GLR January-February 2025

P HILIP G AMBONE Reflections of a Generalist THE GAY IMAGINATION by Alan Contreras Oregon Review Books. 254 pages, $25. A LAN CONTRERAS, a regular contributor to this mag azine, is the author of four books of poetry and more than a dozen works of nonfiction, principally about or nithology and higher education law. In contrast, The Gay Imag ination is a collection of pieces about poetry and music, areas in which the author proves to be a sharp and knowledgeable writer. He applies a keen intelligence and a cultivated taste that reveal an impressive familiarity with a wide range of poetry. The question Contreras brings to bear when reviewing any book is: “Why has this work been published?” After all, he re marks: “The sheer volume of published work limits what any re viewer, expert or not, can consider, and of course much of it is dreck. This very book that you are reading is in effect self-pub lished. Whether it is dreck remains to be seen: you get to make that judgment based on your knowledge and experience.” Well, there’s a setup for a reviewer of this collection! I’m happy to say that this book is decidedly not dreck. Indeed, on several oc casions, reading one of these short essays left me eager to read the book being reviewed. The first half of the book includes 24 of Contreras’ essays and reviews, focused for the most part on gay writers and mu sicians. Among them, he tackles poets Richard Blanco, Essex Hemphill, Adrienne Rich, and Bebe Backhouse; composer Ned Rorem; and queer songwriter Stephan Nance. Some of the re views look further back in time to the poetry of Byron, Whit man, Andrew Marvell, Federico García Lorca, and Gabriela Mistral. Contreras has a talent for nailing a poet’s style in a few words: A. E. Hines exhibits “a transcultural breadth of image”; The 35 chapters of this stunning novel are grouped into six sections, each with a witty title. Henry Henry, which covers a timespan of about a year, presents the everyday life of young Hal in the style of a weighty chronicle of British history. As in Shakespeare’s “Henry” plays, the young man who seems to be sowing his wild oats eventually sobers up, although the ending of the novel is somewhat inconclusive. The hypochondriac Henry, who seems to believe he’s perpetually on the brink of death, is still alive on the last page, but history suggests that Hal will outlive him and will accede to Henry’s title and estate. Perhaps he’ll surprise everyone and succeed brilliantly in the role of duke. _______________________________________________________ Jean Roberta is a widely published writer based in Regina, Sas katchewan, Canada. ward, Richard’s surviving and Edward’s current lover, at a country house, where he receives a warm welcome in an idyl lic setting.

J EAN R OBERTA Prince Hal & Bloody Marys HENRY HENRY by Allen Bra tt on Unnamed Press. 350 pages, $29. A LLEN BRATTON is an American writer whose first novel, Henry Henry , transfers Shakespeare’s “Prince Hal” (Henry V, 1386–1422) to the year 2014, when old Catholic families and a hereditary upper class still exist in Eng land, but theology and rank seem increasingly irrelevant to the issues of the day. The Hal of the novel is a handsome, appar ently aimless young man who spends much time getting drunk and high when not having casual sex with his pal Jack Falstaff. Along comes Henry Percy, a long-term acquaintance whose ti tled family has known Hal’s family for generations. A com parison of the complex relationship of these two characters with that of their historical counterparts is instructive: Shake speare’s Percy is the archenemy of the man who eventually be comes Henry V. The nuances of modern British homophobia—especially in aristocratic families, where a masculine image and the produc tion of heirs are still considered essential—are deftly conveyed in dialogue scenes. More disturbingly, the impunity of men like Hal’s widowed father, another Henry (the Duke of Lancaster), to indulge their most forbidden desires while seeming to be be yond reproach is both shocking and commonplace. In the world in which Hal has grown up, certain activities are unspeakable, which is how men get away with them. While abuse and addiction are at the heart of this novel, it can also be read as a dark comedy. Here is Hal’s analysis of the results of too much drinking, expressed in a wry third-person voice: “There were a lot of different ways you could vomit from being drunk. There was the tactical thunder, the unloos ing of a stomach’s worth of lager to make room for another few pints; the surprise puke, which was not a surprise because it would happen inevitably if you did not make it happen your self; the takeaway puke, when you scarfed a Styrofoam box full of chips or an extra-spicy kebab and then gagged it back up again like a dog who’d pawed open the rubbish…” and so on for another hundred-plus words. Henry’s disappointment in his eldest son Hal is no greater than Hal’s disappointment in himself. Reluctantly going to visit his father at the family home in London, Hal thinks of the house as another version of his own body, which he wouldn’t live in if he had a choice. If there’s a redemptive arc in this novel, it involves Hal’s interest in his father’s cousin Richard (based on King Richard II), who died after becoming estranged from Henry for several reasons, including Richard’s long-term relationship with an other man. In the novel, the death of Richard from AIDS-re lated causes seems to Henry (Hal’s judgmental father) to be God’s punishment for his “perversion,” but Hal realizes that he can form his own opinion. Hal impulsively visits Ed

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