Possibilities of Male Chick Lit

The Possibilities of

Male Chick Lit

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“What is the meaning 
of Peter Pan?”
—Jacqueline Rose
The Case of Peter Pan:
Or the Impossibility of
Children’s Fiction
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What’s the meaning, my dears—
Of Peter Pan not for J. M. Barrie

But for the thousands of avid—
Chick Lit “Lolitaesque” Readers

Who buy cheap Pulp Fiction—
Romances so tres Nabokovian 
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And for all the Justin Bieber fans—
Devotees out there who are into

Faithfully attending the productions—
Of Justin Bieber on the Stage

There in Concerts & listening to him—
On Youtube and live Everywhere
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What does Peter Pan have to say—
About our conception of Bieber?

About how we understand Boyhood—
And our own relationship to Boy Bands?

What can Justin Bieber & Peter Pan tell us—
About language, sexuality, and death? 
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About the theatrical, literary, musical—
And educational institutions of our society?

These are some of the questions that—
Perhaps one could attempt to answer 

Shifting attention away from J. M. Barrie—
The queenly British originator of Peter Pan
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And ask instead what is the nature of—
Our own desire & investment in Chick Lit?

Books, plays, novels, stories, song lyrics—
Peter Pan fantasies of our own youth?

As we retrace back through history—
Chick Lit fiction forward to modern times?
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Commentaries on children's writing began—
A long time ago with Grimm’s Fairy Tales

And before that with Greek Mythologies
Especially the Oedipus and Electra genres

Miss Freud did her slant on Chick Lit—
With vast tomes on Infantile Sexuality
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Most contemporary writers of books—
For children today and chicken queens

Owe so much of their Chick Lit oeuvres—
To The Mysterious Case of Peter Pan 

With Jacqueline Rose & Hollywood getting—
Into the act now one wonders What’s Up?
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The endless production and dissemination—
Of Chick Lit Fiction has simply gone Viral

Peter Pan's new guise as Justin Bieber—
Along with Spielberg's Hook in Hollywood 

The lesbian production of Peter Pan—
At the London Drill Hall in 1991… 
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And debates in the English House of Lords—
Certainly have stirred Male Chick Lit up

Peter Pan has become the new icon—
Of a transvestite Chick Lit Culture

Peter Pan is the latest renewable—
Bizarre Fetish Icon of our Times

Katsushika Hokusai 36 View of Mount Fuji

Floating Fuji

From my Bayliner—

Pictures of a floating world

Floating on Lake Washington

Looking south—

Over Renton & Boeing

Floating worlds gather

The Last Man on Earth

The Last Man

On Earth (1954)

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“there's no

escape from

Vincent Price”

—Scott Heim

“The Death of

Vincent Price”

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Bleak as Pasolini—

Kitschy as Sergio Leone

Decadent as Visconti

There’s no escape—

For the Vampire-Zombies

Of Living Dead Rome

Shots of dead bodies—

Strewn in the empty

Streets of the Roma

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The alarm clock rings—

It’s morning once again

Time for Vincent to rise

“Another day” she says—

“Another day to live thru

Better get started”

Thus begins one—

of the most tacky horror

films of Vincent’s oeuvre

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When a disease turns—

All of humanity into a

Nightmare of Living dead…

Much deader than usual—

Poor bored humans around

The putrid dead dying world

It becomes Vincent Price’s—

Stake-plunging Responsibility

To DeZombiefy the Planet

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The Last Man on Earth—

Has to reluctantly become

Limp-Wristed Vampire Killer!!!

Yes, my dears, as Night falls—

The plague victims begin

Leaving their stinking graves

Crawling, shambling, limping—

Whimpering, pleading for blood

Throughout the empty streets

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The Hellish Undead—

Zombies starved for blood

Thirsting for Vincent Price’s bod

The Last Gimpy Man on Earth—

Lisping, mincing his way thru

One of his most tacky movies

But this time Vincent won’t—

Escape the Living Dead!!!

Like in all those Poe Classics

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Spectral Rome drained dry—

Ancient abandoned Sinful City

Stalked by greedy Bloodsuckers!!!

There’s no escape for Vincent—

“Vincent come on out now!!!”

