Assaracus Issue 01: A Journal of Gay Poetry by Bryan Borland

Assaracus Issue 01: A Journal of Gay Poetry Reviews

• 
  Grady

  A Brave New World: Sibling Rivalry Press
  
  Bryan Borland, a gifted port and judge of fine poetry, has created a small publishing house called Sibling Rivalry Press and for its first years in existence it is proving to be a very fine, classy leader in ferreting out excellent writers to publish. The current publication is Issue No. 1 of ASSARACUS: A JOURNAL OF GAY POETRY and contains a generous sampling of the poems by Shane Allison, Jay Burodny, Gavin Dillard, Christopher Hennessy, Matthew Hittinger, James Kangas, Raymond Luczak, Frank J Miles, Stephen Mills, and Eric Norris. The name of the journal was chosen because according to mythology Assaracus was the brother of Ganymede, the handsome youth swept up by an eagle from the earth for the pleasure of Zeus. Assaracus remained earthbound, and since poets are earthbound, it is up to their poetry to lift us in to the heavens as Ganymedes!
  
  The goal of the quarterly journal according to Borland is as follows; 'ASSARACUS has no formula. This quarterly journal will not contain a particular kind of poetry, only that the poems are authored by gay men.' And from this first issue it is obvious that Borland will have many submissions to join his ascent into the heavens. Many of the poets are already very well known: Matthew Hittinger, Stephen Mills, Shane Allison appear regularly in other places, but then so do each of the poets congregated for this initial launch. And while it is unfair to select one poem to represent the group, the works of the deaf poet Raymond Luczak provide an indication of the sophistication of the contents:
  
  NEAR NORRIE PARK
  
  Montreal River smoother
  its brown ripples, sprung
  free of wrinkles, over the cement
  dam. Everything was a giggle.
  There was never a stain of desire.
  
  Straddling my bike at fifteen, I stared
  for hours, wondering how people could
  hide their aches to touch each other,
  and how a wall could restrain
  slinky spurts with such grace.
  
  ASSARACUS is a fine initial offering of gifted poets and deserves our attention and our applause for the launch of Bryan Borland's brave new world.
  
  Grady Harp
• 
  Richard Leis

  A wide range of writing styles, and if many of the poems seem to be about similar topics, they are topics I want to read about, from unique perspectives. The poems of a couple of the poets were opaque to me, but they also make me want to read the issue again, as do the poems that were more immediately understandable. I'm not exactly sure what Jay Burodyny was writing about, for example, but the language is so lovely and the images so vivid that his poems are worth the effort.
  
  I particularly loved Raymond Luczak's work; what he does with trees in "White Pines" and "The Cutting" is fascinating. Shane Allison's work was blunt and open and often very sly; "High School Epithalamion" had me grinning ear to ear and imagining creating something similar from my high school yearbooks. The work of Gavin Dillard begins with an earnest and lovely poem about love, and continues with often very humorous and insightful "Aphorisms".
  
  I'm eager to read more issues.
• 
  IE

  A lot of camp, which is all fine and dandy, but quite off-putting if there's nothing else going on. I understand the impulse of cramming as many a minute detail about a sudden encounter or the sting of unrequited love or some instance of desire, so long as the poems offer something for (poetic) discourse. Not a lot of poets in this collection have that in mind — this anthology feels more like group therapy. Different only in particulars, but complacently, inescapably homogenous in thought.