I recently popped in at Steve Fellner's
blog, in which he says,
I like to think of [Alice Notley] as queer. In the broadest sense possible. Her rejection of PoBiz, her rejection of white, middle-class values; she refuses to be categorized, shifting her poetic project from narrative to the experimental and back to lyrical in a mere second.
This question of who is or is not a queer writer is recently in my mind due to conversations with a friend of mine who has been wondering whether or not to identify as a queer poet. She is bisexual, but her personal sexuality rarely arises in her writing. On the other hand, she does a lot to question norms both social and sexual in her work, leading me to suggest to her that she is a "queering poet." That is to say, the emphasis is on what she
does rather than who she
is. The emphasis is on the question rather than the answer. The emphasis is on mini-narratives, not a grand all-encompassing one. The emphasis is, to my joy, on guiding the reader through a process rather than presenting said reader with an object.
With that in mind, can I identify as a queering poet as well? I want to say yes, based on the nature of my work, but I think I need some friends and colleagues to weigh in, to argue against a straight male as being able to queer. Some devil's advocates, as it were (but play nice, please, in the process of doing so).