Louie Crew
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Louie Crew has edited special issues of College
English and Margins. He has written four poetry
volumes Sunspots (Lotus Press, Detroit, 1976)
Midnight Lessons (Samisdat, 1987), Lutibelle's Pew
(Dragon Disks, 1990), and Queers! for Christ's Sake!
(Dragon Disks, 2003). The University of Michigan
collects all his papers. As of today, editors have
published 1,861 of his works.
English and Margins. He has written four poetry
volumes Sunspots (Lotus Press, Detroit, 1976)
Midnight Lessons (Samisdat, 1987), Lutibelle's Pew
(Dragon Disks, 1990), and Queers! for Christ's Sake!
(Dragon Disks, 2003). The University of Michigan
collects all his papers. As of today, editors have
published 1,861 of his works.
Louie Crew (left) and Ernest Clay (right)
Emmanuel Sigauke Interviews Louie Crew
1. First, I would like to commend you for your comprehensive list of Poetry Publishers
that Accept Submissions Electronically. It is through this listing that Munyori Poetry
Journal gets a large percentage of its monthly visits. You you have been maintaining this
directory since 1996. What prompted you to create this list?
Like most other writers, I long maintained my own list of publishers currently seeking
manuscripts -- gleaned from various public notices and from the many publications to which I
subscribe. When I started a website in 1996, I immediately seized the opportunity to share this
information, focusing on those publications that welcome poetry submissions by email. Few did
at the time, and it was helpful to all who wanted to read them and submit to them.
2. How much faith do you have in electronic publications as viable vehicles for the success
of poets? What's your faith in technology as a liberating force to writers?
This question is much less poignant now than it was when I started the site -- A dozen years ago
it was not clear whether the new medium would take hold. Most writers love the feel of paper in
our hands. Most editors want to see text on paper, not on a screen. Editors like to stack pages in
a variety of piles. Computers seemed but a gimmick, even a distraction, and twelve years ago
few editors had learned to use computers well enough to command the computer to stack,
retrieve, and search the texts.
Mark Twain tried to hide the fact that he used a 'computer' lest the uninitiated would think that his
typewriter did his thinking for him. Someone asked Alexander Graham Bell what he expected to
do worthwhile with his new invention the telephone. He replied, "You can call ahead to notify
someone that a telegram is about to be sent."
For at least 3-4 years fewer than 100 editors agreed to be listed on my directory. Now more than
400 are listed.
Through the years, a few editors who would not let me list their publication admitted to me that as
poets themselves they were placing many of their own manuscripts by using the directory.
3. Talking of faith, some of your poems, including "Catherine Jordan's Prayer" featured
in this issue of Munyori, make many references to religion, especially Christianity. Do
you draw any inspiration from religion?
God's spirit moves through the world and inspires. Sometimes religious institutions counterstate
God's spirit, or claim exclusive rights to it. Yet when institutions finally "get it," they stick around
for generations -- until the last leper is healed or the last illiterate can read.
As a young person, I said, "Institutions? No damn good. Individuals? Ah, yes." As an old man I
work hard to keep the religious institutions viable, as places where the texts are still read in
communities, as places where sharp young skeptics can encounter them. The institution provides
music and art a community, not just a gallery, in which we encounter them.
I struggle with religion; I do not struggle with faith. I have abundant faith, not as my gift to God
but as God's gift to me.
Faith is not a private matter for me. Faith is not a check list, but a way of life lived in community.
It would be easy to love my neighbors as myself if I could pick and choose them: that's not the
way it works. As a privileged white male, I have been blessed to be queer: otherwise, I might
never have questioned my unearned privileges, might never have had the splendid adventure of
striving to live justly with others. Life might so easily have become something I talked and wrote
about, not something that I richly live.
I have also been enormously blessed to share this journey for the last 34 years married to Ernest
Clay, my African American husband.
4. You have been a professor of English since 1958 . How has your career contributed to
your growth as a poet? Does teaching contribute significantly to the growth of a writer,
especially a poet?
As a professor and essayist, I have spent enormous energy and time de-mystifying the world,
closely examining received opinions, Being queer has added a sense of urgency to those enquiries:
the stakes are higher, especially when you may lose your job, your promotion, some of your
friends...... merely because of what you write about, merely because you let others know who
you are. Through poetry I work to re-mystify the world, celebrating chaos, awe, and wonder.
Poetry allows one to write about the ineffable.
De-mystifying and re-mystifying work together to keep me whole.
5. What inspired the poem "Calling all epic seers"?
I wrote the poem in 1980. More and more writers were coming out and getting away with it.
Fewer were trying to hide their sexuality. But many came out only socially, not in their work, at
least not boldly and directly. If you did come out in your work, critics jumped to diminish you.
