GLR September-October 2024

Candy was the subject of Lou Reed’s song “Candy Says” on the Velvet Underground’s first album and immortalized in Reed’s “Walk on the Wild Side”: Candy came from out on the Island In the back room she was everybody’s darling But she never lost her head Even when she was giving head She says, “Hey, babe Take a walk on the wild side.” Most importantly, she befriended Andy Warhol at an all night club called the Tenth of Always and became a regular at his Factory, one of his “superstars” along with Holly Wood lawn and Jackie Curtis. (There’s a famous photo of all three taken by Richard Avedon for the June 1972 issue of Vogue .) He cast her in a short scene in Flesh and gave her a pivotal role in Women in Revolt . Warhol became Candy’s ticket to exclusive art gallery openings, film and theater premieres, and trendy Upper East Side cocktail parties. Warhol seems to have been more fascinated with Candy than with any of his other Super stars. Not only did he give her central roles in two of his best known films, he took Candy under his wing, introduced her to all the right people, and escorted her to Max’s Kansas City ( the place to be seen at the time). He also paid for her dental work

(when she was down to just fifteen teeth) and gave her money for rent, clothes, medicine, and whatever she wanted—which was everything. Perhaps that ambition helps explain why Candy’s story is such a sad one despite the incredible heights she attained. From a very early age, she suffered acute gender dysphoria. Her diary is rife with her laments over being in the “wrong” body. Her “flaw,” as she saw it, was her male genitalia. She longed to be a ravishingly beautiful, stylish, glamourous woman in the mold of 1930s and ‘40s movie stars. She began hormone therapy to make herself more feminine and considered gender reassign ment surgery several times, but was held back by a lack of money and a fear of the surgery. She lamented that she had no real friends, that no one understood that she wasn’t a drag queen but, in her mind, a real woman. Many times she wrote in her diary about wanting to commit suicide and wishing to die. When Candy lay in her bed in the hospital, dying of leukemia, photographer Peter Hujar took a stirring photo of her looking every bit as glamorous as Jean Harlow or Kim Novak in their heyday. On the morning of Candy’s funeral on March 21, 1974, Hugar arrived before other mourners and took a haunting photograph of Candy in her casket, her makeup flawless, her hair coiffed to perfection—a glamor girl to the very end.

Three ‘Song Languages’

H ERE ARE three recent titles from among an abundance of new poetry from independent publishers. The variety and mastery of these poets’ distinctly different voices are exhilarating: Our tribe of LGBT poets contains many song languages, and we need their full range. I F YOU ’ VE EVER HEARD Michael Klein’s speaking voice, you know it’s one of a kind, with elements of growl and rasp, the arc of thought suspended momentarily while Klein laughs reflexively at some ab surdity shared with the listener. “Say, the Voice,” from Klein’s first book, 1990, con cludes: “I remember when I became my

coholics, poets, friends. “The Twin,” from then, we were still living, physicalizes the complexity of the poet’s grief for his brother in a few telling details: “I carried the effect of him/ afterwards down some coiling stairs into the streets/ of Boston— music, garments, literature, some beauty stuff.” Those “coiling stairs” read like the building’s viscera; and within them the poet carries truths coiled within his body into the world. Good artists know that there’s power in limiting one’s options, but Klein also knows when to take off the restraints and sweep us up in a crescendo of praise. Among poems asserting gratitude for close ness to animals, “Swale,” the prose poem

J OAN L ARKIN

THE EARLY MINUTES OF WITHOUT New & Selected Poems by Michael Klein The Word Works. 115 pages, $21. TEMPTING GOD: Poems by Christopher Soden Luchador Press. 93 pages, $13. FOGNOTES by Tony Leuzzi Tiger Bark Press. 117 pages, $18.95

voice/ & tried to make its life/ & my life mean one thing.” Read ing The Early Minutes of Without , a generous collection of three decades of Klein’s poetry, one can see how here, too, meaning is embodied in sound, fusing with it in long cadences as lines extend and turn under the pressure of thoughts and feelings. I trust these poems for the way they trust us with Klein’s inti mate, direct utterances, the intensity of his passion, the deep seeing he wants to share. Many souls come to life in these poems—lovers, family, al Joan Larkin’s newest book of poems is Old Stranger , out from Alice James Books in August 2024. September–October 2024

that ends the book, sings homage to the great racehorse Klein served as groom, asserting that “nothing has given me more life than watching that big black beautiful shining soul run through the animal line & past all comprehension into the music of his speed & win. ... Here’s to Swale & to others of his kind, crea ture of my joy & of my sorrow.” T HERE ARE NO DULL MOMENTS or wasted words in Christopher Soden’s captivating third full-length collection, Tempting God . He knows how to skip the on-ramp, take us straight to the place of conflict, and shine his light on situations that kidnap our hearts. It’s no surprise to learn of Soden’s long association with

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