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- Title
Freely Espousing: James Schuyler, Surveillance Poetry, and the Queer Otic.
- Authors
Levine, R Morris
- Abstract
Amidst the "lavender scare" of the Cold War, James Schuyler, "the great queer voice of the New York School," subverted the state's auditory surveillance of queer life. Refunctionalizing its tools of espionage as poetic tactics, Schuyler eavesdrops on errant conversations (the espoused) and joining (espousing) them in paratactic assembly. In so doing, Schuyler expands José Esteban Muñoz's "queer optic," the utopian capacity to see beauty amidst ruins, beyond the visual into a queer otic that drags into being a world of freer espousal. I survey the aural surveillance of mid-century queer life before tracing Schuyler's détournement of bugging, wiretapping, and overhearing in his 1969 Freely Espousing. In turn, I uncover the queer political commitments lurking beneath Schuyler's classification as a pastoral lyricist concerned only with "leaves and flowers and weather."
- Subjects
SCHUYLER, James, 1923-1991; SWEARING (Profanity) in literature; CONVERSATION; ECONOMIC security; HETERONORMATIVITY
- Publication
Diacritics, 2023, Vol 51, Issue 1, p32
- ISSN
0300-7162
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1353/dia.2023.a923442