Re: Ginsberg's Rorschach poetry

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homoerotic_poetry

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Homoerotic poetry is a genre of poetry implicitly dealing with same-sex
romantic or sexual interaction. The male-male erotic tradition
encompasses poems by major poets such as Abu Nuwas, Michelangelo, Walt
Whitman, Federico García Lorca, W. H. Auden, Fernando Pessoa and Allen
Ginsberg. In the female-female tradition, authors may include those such
as Sappho, "Michael Field", "Marie-Madeleine" and Maureen Duffy. Other
poets wrote poems and letters with homoerotic overtones toward
individuals, such as Emily Dickinson to her sister-in-law Susan
Huntington Gilbert.

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English poetry

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Sonnet 20
The most prominent example in the English language and in the Western
canon is that of Sonnet 20 by William Shakespeare. Though some critics
have made efforts to preserve Shakespeare's literary credibility by
claiming his work to be non-erotic in nature, no critic has disputed
that the majority of Shakespeare's sonnets concern explicitly male-male
love poetry. The only other Renaissance artist writing in English to do
this was the poet Richard Barnfield, who, in The Affectionate Shepherd
and Cynthia, wrote homoerotic poetry. Barnfield's poems, furthermore,
are now widely accepted as a major influence upon Shakespeare's.[1]

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In the twentieth century, W. H. Auden and Allen Ginsberg became well
known as poets. In Great Britain the pederast Ralph Chubb lived in
poverty and produced his own books in limited editions made from
illustrated engravings (similar to methods employed by William Blake),
which he then erased.[citation needed]

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During the 19th century the British gay poet Digby Mackworth Dolben was
little known; however, in the last decade Lord Alfred Douglas produced a
major volume of Dolben's homoerotic poems (1896) published in Paris,
written in both English and French translations after the trial of Oscar
Wilde for homosexual offences brought about largely by Wilde's love for
Douglas. Wilde in De Profundis, a poem about his prison experiences
which broke him and led to his death in 1900 in Paris, produced an
enduring poem. At the same time A. E. Housman gave voice to gay feelings
of fear and guilt in a still-criminalized situation in his A Shropshire
Lad (1896). In the twentieth century Noël Coward wrote witty gay poems
while the magician Aleister Crowley wrote works in English.[citation
needed]

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The British savant Anthony Reid created the largest male homosexual
anthology of poems: The Eternal Flame (2 volumes, 1992–2002) which he
worked on for nearly fifty years; publication of the second volume was
held up by the publisher going bankrupt. The Canadian gay poet Ian Young
produced the first major bibliography with his works The Male Homosexual
in Literature (2 editions, the second being expanded). The Australian
gay poet Paul Knobel's CD-ROM 'An Encyclopedia of Male Homosexual Poetry
and its Reception History' (2002) is the largest survey of the subject
and comes to one million words with overviews covering over 250
languages and language groups. He has also published A World Overview of
Male Homosexual Poetry (2005). Gregory Woods has produced other studies,
including a history of gay literature with some reference to
poetry.[citation needed]

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The period since gay liberation (from 1968) has produced dozens of gay
poetry anthologies (e.g. 2 edited by Ian Young alone and others by
Winston Leyland producer of the gay lib periodical Gay Sunshine, which
included poetry); this has mainly been the result of the increasing
decriminalisation of gay sex in the Anglo world (male homosexual acts
were decriminalized in France in the late 18th century and in Italy in
the late 19th). Notable United States gay poets include Dennis Cooper,
Gavin Dillard, John Gill, Dennis Kelly, Tom Meyer, Paul Monette, Harold
Norse and Jonathan Williams. Rob Jacques has written about the
relationship between love and violence in the military.[2] Jamse S.
Holmes was a leather poet who emigrated to Amsterdam. Daryl Hine from
Canada and David Herkt and Paul Knobel from Australia have written fine
gay poems. New Zealand has a vibrant gay culture and has produced some
gay poets. The Canadian gay poet Edward A. Lacey was run over in the
street while drunk in Bangkok; repatriated to Canada, he remained
bedridden until his death. His complete poems were only published in the
early 21st century. The British poet Thom Gunn lived in the United
States and wrote a notable volume inspired by AIDS (which has produced
several anthologies)

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