{"id":1082,"date":"2013-03-07T18:10:25","date_gmt":"2013-03-08T00:10:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.glbtrt.ala.org\/reviews\/?p=1082"},"modified":"2013-03-02T18:12:58","modified_gmt":"2013-03-03T00:12:58","slug":"he-do-the-gay-man-in-different-voices","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.glbtrt.ala.org\/reviews\/he-do-the-gay-man-in-different-voices\/","title":{"rendered":"He Do the Gay Man in Different Voices"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"cover<\/a><\/p>\n

Stephen S. Mills. He Do the Gay Man in Different Voices.\u00a0Sibling Rivalry Press, 2012. Paperback. 102p. $14.95. 978-1-937420-08-6.<\/a><\/p>\n

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\u201cFearless boys with glitter in their blood\u201d from the poem \u201cA History of Blood\u201d perhaps best encapsulates the mindset that Mills takes in his first book of poetry. \u00a0This collection explores different facets of gay experience in the 21st century with a focus on sex and violence.<\/p>\n

Mills consistently ties moments of personal importance with larger world events: for instance, a poem about fisting someone for the first time is tied to the day that \u201cDon\u2019t Ask, Don\u2019t Tell\u201d was repealed.<\/p>\n

The poet rejects the notion that we should \u201c…hide the good parts. The \u2018dirty\u2019 parts. A culture\/obsessed with sex, yet so afraid of it.\u201d \u00a0This culture confronts that shame by unabashedly ignoring it, and the result is this fantastic collection.<\/p>\n

The book is structured into three divisions, each part having a narrative running throughout it. \u00a0The first section primarily details the memories, action, and sexual practices of the author with his longtime partner. \u00a0Interspersed with these everyday occurrences, the poet returns to the ideas of tragedy through repeated references to a pair of boys hanged for sodomy in Iran and to gay bashings in the United States.<\/p>\n

The second piece is composed entirely of the poem \u201cAn Experiment In How to Become Someone Else Who Isn\u2019t Moving Anymore\u201d which uses the life and crimes of Jeffrey Dahmer as a counterpoint to the speaker\u2019s life. \u00a0The last is an extended sequence of poems that arose from Mills\u2019 correspondence with Edmon Vardanyan (aka Nickolay Petrov), a gay porn star who was sentenced to prison in Louisiana for the assault of an elderly couple.<\/p>\n

This third part is the weakest of three sections. \u00a0Although the story of the correspondence between Mills and Petrov unfolds in a narrative and interesting way, a few of the poems in this cycle (\u201cSeptember 21, 1991\u201d and \u201cLines From a Prison Letter\u201d) fall short of the emotional immediacy that characterizes much of the rest of the collection.<\/p>\n

This book is a breath of fresh air and a competent first step for a poet who hopefully has a long career ahead of him. It is one that can be read again and again.<\/p>\n

The collection is highly recommended for any library with an interest in gay and\/or contemporary poetry. \u00a0It should be noted that this collection contains explicit sexual imagery, but it is highly recommend to individuals who like boundaries pushed and literature unsanitized.<\/p>\n

Reviewer: Mack Freeman<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Stephen S. Mills. He Do the Gay Man in Different Voices.\u00a0Sibling Rivalry Press, 2012. Paperback. 102p. $14.95. 978-1-937420-08-6.   \u201cFearless boys with glitter in their blood\u201d from the poem \u201cA History of Blood\u201d perhaps best encapsulates the mindset that Mills takes in his first book of poetry. \u00a0This collection explores different facets of gay experience […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1164,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[27,19,40],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.glbtrt.ala.org\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1082"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.glbtrt.ala.org\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.glbtrt.ala.org\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.glbtrt.ala.org\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1164"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.glbtrt.ala.org\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1082"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.glbtrt.ala.org\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1082\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.glbtrt.ala.org\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1082"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.glbtrt.ala.org\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1082"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.glbtrt.ala.org\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1082"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}