For example, at the 1976 meeting of the Modern Language Association, one straight professor at
the University of Colorado gave a paper complaining that gay and lesbian writers were coming
out. By their struggle with secrecy, he insisted, gays and lesbians have added much rich
ambiguity and double entendre to our language. We are in danger of losing their gift to us.
I congratulated him on this insight and suggested that, using his logic, the MLA should promote
the oppression heterosexuals -- to enrich our literature. The audience hooted. Later that day he
was on the hiring committee when I went for an interview; he got the last laugh. I did not get the
job.
In another panel at that same MLA meeting, I gave a paper on some of the themes which later I
worked into "Calling all Epic Seers." The poem alludes to Walt Whitman and his tram-car
conductor boyfriend, to Garcia Lorca and his boyfriend, to T. S. Eliot and his "J. Alfred
Prufrock," et al. At the MLA panel I quoted some silly gay lyrics of the great poet Auden. I
complained that Auden did not give the care to his few gay and private poems that he did to his
public work. I also bemoaned the way his friend Christopher Isherwood privatized gay life in his
powerful novel The Single Man.
I did not realize that Isherwood would be in the audience. Other panelists praised Isherwood's
work from a neutral, presumably straight perspective. At the question & answer session
afterwards, Isherwood rose to criticize the timidity of the 'straights' and said, 'I want to thank the
gay guy in the lavender pants suit. He's pushing to keep me honest and accountable.'
All who had spoken from a 'straight' perspective that day later wrote significant gay scholarship
far more powerful than my tacky pants suit and my audacious paper. In his response to me,
Isherwood was giving them permission, the same kind of permission that I advocate in calling "All
Epic Seers."
Maya Angelou once wrote that she respected the blacks who had for generations shuffled and said
'yessum' and 'no suh': "They kept my race alive!" I honor the subtleties my gay and lesbian
ancestors mastered to keep my tribe alive, and I rejoice that we are now free to explore vastly
more varied subtlety with no oppression required.
6. What advice do you have for aspiring poets? To publishers of online journals and small
presses?
To the poets: Aspire to write extraordinarily well. Tear up piece after piece as you re-write it.
If you are in the one percent who will make their living as poets, you don't need my advice. If
you are one of the many who will make their life out of poetry, don't write for your dresser
drawer. Circulate it. Join a local group of writers and meet regularly to critique each other's
poems written since the last meeting. Read dozens of poems by living writers, and then hundreds
more. React to them in a journal. Haunt every library for live performances of poetry, and bring
some of your own for the open microphone at the end. Organize readings for your public library
if they do not already have them. Send your material to journals. On the same day that you
submit, make a note of where to send it next if it is rejected. Read aloud poems to your closest
friends, and if they don't like poetry, add to you circle of closest friends.
To publishers: dedicate much of your time inviting visitors to read your site. Seed discussion in
many forums with references to work they will find on your site, and be sure that the links you
provide are worth the visitors' time.
1. First, I would like to commend you for your comprehensive list of Poetry Publishers
that Accept Submissions Electronically. It is through this listing that Munyori Poetry
Journal gets a large percentage of its monthly visits. You you have been maintaining this
directory since 1996. What prompted you to create this list?
Like most other writers, I long maintained my own list of publishers currently seeking
manuscripts -- gleaned from various public notices and from the many publications to which I
subscribe. When I started a website in 1996, I immediately seized the opportunity to share this
information, focusing on those publications that welcome poetry submissions by email. Few did
at the time, and it was helpful to all who wanted to read them and submit to them.
2. How much faith do you have in electronic publications as viable vehicles for the success
of poets? What's your faith in technology as a liberating force to writers?
This question is much less poignant now than it was when I started the site -- A dozen years ago
it was not clear whether the new medium would take hold. Most writers love the feel of paper in
our hands. Most editors want to see text on paper, not on a screen. Editors like to stack pages in
a variety of piles. Computers seemed but a gimmick, even a distraction, and twelve years ago
few editors had learned to use computers well enough to command the computer to stack,
retrieve, and search the texts.
Mark Twain tried to hide the fact that he used a 'computer' lest the uninitiated would think that his
typewriter did his thinking for him. Someone asked Alexander Graham Bell what he expected to
do worthwhile with his new invention the telephone. He replied, "You can call ahead to notify
someone that a telegram is about to be sent."
For at least 3-4 years fewer than 100 editors agreed to be listed on my directory. Now more than
400 are listed.
Through the years, a few editors who would not let me list their publication admitted to me that as
poets themselves they were placing many of their own manuscripts by using the directory.
3. Talking of faith, some of your poems, including "Catherine Jordan's Prayer" featured
in this issue of Munyori, make many references to religion, especially Christianity. Do
you draw any inspiration from religion?