Comes the Creepy Nightly Chant

Ubaldo Ragona directs this—

Classic Long before the American

Rotten cheap Hollywood version

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Nobody can compare with—

Vincent Price, certainly not

Crummy Charlton Heston

The Omega Man version—

Stinks worse than the ugly

Cheap Zombie-Vampire Dead

The Last Man on Earth filmed—

In dismal black & white shots

Of decadent postwar Rome

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Produced by the horror queen—

Samuel Z. Arkoff with a cast of

Millions of Unemployed Italians

The Zombie Cast reads like a—

Spaghetti Western with names

Like Franca Bettoia, Danieli,

Giacomo Rossi-Stuart, Umberto

Raho, Antonio Corevi, Ettore

Ribotta, Rolando De Rossi,

Giuseppe Mattei, De Fonseca,

Gen Ruggiero, Franca Silvi,

Giorgio Giovannini, Brunell…

Serena Ulloa, Angiolina

Menichelli, Piero Mecacci,

Linello Meucci, Vico Vaccaro,

Luciano Volpato, Carlo

Grandone, Enzo Silvestri,

Armando Timpani, Bruno

Zanoli, Alfonso Avincola,

Angelo Lannutti, Alvaro

Lanzoni, Renato Pedrini,

Federico Tocci, Carmen

Frosali, Alfonso D’Artega,

Rita Agostini, Franco Rispoli,

Ermete Santini, etc. etc.

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And of course the great—

Hollywood Horror Queen

Vincenti De Pricella herself!!!

“December 1965? Is that all—

It’s been since I inherited the

world? Only three years!!!”

“Seems like 100 million—

You're freaks, all of you!

All of you, freaks, mutations!”

Miss Baldwin

Miss Baldwin

“Jimmy thought of himself

as a combination of Martin

Luther King and Bette Davis.”

—Gore Vidal

“What a dump,” Jimmy would say—

Whether it was Harlem or Hollywood

Marlon Brando nods knowingly—

Wally Cox has other things to do

“Really, my dear,” John Gielgud quips—

While Cary Grant does vaudeville drag

Rock Hudson and James Dean—

Camping it up with Elizabeth Taylor

Montgomery Cliff stuck with all—

Those mean little Riviera hustlers 

Shocked to see Stewart Granger—

Flipping wrist The Johnny Carson Show

Miss Truman Capote and Miss Vidal—

A bitch fight in Tiffany’s tearoom!!!

 

Sylvia Plath

POET LAUREATESS

“I see her as a kind
of Hammer Films poet”
—Philip Larkin
Letter to Judy Egerton
10 June 1960

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It wasn’t pretty—

It was tres messy

And rather bloody….

But it had—

To be done and

That’s what I did…

I killed Big Daddy—

Fucking there in the

Old cold graveyard

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I waited behind—

A tilting old gravestone

As he fucked away

I even invited—

Assia to come and

Visit that weekend

The Yorkshire prick—

Couldn’t wait to sink

His Pike inside her

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That’s when I—

Heard my tall

Handsome husband

Moan & groan—

The way he did

When he lost it

That’s when—

I snuck up &

Shot them dead

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I used his own—

Rabbit-hunting

Stinking killer rifle…

I buried them—

Both down deep in

Court Green Cemetery

And reported—

Them gone and

Poor me all alone

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An abused abandoned—

Wife of an adulterous

Gigolo husband

Everybody nodded—

Knowingly, he’d always

Been a Lady’s Man

Ever since his—

Randy Cambridge days

People shook their heads

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I played the sad—

Distraught abandoned

Widow game rather…

Cool & nicely—

I thought & stayed

There at Court Green

I played it well—

The grieving widow poet’s

Sad bitter Violin

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Faber felt sorry—

Miss Eliot took me

Under her wing

After all, my dears—

His marriage wasn’t

The happiest thing either

And so I published—

While the Fox, Hawk

Whore rotted slowly

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Down there beneath—

The Yew tree in my own

Backyard cemetery

I skipped London—

Yeats’ flat and all

That cold winter angst

Mommy Dearest—

Wanted me to come back

To America, of course

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Why teach there—

At Smith though with

Prouty & the dykes?

I was British now—

With a stiff upper lip

And poetry to write

Big Daddy Lit—

It grew & grew

I became famous

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Women’s Lib—

Was just beginning

The BBC loved me

I sneered at men—

Especially Mytholmroyd

Male putrid Pricks

My oeuvre grew—

I became famous

And infamous too

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When Larkin turned—

The poet laureateship

Down, it was mine

Rather than—

Carol Ann Duffy

Or my tacky husband

From then on—

Butchy Britannia did

The Big Turnaround

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I relished it—

The very first Lady

Poet Laureate

Lesbos reborn—

Founder of British

Sapphic Modernism

My pen sang—

While Ted & Assia

Rotted down below

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So much for—

Big Daddy finally

Gone at last

And me, my dears?—

I didn’t even bother

To say Achoo!!!              

