Prompts for Timothy Liu

At this point in the semester, I feel like I can ease back on giving you really specific prompts. You have clearly demonstrated your abilities to apply theory in appropriate and exciting ways (even though some of you are not as confident about your abilities as you should be).

For Tuesday, then, I would like for you to carefully read the poetry by Timothy Liu. When I say carefully read the poetry, I mean that you should read the poems several times and give yourselves time to think about them. Annotate them and work your way into the symbolism, metaphor, and sound. Look at the way Liu shapes his lines and arranges words together. Pay attention to the nuances of his rhythms. Don't just read the poems ten minutes before class. Once you are familiar with the poems, write a thoughtful response that incorporates ideas and terminology from LGBT theory. That is as specific as I would like to make this prompt. However, let me give you some things to think about as you read these poems:

1. Liu has explored the AIDS epidemic in America in more detail than most poets. Much of his work, including "The Quilt" rises out of his experience as a volunteer working with AIDS patients. While we of course know that AIDS is not a "gay" disease, Liu's own sexuality clearly informs many of his poems about AIDS and those who have the disease.

2. "Eros Apteros" means "wingless love" or "love without wings." Many classical statues and shrines have missing/broken body parts, and Liu clearly uses this imagery to inform his poem.

3. Here is an excerpt from a Q and A that will give you some insight into Liu's background:

Q: Let’s start with the basics--where and when you were born, where you studied, your greatest poetic influences, work, degrees, favorite teachers, how you came to be a poet, and if any of this background really sticks to your writing.

A: I was born in San Jose, California in 1965 and educated at UCLA, Brigham Young University (B.A. in English) the University of Houston (M.A. in English) and the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. In addition to California, Utah, Texas, and Massachusetts, I lived in Hong Kong for two years as a Mormon missionary and four years in Iowa as an Assistant Professor at Cornell College. I currently reside in Hoboken and teach at William Paterson University in Wayne, NJ. Place always affects my imagination, so these various locales do also pressurize my work. Favorite poets as an undergraduate included Louise Gluck, Linda Gregg, and Jean Valentine. Recent favorites include Gustaf Sobin and Charles Wright. Three mentors in my first decade of writing were crucial to my sense of self as a writer: a Welsh poet named Leslie Norris, the poet Richard Howard, and the writer/editor Gordon Lish. Without their eyes and constant attention, who knows where I would have ended up? On being a poet: the commitment was gradual, like religion or playing a musical instrument. First half an hour a day, and then, years later, five to six hours a day of reading and writing. If not poetry, then surely something else would have come along to equally demand my energies.

Q: Martin Espada has said his subject, identity, and audience exist in concentric circles: Puerto Ricans, Latinos, people of color, the Left, the working class, and anyone who will listen. Mary Oliver, in A Poetry Handbook, suggests poems be written for some stranger in a distant country hundreds of years from now. Who and where is the audience for which you write as an Asian, as a Mormon, as a gay man?

A: I would start with readers of contemporary poetry. There are so many great books written in prose about the various identities that I occupy, so to me, that is not the point. The point is poetry, the experience of reading it and writing it. My Asianness, my Mormon roots, my homosexuality, are but a part of my being and therefore but a part of my poetry. Therefore, in addition to those identities, there are countless others. None of the poets I have previously mentioned (Gluck, Gregg, Sobin, Valentine, Wright) share with me the identities that you mention. Now what are we to make of that?

Q: How has the work of other gay writers affected your own work?

A: The work of other gay writers has helped to make my own work possible. My debt to Allen Ginsberg, Adrienne Rich, and scores of others is immense. I am currently editing an anthology of gay American poetry for Talisman House, an innovative press that makes its home in Jersey City. I plan to represent work by over forty poets who have been publishing over the past fifty years. While previous anthologies have been loyal to representing “gay experience,” my anthology seeks to complicate the relationship between one’s sexuality and one’s textuality. Collecting poems that span the gamut from traditional to radical forms, I hope the need to label a poem or poet as gay is brought into question.

Thanks. I am looking forward to reading your responses and talking about them. Please do justice to the poetry and to the theory.