God's spirit moves through the world and inspires. Sometimes religious institutions counterstate
God's spirit, or claim exclusive rights to it. Yet when institutions finally "get it," they stick around
for generations -- until the last leper is healed or the last illiterate can read.
As a young person, I said, "Institutions? No damn good. Individuals? Ah, yes." As an old man I
work hard to keep the religious institutions viable, as places where the texts are still read in
communities, as places where sharp young skeptics can encounter them. The institution provides
music and art a community, not just a gallery, in which we encounter them.
I struggle with religion; I do not struggle with faith. I have abundant faith, not as my gift to God
but as God's gift to me.
Faith is not a private matter for me. Faith is not a check list, but a way of life lived in community.
It would be easy to love my neighbors as myself if I could pick and choose them: that's not the
way it works. As a privileged white male, I have been blessed to be queer: otherwise, I might
never have questioned my unearned privileges, might never have had the splendid adventure of
striving to live justly with others. Life might so easily have become something I talked and wrote
about, not something that I richly live.
I have also been enormously blessed to share this journey for the last 34 years married to Ernest
Clay, my African American husband.
4. You have been a professor of English since 1958 . How has your career contributed to
your growth as a poet? Does teaching contribute significantly to the growth of a writer,
especially a poet?
As a professor and essayist, I have spent enormous energy and time de-mystifying the world,
closely examining received opinions, Being queer has added a sense of urgency to those enquiries:
the stakes are higher, especially when you may lose your job, your promotion, some of your
friends...... merely because of what you write about, merely because you let others know who
you are. Through poetry I work to re-mystify the world, celebrating chaos, awe, and wonder.
Poetry allows one to write about the ineffable.
De-mystifying and re-mystifying work together to keep me whole.
5. What inspired the poem "Calling all epic seers"?
I wrote the poem in 1980. More and more writers were coming out and getting away with it.
Fewer were trying to hide their sexuality. But many came out only socially, not in their work, at
least not boldly and directly. If you did come out in your work, critics jumped to diminish you.
For example, at the 1976 meeting of the Modern Language Association, one straight professor at
the University of Colorado gave a paper complaining that gay and lesbian writers were coming
out. By their struggle with secrecy, he insisted, gays and lesbians have added much rich
ambiguity and double entendre to our language. We are in danger of losing their gift to us.
I congratulated him on this insight and suggested that, using his logic, the MLA should promote
the oppression heterosexuals -- to enrich our literature. The audience hooted. Later that day he
was on the hiring committee when I went for an interview; he got the last laugh. I did not get the
job.
In another panel at that same MLA meeting, I gave a paper on some of the themes which later I
worked into "Calling all Epic Seers." The poem alludes to Walt Whitman and his tram-car
conductor boyfriend, to Garcia Lorca and his boyfriend, to T. S. Eliot and his "J. Alfred
Prufrock," et al. At the MLA panel I quoted some silly gay lyrics of the great poet Auden. I
complained that Auden did not give the care to his few gay and private poems that he did to his
public work. I also bemoaned the way his friend Christopher Isherwood privatized gay life in his
powerful novel The Single Man.
I did not realize that Isherwood would be in the audience. Other panelists praised Isherwood's
work from a neutral, presumably straight perspective. At the question & answer session
afterwards, Isherwood rose to criticize the timidity of the 'straights' and said, 'I want to thank the
gay guy in the lavender pants suit. He's pushing to keep me honest and accountable.'
All who had spoken from a 'straight' perspective that day later wrote significant gay scholarship
far more powerful than my tacky pants suit and my audacious paper. In his response to me,
Isherwood was giving them permission, the same kind of permission that I advocate in calling "All
Epic Seers."
Maya Angelou once wrote that she respected the blacks who had for generations shuffled and said
'yessum' and 'no suh': "They kept my race alive!" I honor the subtleties my gay and lesbian
ancestors mastered to keep my tribe alive, and I rejoice that we are now free to explore vastly
more varied subtlety with no oppression required.
6. What advice do you have for aspiring poets? To publishers of online journals and small
presses?
To the poets: Aspire to write extraordinarily well. Tear up piece after piece as you re-write it.
If you are in the one percent who will make their living as poets, you don't need my advice. If
you are one of the many who will make their life out of poetry, don't write for your dresser
drawer. Circulate it. Join a local group of writers and meet regularly to critique each other's
poems written since the last meeting. Read dozens of poems by living writers, and then hundreds
more. React to them in a journal. Haunt every library for live performances of poetry, and bring
some of your own for the open microphone at the end. Organize readings for your public library
if they do not already have them. Send your material to journals. On the same day that you
submit, make a note of where to send it next if it is rejected. Read aloud poems to your closest
friends, and if they don't like poetry, add to you circle of closest friends.
