[Daniel Recktenwald]

My personal distaste may be the only common denominator of Harrison's and Bukowski's poetry. I doubt that that is so, but I'm content to leave fuller comparisons and contrasts to any sufficiently interested.

Julie, I appreciate your thinking on the sexual mores immediately upthread.

There's something I wanted to add. [humph . . .] It's like this: I enjoy fencing, the sport. The backyard club of fencing enthusiasts that I practiced with for a while had all kinds of fun. I just can't imagine finishing a good bout, then pulling off my mask to exclaim, "This sure beats wasting your time between some woman's legs!"

When one tactic of praising one thing is the disparagement of something else, one has said something about both things and about oneself.

It may just be a matter of taste. Had I been this poem's auditor, and the camping-trip companion, I would have to have replied, "Really, bro? I like camping and I'm glad to spend this time with you, but if I had a girlfriend, I wouldn't be here right now."

[John Isbell]

Daniel, I think you're right about how the poem's addressee might respond. And if he did, I think he'd be missing the homoerotic subtext of that unexpected closing comparison. Male bonding occurs in some weird ways (perhaps like any bonding), and that I think is one of them in action, or at least in intention. A kind of vicarious sexual adventure.

Cheers,
John

[Allen Tice]

Thus spoke Zarathustra. I think we’re talking about having fun, pleasure if you will, in company. If every time I and my wife are laughing at a TV show, is it heteroerotic; if the same is true with a friend from across the hall or with my biological brother, is it ipso facto homoerotic? Not necessarily. It Could Be, of course. But does having fun always and have to require a sexual spin? At this point, I think I will retreat from this thread into my monkish cell of academic and literary mental stimulation or go buy groceries at a neighborhood mixed sex grocery store. Sail on, posting people. How many angels can prance on a pin? Seventy-three.

[John Isbell]

It's not the riverside companionship that's homoerotic per se. It's the addition of the "some woman" comparison at the end. I stand by my analysis.

Cheers,
John

Update. Or as Einstein put it: "A journalist asked Einstein what he would do if Eddington’s observations failed to match his theory. Einstein famously replied: “Then I would feel sorry for the good Lord. The theory is correct.”"

[Julie Steiner]

Maybe drunken stump arson really is better than casual sex with a nondescript partner. I can't say that I've ever tried either.

Far be it from me to yuck someone else's yum (she said, primly).

Actually, unlike David discussing his relationship with Jonathan, which is the passage I immediately thought of when I read that part of the poem, the poet here does not say that what he felt while sharing this experience with his male friend was better than a heterosexual episode.

Now, tell me, other than lying between some woman's legs,
what joy have you had since, that equaled this?

As I see it, the narrator is either saying that lying between some woman's legs is on the same plane of joy as this experience, or that a heterosexual experience is too exceptional for fair comparisons to be made to it--thus removing it from the conversation (even as he is introducing it to the conversation). Either of those messages is pretty different from how a lot of people in this thread seem to be interpreting the gist.

I'm surprised that no one has yet mentioned that The New York Times published an essay last week about how difficult it is for heterosexual men to talk about the non-erotic love they feel for other men in their lives--in part because they're so terrified of being mistaken for homosexual, and being attacked, either literally or figuratively, by other men terrified of homosexuality.

I was keenly interested in the subject of things men aren't allowed to say without negative social consequences, because there are so many things that women are not allowed to say without negative social consequences. But I thought the New York Times essay wasn't quite a bullseye. I would like to see some of the poets here try to do justice to that topic.

Part of the communication problem is that English, usually so rich in synonyms with various shades of connotation, has surprisingly few words for the various flavors of love. It's harder to talk about something clearly when the vocabulary for it is so limited, when compared to the subject's complexity. For example, a lot of the nuance of the triple "Do you love me?" "Yes, Lord, you know that I love you" exchange between Jesus and Peter (John 21:15, John 21:16, and John 21:17) is lost in translation, because each of them is using a different verb for "love" until the third time, when Jesus finally switches to the verb that Peter is using. (This conversation takes place after Jesus's death, and thus after Peter's triple denial--an opportunity for a triple do-over. But it seems to me that something pretty important is happening in that shift from one verb to another. I can't quite figure out what it is, though.)

[James Brancheau]

That's interesting, Julie. And maybe that's a reason I'm missing something in the poem, the close. I never actually felt that that was some kind of barrier. Or maybe I just grew up around relatively open-minded, easy going men/boys. Well, ok, maybe more of the former than the latter. My father did fall into that category, however. He didn't so much show his emotions enough directly to those closest to him, but he was such a compassionate (and admired) man towards others that, frankly, it, strangely, lost a certain amount of importance. But a fear of expressing emotions among good male friends past and present? Not so much.

[John Isbell]

Just to say I am I think pretty comfortable expressing my love for my male friends. But I still think male bonding expressed via an image of sex with "some woman" to close is a homoerotic choice. I'd find it more straightforward for Harrison to say "I love you." And whyever not, after all?

Cheers,
John

[E. Shaun Russell]

It's funny to see how this thread has progressed, as I've been reading Mario DiGangi's Homoeroticism in Early Modern Drama, which is somewhat of a seminal work for establishing that the bonds of male friendship and the bonds of male sexuality -- not to mention the language used to express the two -- were rather slippery during the English Renaissance. I guess that's never stopped being the case.

[RCL]

Anent Julies’s comments, I’ve always liked the medieval distinction between love as caritas and cupiditas.

[James Brancheau]

When someone quotes the bible, I do a kind of opposite Manchurian Candidate thing. But the verb choices there could really be interesting for a poem. Of course, Jesus finally choosing the right verb choice in the end seems suspect. I'd have to see the original, written between 200 to 300 years after Jesus's death*.

*It may be as early as 150 years. I honestly can't remember. Anyway, a long time.