom Gunn
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    The First Time

    51
    James L. White
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    Nights of 1962: The River Merchant’s Wife

    56
    Marilyn Hacker
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    The Worrying

    63
    Paul Monette
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    7301

    69
    U. A. Fanthorpe
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    Mummy and donor and Deirdre

    74
    Jackie Kay
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    Object Lessons

    80
    Essex Hemphill
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    Mermaid

    85
    Ruth Vanita
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    Suits and Ties

    91
    Samuel Ace and Linda Smukler
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    The Falling Sky

    97
    Melvin Dixon
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    Jump Back in Me Now

    102
    Chrystos
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    The Underwriters

    107
    John Ashbery
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    In the South That Winter

    112
    Cherry Smyth
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    Notes toward dropping out

    117
    Trish Salah
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    looking out now aftr a recent brek up

    124
    Bill Bissett
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    Found in diary dated May 29, 1973

    130
    May Swenson
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    Riding Westward

    135
    Carl Phillips
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    The Broken (I) (2007)

    140
    Kei Miller
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    Takeoff (2007)

    149
    Angie Estes
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    Apparition (2008)

    155
    Mark Doty
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    What the Future Has in Store (2009)

    161
    Richard Howard
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    Evocation (2009)

    171
    Erín Moure
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    Glass Orgasm (2009)

    176
    Jee Leong Koh
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    Deidre (2010)

    182
    Marisa Crawford
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    Lessons in Woodworking (2012)

    187
    D. A. Powell
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    Queer

    192
    Frank Bidart
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    Unknown duration of Fear / A Human Being Realizes They Are Alone for the First Time in 12 Hours

    198
    C. A. Conrad
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    Heart Condition

    204
    Jericho Brown
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    The First of Never (2015)

    208
    Kay Ryan
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    Bisexuality

    213
    Hera Lindsay Bird
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    Cancer, Leo Rising

    219
    Sophie Robinson
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    The Valleys Are So Lush and Steep

    224
    Trace Peterson
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    After Catullus 5

    234
    Anthony Vahni Capildeo
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    Dis Pure diss

    239
    Julian Talamantez Brolaski
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    Sexual History

    244
    Billy- Ray Belcourt
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    She Ties My Bow Tie

    249
    Gabrielle Calvocoressi
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    You Throw a Party and Every one You Have Ever Been Attracted To Is T here

    253
    Stephanie Chan
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    Prayer of the Slut

    259
    Logan February
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    la cortadura / the cut

    264
    Roque Salas Rivera
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    Indo-Queer I

    273
    Rajiv Mohabir
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    Poly Beach House

    278
    Tonee Mae Moll
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    Waiting for You to Die So I Can Be Myself (2022)

    283
    Danez Smith
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    She- Viper with Tales Outstretched

    288
    Essa May Ranapiri
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    Summer

    294
    Chen Chen
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    So Your GF Wants to Come Out as Bi and Polyamorous to Her Very Conservative Family

    300
    Jillian Weise
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    Sources

    309
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    ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

    333
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    CREDITS

    335
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    INDEX

    343
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Publishing information
Pages and Images/Illustrations in book
eBook published on:
February 18, 2025
eBook ISBN:
9780674299733
Pages and Images/Illustrations in book
https://doi.org/10.4159/9780674299733
eBook ISBN: 9780674299733
Keywords for this book
lgbtq poetry; queer literature; contemporary; gender studies; sexuality; poetic form; stonewall; gay; lesbian; trans; anthology; verse; poetic identity; theory; literary analysis; poetry movements; gender expression; poetic forms; lgbt; poetics; identity; analysis; verse techniques; literary interpretation; aesthetics; collection; activism; protest; criticism; experimental verse; modern american poetry; social justice; marginalized voices; radical poetics; hiv; aids; erotic; elegy; coming of age; frank o’hara; adrienne rich; james merrill; audre lorde; john ashberry; carl phillips; mark doty; chen chen; angels in america; tony kushner; bill bissett; elizabeth bishop; butch; femme; lgbtq poetry; queer literature; contemporary; gender studies; sexuality; poetic form; stonewall; gay; lesbian; trans; anthology; verse; poetic identity; theory; literary analysis; poetry movements; gender expression; poetic forms; lgbt; poetics; identity; analysis; verse techniques; literary interpretation; aesthetics; collection; activism; protest; criticism; experimental verse; modern american poetry; social justice; marginalized voices; radical poetics; hiv; aids; erotic; elegy; coming of age; frank o’hara; adrienne rich; james merrill; audre lorde; john ashberry; carl phillips; mark doty; chen chen; angels in america; tony kushner; bill bissett; elizabeth bishop; butch; femme
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