Queer Beats: Sex Poets from the 50’s

by Benji Holmann for the San Francisco Spectrum

Queer beats: How the Beats Turned America On to Sex - selected writings from 1950’s Beat poets edited by Regina Marler is a deep-end dive into the mind set and work of the Beat generation poets that transcended the conformist constructs of the 1950’s including the hostility against same-sex eroticism. In fact, the beats seemed to swim in the pool of sexuality with explorations into all things counter-culture and queer. Forty-seven chapters of poetry and verse, short-writings and letters are woven together showing the steamy undercurrents and an unapologetic lust for life. Divided in three sections, we sink to the bottom and work to the top!

From the first section, The Road of Excess (Or, Saintly Sinners), William Burroughs’ letter to Allen Ginsberg, April 22, 1952: “Now look, you tell Solomon I don’t mind being called queer. T. E. Lawrence and all manner of right Joes (boy can I turn a phrase) was queer. But I’ll see him castrated before I’ll be called a Fag. That’s just what I been trying to put down uh I mean over, is the distinction between us strong, manly, noble types and the leaping, jumping, window dressing cocksucker. Furthecrissakes a girl’s gotta draw the line somewheres or publishers will swarm all over her sticking their nasty old biographical prefaces up her ass.”

The middle section called Male Muses (Or, Sex Without Borders) has one of the few female beats voices with Elise Cowen AKA “Beat Alice” who was a poster child for female queers pre-Stonewall. At a tribute to Allen Ginsberg replied to a question of female beats – “There were women, they were there, I knew them, their families put them in institutions, they were given electric shock. In the 50’s if you were male you could be a rebel, but if you were female your families had you locked up.” After her suicide, Elise Cowen’s family destroyed most of her papers. This excerpt is from her poem Teacher – Your Body My Kabbalah, “Donald’s first bed wherein this fantasy/ shame changing him to you/And you talking of plum blossom scrolls/ and green automobiles/ Shame making body thought/ a game/ Cat’s cradle *& imaginary/ lattices of knowledge & Bach/ system/ Fearing making guilt making shame/ making fantasy & logic & gave & / Elegance of covering splendour/ emptying memory of the event/ covering splendour/ emptying memory of the event/ covering splendour with mere elegance/ covering/ sneer between the angels/ Wouldn’t couldn’t.”

The final third entitled Queer Shoulder to The Wheel, has one of Allen Ginsberg poems entitled Sweet Boy, Gimme Yer Ass: “Come on boy, fingers thru my hair/ Pull my beard, kiss my eyelids, tongue my ear, lips light on my forehead/ -met you in the street you carried my package-/ Put your hand down to my legs, / touch if it’s there, the prick shaft delicate/ hot in your rounded palm, soft thumb on cockhead-/ Come on come on kiss my full lipped, wet tongue, eyes open-/ animal in the zoo looking out of a skull cage-you/ smile, I’m here so are you, hand tracing your abdomen/ from nipple down rib cage smooth skinn’d past belly veins, along muscle/ to your silk-shiny groin/ across your long prick down your right thigh/ up the smooth road muscle wall to titty again-“

Raw lust, risk-taking, edge-living, non-conformist rebels with a anything that moves credo got the Beatniks declared the third greatest threat to America by then FBI director J. Edgar Hoover. A fascinating subculture that impacted the arts communities ever since, the Beats used words to wage war on the straitjacket society that had systematically wiped out anything that was queer. A journey through America in the fifties with some of the most fascinating and engaging characters you will love, hate, admire and despise at times. You certainly will respect that they did embrace that hallmark of American spirit of exploration and self-determination all while getting yourself hot and bothered.

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