Wednesday, December 31, 2008

Cleaving auden



Auden and me
—for John Ashbery

Well, my dears—talk about
tacky straight boy—jealousy
Miss Jascha Jizzwad—such a bitch
in the—Times Literary Suppliment

Gossiping—years later
about W. H. Auden—and me
her sour grapes—routine about
the Yale—Younger Poets Series

Some queens—fester and bitch
for years—about unrequited love
they simply—can’t take scorned
romance—or rejected manuscripts

Some queens—get delusional
You know the kind—my dear
effeminate—waspy charming
“Finalists”—for The Prize

Jascha blames—losing it
The Yale competition—on queers
like Auden—plus Isherwood
And his kind—my dears

Jizzwad gets careless—with facts
“She was new to New York—from Buffalo”
where I’d never lived—having known
Auden through—his lover Chester Kallman

I first met Auden—as an undergraduate
around 1947—after a Harvard reading
he was never—swept away by anybody’s
“Mewling” or “mincing”—“goy gay persona”

I doubt if Auden—would have circumvented
the Yale contest rules—just to trick with me
instead he had—twelve tiresome manuscripts
to paw thru—boring bourgeois straight ones

He picked mine instead—seiving thru all the
other submissions—none of them with merit
Miss jizwad’s—rather dreary manuscript
at the bottom of the—putrid slush-pile

“I can’t help wondering”—Auden said
“Whether I’m receiving—the best
toilet paper there is—here in lovely Ischia
Oh my Mediterranean—hemorrhoids!!!

http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/the_tls/article5278554.ece

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