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Holding Me Together: Essays and Poems by Duane Simolke (Dwayne Smokey) |
Typically collections of "Gay" essays are by well-known columnists like Bruce Bawer or Michael Thomas Ford, so it‚s rather refreshing to read a collection by an ordinary citizen with nothing more to recommend him than insight, intelligence and sensitivity. Through poetry and a series of mini-essays within a larger essay, Holding Me Together offers a commonsense perspective on what it means to be homosexual in the 21st Century. The poetry is quite lovely; in particular "Chasing Seagulls", "Detour," "Sock Poem," "Pharisee" and "Home," but most of the collection is devoted to the essays.
Simolke writes well (as one would expect from the author of The Acorn Stories), with a mild-mannered logic that nonetheless neatly skewers some of the most beloved clichés about GLBT persons: "they just haven't met the right person;""they recruit;" "they live that gay lifestyle;" "it's against nature;" "God didn‚t create Adam and Steve."
In "If there's nothing wrong with it why is it illegal," which is part of the long essay "Reactions to Homophobia," Simolke writes: "As if it weren't bad enough that fundamentalists try to boss all their fellow mortals around, they also try to boss God around. They keep telling Him which groups of people He can love, which religious systems He can support, which marriages He can bless, which gender He can see as superior, which candidate He can endorse, which styles of music He can allow for religious lyrics, which musical instruments He can allow in places of worship, which styles of clothing He can condone, etc. That list could go on forever. If you want to boss God around, that's your folly. But I won't let you control my life or my mind."
In his exploration of what it is to be gay, Simolke manages to touch on a more fundamental truth: what it is to be human.
Learn more about this writer here.
