Gay Love Poetry

This wide-ranging and superbly entertaining anthology of poetry stretches from Catullus and Ovid through Marlowe and Michelangelo, on to Wait Whitman and Oscar Wilde, and finally to such modems as Thom Gunn, J. R. Ackerley, Francis King, and C. E Cavafy.

Gay Love Poetry addresses gay themes in the pastoral tradition, in urban settings, in the elegiac mode, and in celebrations of homosexual desire. Editor Neil Powell's superb collection includes verse by Martial, Virgil, Shakespeare, Drayton, Verlaine, Byron, Wilfred Owen, Gerard Manley Hopkins, and many others. He also offers selections by poets like Wordsworth, Tennyson, Dryden, and Andrew Marvell since these particular pieces, though not conceived of as gay love poetry, nonetheless enjoy a gay readership. But above all, this is an anthology of outstanding poems that holds a special appeal to gay men but at the same time speaks to a broader audience.

With translations of the essential classical and modem texts, this one-of-a-kind collection makes a convincing case for the central place of gay poetry in our literary culture.