Fleurs du Mal Magazine
The hidden history of a vulnerable gay man whose life and death were turned into tabloid fodder.
In the early 1990s, eight people living in a small conservative Florida town alleged that Dr. David Acer, their dentist, infected them with HIV. David’s gayness, along with his sickly appearance from his own AIDS-related illness, made him the perfect scapegoat and victim of mob mentality.
In these early years of the AIDS epidemic, when transmission was little understood, and homophobia rampant, people like David were villainized. Accuser Kimberly Bergalis landed a People magazine cover story, while others went on talk shows and made front page news.
With a poet’s eulogistic and psychological intensity, Steven Reigns recovers the life and death of this man who also stands in for so many lives destroyed not only by HIV, but a diseased society that used stigma against the most vulnerable.
It’s impossible not to make connections between this story and how the twenty-first century pandemic has also been defined by medical misinformation and cultural bias.
Inspired by years of investigative research into the lives of David and those who denounced him, Reigns has stitched together a hauntingly poetic narrative that retraces an American history, questioning the fervor of his accusers, and recuperating a gay life previously shrouded in secrecy and shame.
Steven Reigns is a Los Angeles-based poet and educator and was appointed the first Poet Laureate of West Hollywood. Alongside over a dozen chapbooks, he has published the collections Inheritance and Your Dead Body is My Welcome Mat. Reigns holds a BA in Creative Writing from the University of South Florida, a Master of Clinical Psychology from Antioch University, and is a fourteen-time recipient of The Los Angeles County’s Department of Cultural Affairs’ Artist in Residency Grant. He edited My Life is Poetry, showcasing his students’ work from the first-ever autobiographical poetry workshop for LGBT seniors. Reigns has lectured and taught writing workshops around the country to LGBT youth and people living with HIV. Currently he is touring The Gay Rub, an exhibition of rubbings from LGBT landmarks, facilitates the monthly Lambda Lit Book Club, and is at work on a new collection of poetry.
A Quilt for David Paperback
by Steven Reigns (Author)
2021
Language: English
Publisher: City Lights Publishers
Paperback
128 pages
ISBN-10: 0872868818
ISBN-13: 978-0872868816
$11.12
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A Memory of Youth
The moments passed as at a play;
I had the wisdom love brings forth;
I had my share of mother-wit,
And yet for all that I could say,
And though I had her praise for it,
A cloud blown from the cut-throat north
Suddenly hid Love’s moon away.
Believing every word I said,
I praised her body and her mind
Till pride had made her eyes grow bright,
And pleasure made her cheeks grow red,
And vanity her footfall light,
Yet we, for all that praise, could find
Nothing but darkness overhead.
We sat as silent as a stone,
We knew, though she’d not said a word,
That even the best of love must die,
And had been savagely undone
Were it not that Love upon the cry
Of a most ridiculous little bird
Tore from the clouds his marvellous moon.
William Butler Yeats
(1865-1939)
A Memory of Youth
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De kloosters van de Heilige Driehoek in het Noord-Brabantse Oosterhout vormen voor de derde keer het bijzondere toneel voor een hedendaagse kunst biënnale van internationale allure.
De h3h biënnale voert door de kloosters en langs parkachtige tuinen, weidse landerijen en oude dreven waar je werken tegenkomt van 27 kunstenaars.
De meeste daarvan zijn speciaal voor de biënnale gemaakt. De manifestatie is nog te bezoeken tot en met 16 juli.
De curatoren zijn Hendrik Driessen en Rebecca Nelemans. Zij tonen kunstenaars uit binnen- en buitenland met nieuwe en bestaande werken, geïnspireerd door de unieke locatie en de rijke historische en spirituele tradities.
Het zijn Ghada Amer, Maarten Baas, David Bade, Marwan Bassiouni, David Claerbout, Delphine Courtillot, Anne Geene, Lisette de Greeuw, Loek Grootjans, Elise ’t Hart, Frank Havermans, Laura Henno, Ann Veronica Janssens, Folkert de Jong, Alicja Kwade, Rudy Luijters, Rick van Meel, Romee van Oers, Paulien Oltheten, Kathrin Schlegel, Fiona Tan, Fran Van Coppenolle, Ine Vermee, Wessel Verrijt en Dré Wapenaar. Daarnaast is er ook werk geselecteerd van de overleden kunstenaars Piet den Blanken en JCJ Vanderheyden.
Deze editie van de h3h biënnale draagt het thema Geloof. De curatoren hechten veel waarde aan de verbinding die een kunstenaar met zijn of haar werk weet aan te gaan met een specifieke locatie binnen het kloostergebied en het thema.
De symbiose die ontstaat tussen het werk en de plek was leidend bij de keuze voor de kunstenaars.
De kunstwerken die getoond zullen worden variëren van schilderijen, sculpturen, (geluids)installaties, fotografie en video, tot monumentale ingrepen in het landschap.
De vorige biënnale met het thema Hoop was te bezoeken van 10 juli t/m 15 augustus 2021. De komende editie (in 2023) heeft Geloof als thema, terwijl dat voor de eerste kunstmanifestatie in 2017 Liefde was.
