SUNSET MIX

 

A playlist inspired by SUNSET IN ROME (ALIEN BUDDHA PRESS) 9.22! 

What All Sex Workers Want You to Know 

https://youtu.be/oHypTun-Izw 

Male Escort EXPOSES Vatican Secrets 

https://youtu.be/m1L6k_9mWNU 

10 Famous 

https://youtu.be/v146niszXbo 

Gay of the Day

https://youtu.be/6UfJjm3h1RM 

Total Eclipse 

https://youtu.be/_WF6nMTVfbY   

The Literary Party Kindle eBook!

 

Need a summer read? I have recieved several queries (from Plain Rainbows) about my book of poetry, photos, essays & a short story "The Literary Party: Growing Up Gay and Amish in America", published via inGroup Press a decade ago. 

EDGE MEDIA BOOK REVIEW:

With apologies to Max Weber and Margaret Mead, any armchair anthropologist or sociologist in North America worthy of cocktail party chatter will be able to explain the propensity of sub-groups and clans and tribes to gather into ever-tighter circles as the onslaught of cultural evolution broaches their sacred world-view. The Mormons did it in their westward trek in the 1840's, the Quakers, the Mennonites and the Jim Jones Temple folks and of course the Amish as well, all have their stories of hiding from the realities of the then-perceived world and its evils. The difficulty lays in the troubling fringe of each of these groups, how to control, guide, indoctrinate, and sublimate their individual members into compliance with group norms and expectations; Ross Douthat of the New York Times calls it the paranoia of the six-degrees of separation game. 

"The Literary Party: Growing up Gay and Amish in America" helps us to see into one of these uniquely American groups and the ways in which it builds tight walls of protection around their world-view by destroying the internally unacceptable. James Schwartz shares with us a view point that is at the same time unique, fascinating, real, and also horrifying, as a young gay man growing up in a traditional Amish farm family. His voice, and his story, which we are allowed to glimpse through his poetry, helps us to understand what it may be like for such a cloistered view of the world from the inside out.

Certainly every such group in American history has similarities, familiar trajectories, and expected time sequences: a coming-of-age story in any other setting, East Los Angeles, for example, or Bedford-Stuyvesant, or Salt Lake City, may stand on similar ground. What helps us appreciate the struggle of Schwartz' "Literary Party" is the rare insight that is current, fresh, and authentic. I am still upset at Tim Allen and Kirstie Allie for that horrible "For Richer or Poorer" (1997), and I also have to suggest that all of hip-hop and rap combined may not be as authentic as we wish it to be, at least in an anthropological sense. I am still waiting for the Langston Hughes of the twenty-first century, and I am not at all sure that even Martha Beck, with her brilliance, is an authentic Mormon voice either.

Conversely, Schwartz seems to have made the transition to the mainstream American cultural highway fairly easily: "In this time and at this rate/ the world prefers its assassins str8./ Heros for heteros to relate/ comfort for their grieving mate." Poetry is elastic, no matter which culture upon which it focuses nor from which it may be derived, and as a reader, my experience, world view, politics, religion, sexuality, age, and ethnicity all come to bear upon the machinations of my interpretation of any poetry, and in Schwartz' work I can reflect on not simply what he meant to say, but what the poetry is saying to me right now and right here. The inferred message is, an Amish gay man can speak to me and we can share some universality of human emotion and cross-cultural meaning, and succeed in making the world a little easier to deal with and a little easier to negotiate.

I am eager to see the maturation of this poet; in "The Pale City" ("From the pale city/ beside the sea/ I traveled once more home/ to the fields in hues of tea") helps us see the future of James Schwartz, an authentic American voice, and that uniquely individual voice as well. 

Available as a Kindle eBook!

NYT Interview: L.G.B.T.Q. in the Midwest, Where the Fight Is Still Happening

NOTE: My recent New York Times interview feature L.G.B.T.Q. in the Midwest, Where the Fight Is Still Happening has been published in this weekends PRIDE edition! Grab your copy!

From Pahoa with La❤a + Lovejets 🌋

I am celebrating Walt Whitman and my 2 year anniversary in Puna! You can catch me in the Nā Leo TV documentary film FROM PAHOA WITH LA❤A 4🌋 premiering in May on Nā Leo TV (check local listings) + the @NaLeoTV app + Facebook & YouTube platforms!

