W.H. Auden's Poems and Homosexuality Essay

“For a moment the last sunshine fell with romantic affection on her glowing face; her voice compelled me forward breathlessly as I listened - then the glow faded, each light deserting her with lingering regret, like children leaving a pleasant street at dusk.”

Perhaps, in the following essay I put a quart into a pint pot, because I intend to puzzle out, or rather, find and give a deeper insight into Walt Whitman's sexuality that is still a question on agenda. There are readers and critics who state that it is a shame to humble his poetry to this level, but I think that he was homosexual in his era the topic cannot be left untouched, because therefore this factor was very influential on his everyday life, thinking and hence on his poetry, too.

I believe that this quote means that the narrator is always dreaming, or thinking about Annabel Lee because whenever the moon beams, he is thinking about Annabel.

Soft moonlight lit the land and sea kindly, almost as if it were giving gentle kisses. It kissed the sea and the waves it formed, it kissed the drowsy ship which laid on said water, it kissed the sand the waves lapped at, it kissed the grassy cliff above the shore, and it kissed the girl who slept on said cliff.

Villaurrutia’s poem, “La Nocturne: The Angels” is an intriguing poem that describes the hidden life of homosexuals during an era where it was not common. The men in the poem are gay, but feel the need to hide their true identities. Villaurrutia writes, “the lights are dim so the secret will be kept, the secret known by men who

Throughout the 1950’s, the United States belonged to the Leave It To Beaver era. Families were structured around a strong, hard working father and a wonderful homemaker mother. Children were brought up with solid ideologies on what society expects from them and were warned about living a different and dangerous life. Only one-year separates Tennessee William’s Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and James Baldwin’s Giovanni’s Room from there publishing dates during this decade of unwavering beliefs. These texts were seen as extremely controversial during their time due to their themes of homosexuality. Sexual orientation was an awkward topic during such a “to the book” time period and these texts pushed the limits, making them remarkable and memorable works. Both Tennessee Williams and James Baldwin explore the panic men experience while trying to comprehend what sexual orientation they belong to and highlight the masculine gay man. These texts also examine the woman’s role in the mist of it all.

The subsequent lines, “Some say love, disclosed, repels what it sees, / yet if I touch darkness, it touches me,” (5-6) show the narrator’s sudden comfort with revealing his thoughts. Here, the speaker says that in theory, if one discloses his love, it should be strong enough to repel all darkness that may come his way. However, he feels that

“We sat by the fire stretching our arms toward the flame as we listened to stories and watched the moon and the stars retire” (261). The moon again appears during a time of happiness and hope. Ishmael Beah had made it to New York and is ready to start his new life. He is in America, the land of opportunity with the hope he can start anew. He wishes to forget his past and only focus on the future. The moon is present when he is sitting out by a fire surrounded by good people. As the moon raises into the sky and fades out of the sky, it once again represents happiness. The moon appears in times of happiness and disappears in times of sadness. When Ishmael has finally started his new life and is surrounded by friends, the moon rises into the sky. As Ishmael Beah escapes from the horror of war and the constant memories of what happened at home, the moon rises into the

Robert Browning uses descriptive details to portray a theme of how darkness rises from warmth and happiness by showing us on how a man’s love for someone makes him turn to savagery. The narrator of the poem has very deep feelings for his lover, but he only thinks of himself and he never wants the girl to leave his side so he does the unthinkable. In the times that the girl was not home or was not with the narrator then there was coldness and darkness, but when she was with the man then the house would “blaze up, and all the cottage warm”. She created hope and the narrator needed that constantly, so he realized that his love was too strong to put on hold everyday when she would leave. The fact that the narrator had to watch his lover leave everyday

Within modern-day America, there are certain societal standards based on sexual relationships. Within the poem, the narrator, a young woman, questions why she has to “wear the brand of shame; /whilst he amid the gay and proud/still bears an honored name” (Harper 26-28). Within her poem, Harper exposes the hypocrisy of the

Leaves of Grass is Walt Whitman’s life legacy and at the same time the most praised and condemned book of poetry. Although fearful of social scorn, there are several poems in Leaves of Grass that are more explicit in showing the homoerotic imagery, whereas there are several subtle – should I say “implicit” – images woven into the fabric of the book. It is not strange, then, that he created many different identities in order to remain safe. What Whitman faced in writing his poetry was the difficulty in describing and resonating manly and homosexual love. He was to find another voice of his, a rhetoric device, and his effort took two forms: simplified, and subverted word play.

Again, the author selects a new set of imagery, such as stars, moon, sun, ocean, and wood to remind of the heaven in which the speaker used to live, and then to sweep it off right away. The last statement “For nothing now can ever come to any good” (16) finally reinforces the speaker’s loss and unhappiness. In loneliness, the speaker’s love becomes fiercer and more truthful. It is the fierceness and truthfulness that lead the speaker to the last stair of hopelessness. The end of the poem is also the hopeless end of the speaker’s life because of “nothing …good.”

The next two lines, “Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks, / But bears it out even to the edge of doom” is an allusion to love standing its ground even in the wake of Doomsday. This quatrain effectively illustrates love as a thing that endures all hardship; reinforcing the extended metaphor of the previous quatrain.

Adrienne Rich was a highly acclaimed twentieth-century poet who railed against war and the injustices in the world, and also used imagery that spoke tenderly of love—feelings that she sensed were both highly individual for her, but also universal. “Twenty-One Love Poems” were written between 1974-1976 to her lover of the time, and they track the course of the relationship through the sweet beginning stages, the development of mature love, and all the way through to its dissolution due to her partner’s seeming inability to “come out” and admit to her homosexuality at a time in society when relationships between women were not endorsed or supported. The language in these poems is very rich and weaves both ugly city imagery and elegant metaphors and similes together, with the apparent intention of making the reader search inside to see if the images and ideas conveyed by the language can be applied to the reader’s own experience of living too. While these poems are highly individualistic and at times very personal, this impressive and moving body of poetic accomplishment also reflects themes to which all human beings can relate.

Auden is a poet from the XXth century. As such, he has suffered the wars that have stricken the period. The ekphrasis, which is a literary description of a work of art, is used by Auden in his poems “The Shield of Achilles” and “Musée des Beaux Arts”. As part of his great concerns were the political and psychological conflicts that existed then. In the aforementioned poems, Auden uses the ekphrasis to denounce people’s indifference to human misery.