Sometimes the world is too complex, and mournful--so instead of the freedom of verse libre, there is a need to return to sonnets and villanelles and sestinas, and sometimes those formalist, constrained, quiet verses do better talking about sex, love, death, desire then any of the barabaric yawps.

there was bishop, and her one art. there was auden and his angloirish sadness. there was macniece, and larkin and mcdiamand.

they are all dead, but we had gunn, we had gunn to take us through the aids crisis, and gunn to take us through queer liberation and gunn to guide us through all sorts of other compelxities.

hes dead now, my darling thomas, who taught me how to love men.

The Man W. Night Sweats
I wake up cold, I who
Prospered through dreams of heat
Wake to their residue,
Sweat, and a clinging sheet.

My flesh was its own shield:
Where it was gashed, it healed.

I grew as I explored
The body I could trust
Even while I adored
The risk that made robust,

A world of wonders in
Each challenge to the skin.

I cannot but be sorry
The given shield was cracked,
My mind reduced to hurry,
My flesh reduced and wrecked.

I have to change the bed,
But catch myself instead

Stopped upright where I am
Hugging my body to me
As if to shield it from
The pains that will go through me,

As if hands were enough
To hold an avalanche off.