Entree en parking h3h biënnale 2023, Monnikendreef, Oosterhout.
Dagelijks open, behalve op dinsdag, van 10.00 tot 17.00 uur.
Nog te zien t/m 16 juli 2023
Meer informatie op website: https://www.h3hbiennale.nl/biennale/
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Genesis P-Orridge, the mind and voice behind Psychic TV, Throbbing Gristle and COUM Transmissions, began their artistic journey in the 1960’s writing poetry.
Heartworm Press is proud to present hundreds of never before seen or published poems by this legendary, influential original.
Genesis P-Orridge, the mind and voice behind Psychic TV, Throbbing Gristle and COUM Transmissions, began their artistic journey in the 1960’s writing poetry.
This collection introduces Genesis as a thoughtful innovator and irreverent provocateur with over two decades of poetry, from beat to concrete, and shows the progression of the self, beginning the book under the given name of Neil Megson and eventually growing into the enigmatic Genesis P-Orridge.
Heartworm Press is proud to present hundreds of never before seen or published poems including 50 images with an intro by friend and collaborator Wesley Eisold.
Genesis P-Orridge (1950 – 2020) was a singer-songwriter, musician, poet, performance artist, and occultist who rose to notability as the founder of the COUM Transmissions artistic collective and lead vocalist of seminal industrial band Throbbing Gristle. P-Orridge was also a founding member of Thee Temple ov Psychick Youth occult group, and fronted the experimental band Psychic TV.
Coumplete Poems – 1960’s & 70’s
by Genesis P-Orridge
Pub Date: 05/01/2023
Publisher: Heartworm Press
ISBN 979-8-9859385-2-4
SKU#: D19A
Binding: Paperback
Pages:212
Price: $ 28.00
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The City of Sleep
Over the edge of the purple down,
Where the single lamplight gleams,
Know ye the road to the Merciful Town
That is hard by the Sea of Dreams –
Where the poor may lay their wrongs away,
And the sick may forget to weep?
But we – pity us! Oh, pity us!
We wakeful; ah, pity us! –
We must go back with Policeman Day –
Back from the City of Sleep!
Weary they turn from the scroll and crown,
Fetter and prayer and plough –
They that go up to the Merciful Town,
For her gates are closing now.
It is their right in the Baths of Night
Body and soul to steep,
But we – pity us! ah, pity us!
We wakeful; oh, pity us! –
We must go back with Policeman Day –
Back from the City of Sleep!
Over the edge of the purple down,
Ere the tender dreams begin,
Look – we may look – at the Merciful Town,
But we may not enter in!
Outcasts all, from her guarded wall
Back to our watch we creep:
We – pity us! ah, pity us!
We wakeful; ah, pity us! –
We that go back with Policeman Day –
Back from the City of Sleep!
Rudyard Kipling
(1865 – 1936)
The City of Sleep
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A thrillingly provocative investigation into the Shakespeare authorship question, exploring how doubting that William Shakespeare wrote his plays became an act of blasphemy…and who the Bard might really be.
The theory that Shakespeare may not have written the works that bear his name is the most horrible, vexed, unspeakable subject in the history of English literature.
Scholars admit that the Bard’s biography is a “black hole,” yet to publicly question the identity of the god of English literature is unacceptable, even (some say) “immoral.”
In Shakespeare Was a Woman and Other Heresies, journalist and literary critic Elizabeth Winkler sets out to probe the origins of this literary taboo.
Whisking readers from London to Stratford-upon-Avon to Washington, DC, she pulls back the curtain to show how the forces of nationalism and empire, religion and mythmaking, gender and class have shaped our admiration for Shakespeare across the centuries.
As she considers the writers and thinkers—from Walt Whitman to Sigmund Freud to Supreme Court justices—who have grappled with the riddle of the plays’ origins, she explores who may perhaps have been hiding behind his name.
A forgotten woman? A disgraced aristocrat? A government spy? Hovering over the mystery are Shakespeare’s plays themselves, with their love for mistaken identities, disguises, and things never quite being what they seem.
As she interviews scholars and skeptics, Winkler’s interest turns to the larger problem of historical truth—and of how human imperfections (bias, blindness, subjectivity) shape our construction of the past. History is a story, and the story we find may depend on the story we’re looking for.
An irresistible work of literary detection, Shakespeare Was a Woman and Other Heresies will forever change how you think of Shakespeare… and of how we as a society decide what’s up for debate and what’s just nonsense, just heresy.
Elizabeth Winkler is a journalist and book critic whose work has appeared in The Wall Street Journal, The New Yorker, The New Republic, The Times Literary Supplement, and The Economist, among other publications. She received her undergraduate degree from Princeton University and her master’s in English literature from Stanford University. Her essay “Was Shakespeare a Woman?”, first published in The Atlantic, was selected for The Best American Essays 2020. She lives in Washington, DC.
