Abandoned Project

In the 90s I did a lot of work on gay male poets of modern Spain. I published on Gil de Biedma, Brines, and Gil-Albert. I wrote other essays on Lorca and Cernuda that were not published. I also published work on Claudio Rodríguez and Valente, from the perspective of masculinity. This was going to be a book on the gender of male poets. Why should only female poets have gender, I thought? It would include both straight and gay poets.

For whatever reason, I didn't do that book. Enrique Álvarez, a friend of mine (now) wrote a book that was similar in scope, on Lorca, Cernuda, Gil de Biedma, and Villena. I thought it fine that someone else did it, filling in that gap, though I would have done it differently. His book is good, and I wrote for his tenure, so it worked out well for everyone.

I no longer have the essay on Lorca I wrote for this project. That was many computers ago and I simply don't know where the electronic file would be. Now, however, I realize I have to make that exact argument again. The argument I would have made in that part of the book. I remember, too, exactly what I wanted to say. I just have to re-do the spade work to find the critical citations. Enrique does not make that argument, so it leaves me the perfect hueco to fill.

That was my breakthrough today. It will be a kind of tour-de-force deconstruction of "Ode to Walt Whitman." I will also deconstruct the critics, like Jack Walsh in ¿Entiendes?

I think Hispanic criticism kind of missed the whole "queering everything" movement. That book has too many articles where the critic is trying to prove someone is gay, rather than starting with that as the point of departure, as should be done. PJS does not cite Sedgwick in his book on Lorca's theater, published 8 years after Epistemology of the Closet.He only wants to do other kinds of Foulcauldian readings, not that kind.