Favorite Poet: A.E. Housman

A. E. Housman was the poet of my youth. He often wrote about death and dying young. For young men of my era, his poems especially resonated, though I am not sure anyone other than I was reading his poetry. I bought THE COLLECTED POEMS OF A. E. HOUSMAN in college and carried it everywhere with me. I also bought a biography, A DIVIDED LIFE, that speculated, using his poetry, that Housman was gay.

Eventually, during my Master's Degree in the Humanities, I took an independent study course in which I discussed three British poets who became associated with WWI: A. E. Housman, Rupert Brooke, and Wilfred Owen, who was also likely gay.

From A SHROPSHIRE LAD, my favorite line from Reveille: "Clay lies still, but blood's a rover; / Breath's a ware that will not keep. / Up, lad: when the journey's over / There'll be time enough to sleep."

From the same first collection, my favorite line from XXII: "What thoughts at heart have you and I / We cannot stop to tell; / But dead or living, drunk or dry, / Soldier, I wish you well."

Also from A SHROPSHIRE LAD, my favorite line from XXXIII: "If truth in hearts that perish / Could move the powers on high, / I think the love I bear you / Should make you not to die."

From the introduction poem to MORE POEMS: "They say my verse is sad: no wonder; / Its narrow measure spans / Tears of eternity, and sorrow, / Not mine, but man's."

Also from MORE POEMS, VII: "Stars, I have seen them fall, / But when they drop and die / No star is lost at all / From all the star-strewn sky."

The most revealing of his poems, from MORE POEMS, XXXI: "Because I liked you better / Than suits a man to say, / It irked you, and I promised / To throw the thought away."

The poem where I took the title of my volume of poetry, from LAST POEMS, from XXXIV The First of May: "For oh, the sons we get / Are still the sons of men."

His poetry got me through some very tough years in college especially, dealing with being gay. I had had one-sided crushes on two straight college chums: first Daylin at East LA JC and then Pat at Cal State Dominguez Hills. I somehow intuitively sensed that Housman had had similar, unrewarded longings in Victorian England where a man could be imprisoned for expressing such feelings. I would later, at the Academy teaching English, be reminded of how a similar punishment could swiftly and painfully follow being revealed as gay in the service.

---