Instead I became—

Who I’d always been

Ariel the Goddess at last!!!

KEY WEST

The Child Idiot

“The boy strangling

under the mimosas”

—Hart Crane, “The Idiot,”

Key West

Simply shocking, my dears—

Doing it for all to see him

Born-again idiot savant

Strangling himself to death—

Fumbling beneath the palms

Moaning in the mimosas

Teenage child idiot—

Infernal retard in the nude

As I hurried by

He was losing it, agape—

His hand playing, pealing it

Tilting midnight moon sky

He couldn’t help it—

I stared at the hopeless kid

Stroking his ghastly tool

My trespassing shame—

Ogling his simply huge penis

His overflowing rose

Key West Revisited

“how gay culture continues
to perform a sly and profound
critique of what passes for normal”
—David M. Halperin, “Normal as Folk,”
The New York Times 6/21/2012

It’s gay pride month again—
And time for the str8t intelligentsia
To get snide about the queer and
Lesbian parades again


Bring on the dykes on bikes—
The Lady Gaga queens in drag
And the usual flaunting floats

Meanwhile the Brooklyn Bridge—

Still spans the East River and

There he is up there on the roof

Columbia Heights—

Emil Opffer gazing out over NYC

Now that Hart Crane is gone

The Fleet’s in again—

But the sailors don’t miss him

Anymore than the other queens

Djuna Barnes is gone too—

An apartment in Greenwich Village 

Along with Mina in the Bowery

How Queer?

“Crane’s boorish erotic

fixation on hypermasculine

working class images of

masculinity.”

—Brian Reed, Hart Crane:

After His Lights

Excuse me, my dear—

Aren’t you getting a bit

Tres Miss Yvor Winters?

Why not throw in—

Miss Whitman’s love for

Soldiers, sailors & farmboys?

Since when is male gaze—

Limited to Adam’s rib or

Reproductive labor?

Rapture ruled by str8t—

Heteronormative policing

Get real, my dear.

Empyrean Rose

“Crane might deserve

a seat in the queen’s

heavenly seat, but he

does not merit a place

in the Empyrean Rose.”

—Brian Reed, Hart Crane:

After His Lights

Such drama queens—

Djuna Barnes & Miss Crane

Wrecking str8t hearts

Fellow ephebes—

Campy, absurd compatriots

Of decadent morbidities

Djuna with her cape—

Hart with his Key West

Pirates of Penzance pizzazz

Reveling themselves—

Flaunting lotsa lavender

And mid-mauve lush

Hart Craine

HART CRANE

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Miss Crane as Europa

Male Sapphic Modernism

Letter to Miss Tate

Highstepping Hysteric

Letter to Yvor Winters

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Miss Crane as Europa

“Was he aware of the

incredible deviousness

of his language?”

—Paul Bowles, Foreword

O My Land, My Friends

“I have been driven at last

to the parks. The first night

brought me a most strenuous

wooing and the largest

instrument I have handled.

Europa and the bull are

entirely passé. As this

happened only two nights

ago, I am modest and

satisfied. Still, I am

uneasy. I fear for all the

anti-climaxes that are surely

in store for me. Like Alec,

I yearn for new worlds to

conquer, and I fear that

there are only a few

insignificant peninsulas

left.”

—Hart Crane, O My Land,

My Friends: The Selected

Letters of Hart Crane: To

Wilbur Underwood [Cleveland,

Ohio] 4^th of July [1922], The

Selected Letters of Hart Crane

Male Sapphic Modernism

“I often wish we could get

together and read aloud—

there are so few people

who like that mutual

pastime any more.”

—Hart Crane in a letter

to Wilbur Underwood

[Cleveland, Ohio] 4^th

of July [1922], The

Selected Letters of

Hart Crane

I suppose it takes one—

To know one as far as

Size queens are concerned

And both these letters seem

To hint (“WHOOPS”?) that…

But besides that—

Letters are like more like

Readings in that orality rules

Rather than simply reading

Prose since letters swoop

Down out of the aether with

Little pretense of Olympia.

Although this letter—

Of 1922 seems so camp &

Relevant even now almost

A century later as does the

Other communiqués here

Within this juicy volume.