To publishers: dedicate much of your time inviting visitors to read your site. Seed discussion in
many forums with references to work they will find on your site, and be sure that the links you
provide are worth the visitors' time.
Catherine Jordan's Prayer
--Louie Crew
Thank you for the light shimmering
around the decanter which Tom and I
will soon carry as oblations.
Thank you for Mother's good mood
when I called her this morning.
Please don't let me forget to give
Susan and Quin some of that Lane cake.
Forgive me for the dirty joke
I told at bridge.
If I could just lose some weight,
I might not have to work so hard
at being liked.
Feed the hungry. Help those in prison,
especially those not guilty
as charged.
Thank you for keeping us
from knowing what
it is like to be undernourished,
ignorant, or criminal.
Let not our sense of security prove false.
Help me to love Tom more. AMEN
--Louie Crew
Thank you for the light shimmering
around the decanter which Tom and I
will soon carry as oblations.
Thank you for Mother's good mood
when I called her this morning.
Please don't let me forget to give
Susan and Quin some of that Lane cake.
Forgive me for the dirty joke
I told at bridge.
If I could just lose some weight,
I might not have to work so hard
at being liked.
Feed the hungry. Help those in prison,
especially those not guilty
as charged.
Thank you for keeping us
from knowing what
it is like to be undernourished,
ignorant, or criminal.
Let not our sense of security prove false.
Help me to love Tom more. AMEN
Calling all epic seers
--Louie Crew
--No closet lyricists need apply--
Most gay male poets
In earlier generations
Were trapped
In essentially private visions,
Singing a song of self.
A nurse wanders among the lilacs
And the wounded,
His tramcar conductor disguised
As the whore of new orleans.
A wharf quean hides
His sailor tricks
In symbols of bridge and bird
Until he drowns.
A latin lyricist
Laments a boy friend's
Hot death at five o'clock
In the afternoon.
A transatlantic hybrid intellect
Defines the old masters' rightness
About the randomness of grief
Even as he hides his sex
Behind proper pronouns,
Except in bad limericks
Which he reserves for a few friends.
In a twilight kingdom,
Where rats' feet skim broken glass,
We learn the madness,
To repress our feelings,
And reduce our might acts,
Good and bad,
To "do I dare to eat a peach?"
We dress our depression
In high church,
And sport english tweed
Even when we visit texas in summer,
With its own fading star.
Some of us howl when discovered,
Uncovered, in flagrante delicto,
Snatch snatches while we chant "om"
To protest napalm, mayor daley,
And vietnam.
Others sing of genitalia,
Miles and miles of it,
As if going public
Means going pubic.
They fumigate their imaginations.
They concentrate on bodies alone,
And leave persons for the dawn.
Most isolate sex.
Only three at most share a cell.
The damned do not cluster,
Never crowd.
Few sing of our sisters--
Raped, battered, abandoned, neglected,
Denied custody, excoriated--
Victims to the same heel.
Our singers have composed
Few common songs
Even for brothers
Who walk silently
Or chant drab prose
In our street parades.
Our singers hide
In the back of the bus.
Most gay male poets
In all generations
Have been trapped
In essentially private visions.
--Louie Crew
--No closet lyricists need apply--
Most gay male poets
In earlier generations
Were trapped
In essentially private visions,
Singing a song of self.
A nurse wanders among the lilacs
And the wounded,
His tramcar conductor disguised
As the whore of new orleans.
A wharf quean hides
His sailor tricks
In symbols of bridge and bird
Until he drowns.
A latin lyricist
Laments a boy friend's
Hot death at five o'clock
In the afternoon.
A transatlantic hybrid intellect
Defines the old masters' rightness
About the randomness of grief
Even as he hides his sex
Behind proper pronouns,
Except in bad limericks
Which he reserves for a few friends.
In a twilight kingdom,
Where rats' feet skim broken glass,
We learn the madness,
To repress our feelings,
And reduce our might acts,
Good and bad,
To "do I dare to eat a peach?"
We dress our depression
In high church,
And sport english tweed
Even when we visit texas in summer,
With its own fading star.
Some of us howl when discovered,
Uncovered, in flagrante delicto,
Snatch snatches while we chant "om"
To protest napalm, mayor daley,
And vietnam.
Others sing of genitalia,
Miles and miles of it,
As if going public
Means going pubic.
They fumigate their imaginations.
They concentrate on bodies alone,
And leave persons for the dawn.
Most isolate sex.
Only three at most share a cell.
The damned do not cluster,
Never crowd.
Few sing of our sisters--
Raped, battered, abandoned, neglected,
Denied custody, excoriated--
Victims to the same heel.
Our singers have composed
Few common songs
Even for brothers
Who walk silently
Or chant drab prose
In our street parades.
Our singers hide
In the back of the bus.
Most gay male poets
In all generations
Have been trapped
In essentially private visions.