Sister I'm a Poet

I’m still finding traces of the bile I spewed after reading the Wilde Boys write up in the NY Times last Friday. If you weren’t privy to this little group, Patrick Huguenin’s article illustrates the origin of the New York City-based poetry group and it’s founding father, poet Alex Dimitrov. Before you think I’m a blithering troll with no need for culture, allow me to explain why the write-up had me alternating between laughter and vomit.

I appreciate the value of poetry and the craft thereof as much as the next artsy homosexual (my first and only cat was named Eliot after Mr. T.S.), but poetry groups immediately make me think of a herd of illegitimately serious twats who will feign offense when I laugh at an author comparing the fart of a bee to a broken marriage. I decided to keep an open mind though…until I read this direct quote from Dimitrov regarding the birth of Wilde Boys:

“I invited the cute gay poets 

right away,” Mr. Dimitrov said. 

“I sort of had a list of gays that I 

wanted to come, and some of them 

that I wanted to sleep with.”

Right. I have to give him props for his honesty. I also have to give him a triple WTF for actually saying it out loud to a Times reporter. The rest of the article goes on to discuss how selective Dimitrov is in inducting new members—suffice to say they have to be hot and snarky (clever?)—and how the “roving salon” has been held in such places as the fabulous Fifth Avenue apartment of two handsome middle-aged men (Tom Healy and Lillian Vernon heir Fred Hochberg) and dangerously hip Brooklyn backyards.

As a writer and artist, I’m thrilled that a creative group has been able to thrive, gain notoriety, and garner the interest of esteemed poets who have attended as special guests and speakers. Yet I couldn’t shake a nagging question: Am I reading something that could be considered fawning admiration or a satire whose obnoxious material would be fodder for The Soup were it televised?

Admittedly, I was a bit biased. One poet mentioned by name in the article frolicked on the beaches of Fire Island with a few friends and me last summer. In short, said poet drove us all a little bonkers and would be utterly forgettable were it not for his grating baby voice, contrived gangly awkwardness, and nauseating need to be coddled by other creatives. Being reminded of him raised my eye-rolling level fifty points.

Eye-rolling aside, as aforementioned, I’m delighted to see a literary group who is apparently thriving with no lull in sight. I’d love, however, to have Alex Dimitrov or any of the other Wilde Boys prove to me that this is more than just an attention-hungry, laughable gaggle of twerps more integrated into crafting perfect hairdos than perfect haiku.