LOVEJETS: QUEER MALE POETS ON 200 YEARS OF WALT WHITMAN 

(Squares & Rebels Press)

Where the heck have you been, Walt Whitman?

Walt Whitman, author of Leaves of Grass, was born in 1819. The Stonewall riots happened 150 years later. On the bicentennial of Whitman’s birth and the 50th anniversary of Stonewall, over 80 poets pay homage to not only Walt Whitman, but also to queer poets and queer poetry and the vast and various events, revolutions public and private, that have shaken our world since 1819: who we are, where we are, where we have been, and where we might be going in the 21st century.

“This wide and impressive range of poetry echoing the spirit of Walt Whitman and his literary forebears demonstrates the essential embrace of community that we’ve always needed to feel whole with ourselves and among others, especially now during these tumultuous times. Celebrating what had to be largely hidden from view during Whitman’s day, the living queer male poets who grace the pages trumpet a glorious and unforgettable spectacle of passion and compassion.” —Richard Blanco, Presidential Inaugural Poet

Featured poets include Shane Allison, Jeffrey Angles (translator), M. J. Arcangelini, Geer Austin, Stuart Barnes, David J. Bauman, Jeffery Beam, Gary Boelhower, Charlie Bondhus, Bryan Borland, Jericho Brown, A. J. Chilson, Philip F. Clark, Jeffery Conway, Alfred Corn, David Cummer, Gavin Geoffrey Dillard, Patrick Donnelly, Arthur Durkee, Jim Elledge, Jack Fritscher, Keith Garebian, Alex Gildzen, Robert L. Giron, David Groff, Nicholas Alexander Hayes, Trebor Healey, Greg Hewett, Scott Hightower, Walter Holland, Andrew Howdle, Michael Hyde, George K. Ilsley, Curran Jeffery, Jee Leong Koh, Michael Lassell, Travis Chi Wing Lau, Daniel W.K. Lee, Timothy Liu, Chip Livingston, Raymond Luczak, Jeff Mann, Jaime Manrique, Herbert Woodward Martin, Marcos L. Martínez, Dermot Meagher, Jory Mickelson, Stephen S. Mills, Michael Kiesow Moore, SP Mulroy, Chael Needle, Eric Thomas Norris, Margaret Sayers Peden (translator), James Penha, Seth Pennington, Felice Picano, Martin Pousson, Christopher Records, William Reichard, Dennis Rhodes, Rocco Russo, Roberto F. Santiago, Gerard Sarnat, James Schwartz, P. C. Searce, Davis G. See, Gregg Shapiro, Ben Shields, Allen Smith, Michael D. Snediker, Frederick Speers, Malcolm Stuhlmiller, Mutsuo Takahashi, Atsusuke Tanaka, Guy Terrell, Ulysses Tetu, John Whittier Treat, David Trinidad, Mark Ward, Edmund White, Walt Whitman (of course!), Scott Wiggerman, Jim Wise, Cyril Wong, and Ian Young.

Dispatch from Hawaii #1

Aloha from Kapoho, Hawaii!

I've been living at a permaculture community since late April of this year so haven’t spent much time blogging! Mahalo to Kukuau Studio and GaiaYoga Gardens for allowing me to grace your stages- it was an honor to be able to share my poetry with you this year!

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by James Schwartz (@queeraspoetry) on Aug 5, 2017 at 6:09am PDT

I'm so happy to see my essay The Zoo Bar published in the new anthology Our Happy Hours: LGBT Voices From the Gay Bars! I can't believe I have an essay in the same book as the amazing Lee Lynch - another honor. I'm truly humbled. 

In poetry news I'm included in the new Not My President: An Anthology of Dissent and have a poem in the fall issue of RFD Magazine! You can read the issue online here! 

Lastly, you can catch my Creative Thought "From Amish to Aloha" on YouTube and the August issue of Science of Mind Magazine! 

Tribute to Poet Edward Field

Don't miss my interview (orginally published via ERIS Magazine) with legendary poet EDWARD FIELD via EMPTY MIRROR!