Size queen mythology—

Once so chic & in vogue

So full of mythopoetic

Creatures like Europa &

Her Bull, well, honey…

Not that size isn’t—

The last avant garde or

Anything like that but

Still a hung Cisco Kid

Still seems to have its

Pancho aficionados &

Queer Theory shocked

Academics in a Twit…

The Dyke Contingent—

Of Sapphic Modernism

At a recent conference

Objected to the shocking

Backdrop of a well-hung

Hispanic male during a

Speaker’s QT lecture…

Which seems to—

Indicate a QT factional

Dispute deep in the

Butch bosom of Lesbos

Queer Theory which

Needs to be discussed…

Letter to Miss Tate

“Euthanasia”—where you hit

humanity a few slaps, but in

so interesting a way!”

—Hart Crane, Letter to Allen

Tate [Cleveland, Ohio]

Wednesday / July 19, 1922

Your poem is—

So creative, my dear, where

The ordinary “character”

Portrait is merely analytic

And, generally, unimportant

(at least in poetry).

And you needn’t, my dear—

Be afraid of running too

Squarely into Miss Eliot with

Work like this.

You’re such an excellent—

Bitch queen, giving praise

With an edge and beauty,

Allen. That downward slant

Of your damnations, so gay!

Your marriage? Well, dear—

It sounds ominous. Think well,

Beforehand. Are you easily

Satisfied? That’s the main

Danger. Affectionately, Hart

Highstepping Hysteric

“I’m glad to hear—

that you feel lie commenting

on The Bridge…”

—Hart Crane, Letter to Yvor

Winters, 190 Columbia Heights

[Brooklyn, New York] January

27 [1930]

Tate is reviewing it—

For The Hound & Horn,

Cowley for the New Republic,

Schneider for the Chicago

Eve. Post.

That leaves Poetry & The Nation.

I recently read the “Indiana”

Section to Harriet Monroe. There

Aren’t that many openings for

Any of us.

I’m eager to read—

Your exposé of Robinson Jeffers.

I’ve always felt that Jeffers was

Sincere—but that doesn’t quite

Suffice. Somewhat “gifted”—

To use a horrible word.

But everything—

He as written has given me a

Vague nausea. He’s really just

A Highstepping Hysteric, I’m

Afraid.

Letter to Yvor Winters

“Your disparagement of—

The Bridge surprised me

Considerably, dearest Yvor”

—Hart Crane, Patterson,

New York / June 4, 1930

Such hypocrisy, my dear Yvor—

You’ve simply outdone yourself!

Misrepresenting your prejudices—

Toward a biological fact or it just

Your own autobiographical approach

To gay poetry these days?

Of course, you’ve the right—

To be str8t & dish any work of art

Or personality as often as you see

Fit, but I’m less certain that your

Validity as a critic is strengthened

By permitting your own prejudices

To blur the text before you on the

Printed page…

Your homophobic rant—

Certainly takes advantage of your

Hetero persuasions against certain

Features & directions repugnant

To you in The Bridge.

It doesn’t seem to have mattered—

Which sections or lines to cite for

You to exaggerate, misappropriate—

Or just confuse to make your rant

More convincing.

Anyone can read “Indiana”—

And realize that it’s not some tacky,

Mawkish memorandum on queers

Anymore than The Bridge is some

Kind of gay undertaking daring to

Span the morality & high morals

Of the East River.

You assume The Bridge is an epic—

When we both know our present

Stage of cultural development simply

Negates such an organic mythology.

Were you trying to burden me with

Traditional pedantic trappings so that

You could chastise me like an unruly

Whitmanesque schoolboy?

Surely, my dear, tenure at Stanford—

Hasn’t dulled you senses with tacky

Folk lore or caused you to betray with

Such premature gusto “The River” as

Some kind of turgid anti-climax skuzzy

Whitman dish unmastered to any

Unforeseen degree other than merely

Masturbating “purple passages”?

C’mon now, Queen Yvor—

Your petticoat is showing, my dear.

Accusing me of “Moral Surrender”

And “Reversion of the Species” or

Heaven knows what else—it’s simply

Laughable for you to distort my

Innocent poem as some kind of

Terrible “Behavioristic Betrayal.”

The next thing you’ll be doing—

Is accusing Shakespeare of gay

Homicidal inclinations because

He created Macbeth. Again, your

Notions of what is feeble in my

Character offers false premises.

My acknowledgment in The Bridge—

Of Whitman’s influence as “Not

Greatest, thou—not first, not last—

But near” [line 200 in “Cape

Hatteras”]—apparently, this line

Discolored the entire poem in

Your estimation. Not gay enough?

My so-called unflattering—

“Moment to moment” inspirational

Limp to complete The Bridge in

5 years apparently doesn’t fit into

Your Poker game mentality…

Reshuffling the cards—

Sustaining something-or-other

(“Differentiations of experience”)

Into a winning hand on a Saturday

Night schmoozing with the boys…