Shakespeare Was a Woman and Other Heresies
By Elizabeth Winkler (Author)
Language: English
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
June 8, 2023
Length: 416 pages
Hardcover
ISBN-10:198217126X
ISBN-13:978-1982171261
£15.00
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Welgemutst
De lessen zijn gedaan. De tram stroomt vol uniform.
Vol bewegingsdrang, zoals een vis is, kleine jeugd
alom plotsklaps. Jongens willen wijsjes en meisjes
schoentjes. Daar horen zoentjes bij. Al is het maar
in gedachten. Zie ze eens naar de toekomst groeien.
Ze snuiven fris. En lachen elkaar zacht toe, broos
als het marsepeinen gezicht van de mutslangoer.
Bert Bevers
Welgemutst
Gedicht
Uit: Eigen terrein, Uitgeverij WEL, Bergen op Zoom, 2013
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Ord
Varma ord, vackra ord, djupa ord…
De äro som doften av en blomma i natten
den man icke ser.
Bakom dem lurar den tomma rymden…
Kanske de äro den ringlande röken
från kärlekens varma härd?
Edith Södergran
(1892-1923)
Ord
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From “one of the essential voices in American poetry” (New York Times) comes a rich new collection of expansive, light-footed, and cheerfully foreboding poems oddly in tune with our strange and evolving present.
The first new collection since Evolution from the prolific poet, activist, and writer Eileen Myles, a “Working Life” unerringly captures the measure of life. Whether alone or in relationship, on city sidewalks or in the country, their lyrics always engage with permanence and mortality, danger and safety, fear and wonder.
a “Working Life” is a book transfixed by the everyday: the “sweet accumulation” of birds outside a window, a cup of coffee and a slice of pizza, a lover’s foot on the bed.
These poems arise in the close quarters of air travel, the flashing of a landscape through a train window, or simply in a truck tooling around town, or on foot with a dog in all the places that held us during the pandemic lock-downs.
Myles’s lines unabashedly sing the happy contradictions of love and sex, spill over with warnings about the not-so future world threatened by climate change and capitalism, and also find transcendent wonder in the landscapes and animals around us, and in the solitary and collective act of caring for one another and our world.
With intelligence, heart, and singular vision, a “Working Life” shows Eileen Myles working at a thrilling new pitch of their poetic and philosophical powers.
Eileen Myles (they/them) came to New York from Boston in 1974 to be a poet. Their books include Pathetic Literature, For Now (an essay/talk about writing), Evolution, Afterglow (a dog memoir), I Must Be Living Twice: new and selected poems, and Chelsea Girls. The Trip, their super-8 puppet road film can be seen on YouTube. Eileen has received a Guggenheim Fellowship and was recently elected a member of the American Academy of Arts & Letters. They live in New York and Marfa, TX.
a “Working Life”
Author: Eileen Myles
Poetry
Language: English
Publisher: Grove Press
Publication Date: 2023-04-18
Format Hardcover
ISBN 9780802161895
ISBN-10: 0802161898
Pages: 288
List Price: $26.00
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Menschen
Als ich, mit der Welt zerfallen,
Schweigend ging umher,
Da fragten die lieben Menschen:
Was quälet dich so sehr?
Ich sagte ihnen die Wahrheit;
Sie haben sich fortgedrückt
Und hinter meinem Rücken
Erklärt, ich sei verrückt.
Ada Christen
(1839 – 1901)
Menschen
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The Weather-Cock Points South
I put your leaves aside,
One by one:
The stiff, broad outer leaves;
The smaller ones,
Pleasant to touch, veined with purple;
The glazed inner leaves.
One by one
I parted you from your leaves,
Until you stood up like a white flower
Swaying slightly in the evening wind.
White flower,
Flower of wax, of jade, of unstreaked agate;
Flower with surfaces of ice,
With shadows faintly crimson.
Where in all the garden is there such a flower?
The stars crowd through the lilac leaves
To look at you.
The low moon brightens you with silver.
The bud is more than the calyx.
There is nothing to equal a white bud,
Of no colour, and of all,
Burnished by moonlight,
Thrust upon by a softly-winging wind.
Amy Lowell
(1874-1925)
The Weather-Cock Points South
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Suicide is often framed as betrayal, even though we live in a world that betrays us.
When this world tells us that death is better, what does it mean to have faith in life?
JUDAS & SUICIDE is a poetry collection navigating religion and suicidality.
It approaches these topics through the lens of Black family and community, sadness, medication, sexual violence, the prison industrial complex, media, and Bible verses.
JUDAS & SUICIDE explores how to be convinced to stay alive without feeling obligated to.
Maya Williams (ey/em, they/them, and she/her) is a religious Black multiracial nonbinary suicide survivor who is currently an Ashley Bryan Fellow and the seventh Poet Laureate of Portland, Maine.
Judas & Suicide
Poems
by Maya Williams
Publ. Date: 5/23/2023
Publisher: Game Over Books
ISBN: 979-8-9878871-0-3
Binding: PAPERBACK
Pages: 80
Price: $ 18.00
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