The Torchbearers of Queer Legacy: Mark Doty and The Celebration of Aids Poetry

By Luke Dunlop

One of the notions most potent about our contemporary moment is the push for acceptance. Whether that be in race, sexuality, gender identity or body type, the representation of a vast array of individuals who originate from “minorities” has become almost trendy. Gone are the days where a single non-white character (who embodied most, if not all, of the racial stereotypes associated with their “heritage”) would stand out as an “other” in a fully white cast, or how a flamboyantly camp man would be media’s answer to the “gay best friend” trope. In the 2020s, these fixations on typecasts has long become monotonous, thus the push for representing a large collection of groups fulfils an increasingly liberal society’s expectation for “giving a voice to the previously voiceless”.

To hone in on this idea further, then, we could look at the increase not only in the diversification of LGBTQ+ faces within media, but stand-alone narratives that heavily feature themes and issues surrounding the community. From the struggles of coming out, present in Alice Oseman’s Heartstopper series of graphic novels, or the focus placed on underground queer culture which, until now, was only known by those entangled in minority culture, such as Ryan Murphy’s POSE. The latter, a successful television show which explores not only the tragedies the LGBTQ+ faced during the HIV/AIDS epidemic of 80s/90s New York City, but also the richness and marvels of ballroom culture. The multiplicity of these experiences, poignant or performative, enrich the perspectives of contemporary LGBTQ+ individuals, deepening their understanding of their own culture’s history.

As much as POSE offers a fairly accurate view into life as a queer person in its specific time and place (backed up by its main inspiration, the documentary Paris is Burning), where else can LGBTQ+ youths learn about their community’s past? In particular, how can we delve further into understanding the events of the HIV/AIDS crisis when so much of that history has been deliberately pushed down and forgotten by a society who prioritised fear-mongering at the expense of minority voices?

Visual media may be the primary method of absorbing information nowadays, especially among younger generations, but the power of the pen remains a steadfast pillar of communicating information, understanding and emotion to readers, present or future. In particular, poetry finds its way amid the cacophony of voices on LGBTQ+ culture as a traditional yet malleable medium through which experiences of the queer person can be dissected and presented in as raw or as restrained a manner as the writer desires. Once such poet who doesn’t shy away from poignancy is Mark Doty, an American post-AIDS poet who, specifically in his collection Source (2005) explores the gay experience not only in our contemporary moment, but also retroactively muses upon the effects the neglect of public bodies had on the victims of AIDS at the time of the epidemic, but also on those surviving. His commitment to uphold a strong legacy of those he knew during the crisis results in some of the most personal, cutting, humourous and tear-jerking poems in recent history; Doty asserts himself as a master of creating an intimate landscape in which to break the hearts of his audience.

One such poem which deals especially strongly with the thematic concerns of intimacy and heartbreak is “Paul’s Tattoo”, a poem which has its central locus as the tattooing of a heart onto the eponymous Paul’s arm, a “heart beneath his sleeve” as Doty writes. The poem deals, both directly and indirectly, with mortality, while also including more philosophical considerations on death, bringing in the idea of the permanency of art versus the body. Paul, despite knowing his body is dying, and understanding that his living self is soon to be gone, gains an element of immortality in the tattoo he receives. The speaker of the poem, it seems, finds comfort in the fact that his lover, though nearing a tragic and premature demise, will have some aspect of reclamation over his death; he uses art as a method of rebellion, of demanding control over his body once more. The fact, too, that a heart is chosen as his tattoo is not only a symbol of perpetual love, but a way of externalising an assumedly failing organ due to his disease, giving himself a sort of second centre of life, as emphasises through the comparison of the tattoo to the notion that the “self contained too much to be held”.

It is in this poem, and in many others, where Doty asserts that the queer experience cannot, and will not, easily be erased through physical death, or the death of historical knowledge. Those individuals who have a rebellious fire inside them are the torchbearers who will ensure the survival of LGBTQ+ legacy moving forward. To bring it back to the initial point of how we can guarantee the endurance of queer culture, while also maintaining the ability to reflect upon how far we have come, poets like Doty create a space where our core values can be celebrated and remembered, and thus create a “source” from which the future of the queer community can be inspired to continue to “pose” as pillars of rebellion.

https://slate.com/culture/2001/01/paul-s-tattoo.html

Edited by Fleur Howe