June is LGBTQ+ Pride Month

The letter “B” in the acronym LGBTQ+ stands for bisexual. Bisexual poets have been around from the time of Sappho in ancient Greece to the present day. Several of Shakespeare’s love sonnets are written to men. We know he was married to Anne Hathaway, but to this day it is unknown for whom he was writing them for. He wrote them before he met Anne. Several scholars and biographers have suggested that Emily Dickinson, a very private person, may have been bisexual.

Two 20^th century American poets, Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892 -1950) and Adrienne Rich (1929-2012), were open about being bisexual.  Millay became an avowed feminist in 1917-1918 and sought  to liberate women from their traditional roles. The Encyclopedia Brittanica says of Adrienne Rich, “Throughout the 1960s and ‘70s, Rich’s increasing commitment to the women’s movement and to a feminist and—after openly acknowledging her homosexuality—lesbian aesthetic politicized much of her poetry.”

The following poems are excerpts from longer poems shortened due to space and hoping readers will look up the original version.

What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why

By EDNA ST. VINCENT MILLAY

(This is the octave from her Petrarchan sonnet)

What lips my lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why,

I have forgotten, and what arms have lain

Under my head till morning; but the rain

Is full of ghosts tonight, that tap and sigh

Upon the glass and listen for reply,

And in my heart there stirs a quiet pain

For unremembered lads that not again

Will turn to me at midnight with a cry.

Diving into the Wreck  

By ADRIENNE RICH

(Beginning, middle, and ending segments of a 94-line poem.)

First having read the book of myths,

and loaded the camera,

and checked the edge of the knife-blade,

I put on the body-armor of black rubber

the absurd flippers the grave and awkward mask,

I am having to do this not like Cousteau with his

assiduous team aboard the sun-flooded schooner

but here alone …

This is the place. And I am here,

the mermaid whose dark hair streams black,

the merman in his armored body

we circle silently about the wreck

we dive into the hold.

I am she: I am he…

We are, I am, you are by cowardice or courage

the one who find our way back to this scene

carrying a knife, a camera a book of myths

in which our names do not appear.