At AWP Boston last year, Timothy Liu spoke at a panel entitled,
"Courting the Love Poem: Challenges of Sincerity
and Sentimentality."
He closed the panel with a poem in which the last two
lines were, quote, "he said fucking his wife
was as boring as the Stations of the Cross."
End quote.
[LAUGHING]
It says a lot about sincerity in sentimentality,
or lack of the latter.
When we talk about American gay poetics,
we usually consider one or more five umbrella aspects
of the larger American gay poetics.
And what I'm going to list right now
is from Brian Teare and Peter Pereira's "Symposium"
in Beloit Poetry Journal In 2011.
One, transgressive stance or in your face very sexualized
gay poetry.
Two, love of hidden and/or contain and/or transformative
language via anagrams, lyricism, et cetera.
Three, the obsession of rhyming rhyme
to get romantically sentimental attached sounds.
Four, humor and irony.
And five, the rhetorical situations and inquiries
behind what it means to write a gay character.
Timothy utilizes aspects of all five of these categories,
weaving the interpersonal, cultural,
and historical conflicts of Judeo-Christianity
through the lens of a young Asian-American gay poet.
The Judeo-Christian motifs traverse all his collections,
taking in after the 9/11 fact ideological questioning
in his 2005 For Dust Thou Art.
The still narratives, ones which depict the body, the corpus
and its more abstract love, are also infamous patterns.
Timothy's concision exists at the structural contents level.
Most of his books are sectioned into three or four
separate parts.
Even selected titles make their rare appearances
at the title line lines.
You have the marriage, romance, say good night,
"Of Thee I Sing."
That kind of repetition and rhythm
and organized and pathos-driven conceit
is what drives his poetry.
Take "His body, like Christ, pass in and out of my life."
Which is from his first book, Vox Angelica.
Quote, "I was not indifferent, only hardened.
A German violin instead of her voice.
Later my lover smiling as Jesus, always late, never his fault.
What are birds returning, singing compared to this?
The lies I have forsaken to honor God."
Timothy Liu is the author of eight poetry collections,
including several that have won prestigious book awards which
I won't list.
You guys probably have looked that up
or heard enough about it.
His poems have been translated into 10 languages
and his papers and journals are archived at the New York Public
Library.
He teaches at William Paterson University
and lives in Woodstock, New York and NYC with his husband.
Ladies and gents, please welcome Timothy Liu.
[APPLAUSE]