As a kid, I enjoyed reading. It was probably your typical fledgling-homo-trying-to-escape-reality thing, but whatever: I loved books.
As I got older, I developed a similar fondness for writing. I don’t know where it came from: I just knew I liked it. Even now, I don’t like to analyze it too much for fear I’ll pick it to death. Let’s just say I enjoy the look of words and the sound of language.
When I got to college, things changed. Bad news: I had too much crap to read, and most of it was about as engaging as the small print on my student loan applications. Good news: I began to realize that there were first-rate American writers other than William Faulkner, Tennessee Williams, and Eudora Welty–even folks from (gasp!) outside Mississippi. Among those authors, one of my then-favorites was a now-obscure poetess named Amy Lowell, who penned little diddies like this:
Aubade
As I would free the white almond from the green husk
So I would strip your trappings off,
Beloved.
And fingering the smooth and polished kernel
I should see that in my hands glittered a gem beyond counting.
The nice thing about Amy (Ms. Lowell if you’re nasty) was that (a) she wrote beautiful, image-heavy poems (Hello? That’s why she’s considered one of the foremost writers of the Imagist movement?) that often had a bitter, accusatory tone attractive to sophomores, and (b) she was a big-boned, cigar-smoking, combat boot-wearing les-bean, which, as a newly out homosexualist, gave me the wiggles.
Even though I’ve, er, moved on, shall we say, in my literary tastes, every so often, I like to crack open one of Lowell’s oeuvres and peruse a page or two. To be honest, it’s as much about the beauty of her language as it is about me: her poems remind me of the way I used to be, the things I used to like, the way I used to think…. Proust had perfume, I have a 300-pound dyke.
And apparently, I’m not the only one.
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