Never By Itself Alone: Queer Poetry, Queer Communities in Boston and the Bay Area, 1944—Present

Providing an unprecedented exploration of key moments in queer literary history, Never By Itself Alone changes our sense of both the American literary and political landscapes from the late 1940s through the 21st century. Grundy presents the first comprehensive history of post-war queer writing in Boston and San Francisco, intertwining analysis of lesbian, gay, and queer writing, and insisting on the link between activism and literature. The book centers a host of underrepresented writers, especially writers of color and those with gender non-conforming identities, and challenges the Stonewall exceptionalism of queer historiography. Starting with Robert Duncan's 1944 essay, 'The Homosexual in Society', one of the first significant public defenses of homosexuality in the US, Grundy takes the reader through pioneering works by queer voices of the era, including Adrian Stanford's Black and Queer, the first published book by an out, Black gay poet in the US; the Boston collective Fag Rag and their radical reconsideration of family, private property and the State; the Combahee River Collective, whose Black Feminist analysis drew together race, class, and sexuality; the anthology This Bridge Called My Back, in which women of color spoke truth to power, together; and New Narrative writing, which audaciously mixed Marxism, porn and gossip while uniting against the New Right. Linking these works to the context which produced them, Grundy uncovers the communities formed around activism and small press publishing during this era and elevates neglected voices to narrate a history that before now has never been told in its entirety. Drawing on extensive archival research, Never By Itself Alone is a rigorous and unmatched work of both literary criticism and queer scholarship which underscores the vital importance of radical accounts of race, class, and gender in any queer studies worthy of the name.

Table of Contents:
Abbreviations Acknowledgments Introduction Part One. Beginnings (1943-1969) Chapter 1. 'Homosexuals in Society': Poetry and Gay Community in the 1940s Chapter 2. Identity and Community in The Work of Jack Spicer Chapter 3. The Occult School of Boston (1): "Levels above and below" Chapter 4. The Occult School of Boston (2): "Queer Shoulders at the Wheel" Part Two. Gay Liberation in Boston (1969-1983) Chapter 5. "A Gay Presence": John Wieners, Charley Shively, and Fag Rag Chapter 6. "My Real Name": Racial Framings, Queer Imaginings Chapter 7. "We cannot live without our lives": From the Combahee River Collective to This Bridge Called My Back Part Three. Bay Area Communities: Lesbian Feminism to the AIDS era (1969-Present) Chapter 8. "She Who": Judy Grahn and Bay Area Gay Women's Liberation Chapter 9. "The first everything": Pat Parker Chapter 10. "blasting the true story into breath": Writing, Work and Socialist Feminism Chapter 11. New Narrative, New Communities from Left Write to AIDS Coda. "When politics show" Works Cited Index

About the Author :
David Grundy is the author of A Black Arts Poetry Machine: Amiri Baraka and the Umbra Poets (Bloomsbury, 2019), and co-editor with Lauri Scheyer of Selected Poems of Calvin C. Hernton (Wesleyan University Press, 2023). Formerly a Teaching Associate at the University of Cambridge and a British Academy Fellow at the University of Warwick, he is currently an Alexander von Humboldt Fellow at Freie Universität Berlin.

Review :
David Grundy's Never By Itself Alone: Queer Poetry, Queer Communities in Boston and the Bay Area, 1944-Present is a stunning work of cultural, literary and political history. Seamlessly weaving together histories of poetry, political action, and biography Grundy has written a vibrant, deeply moving tapestry in which art and politics coalesced -- often collided -- to create aesthetic and activist movements that radically transformed not only queer life, but the twentieth century. Like all great works of cultural criticism Never By Itself Alone challenges and changes how we think about how we live now. An impressive contribution to queer literary studies. David Grundy's deep engagement with post-war queer poetics demonstrates the vitality of poetry, particularly during gay and lesbian liberation, and further documents the traditions of queer poetry in the United States. An inspiring and essential read. Never By Itself Alone is a colossal study of how poetry and poets can be based in, creative of, and inspired by, community. In doing this study, Grundy creates a literary, yet real, tradition or network or confederation of explicit, self-consciously transgressive, Gay, Lesbian, and Trans poetry with activism, stretching from the 1940s through the 1990s and beyond. Such a joy for me to read, to catch up with my antecedents and those coming after, and to be reminded of the overlap of Gay grassroots publications and people. As Grundy puts us all into contexts that become a river of similarities, solidarities, and differences -- I'm weeping my way through. That I had to wait so long to feel what a thick weaving this has all been, the fast stream hard won amidst the cruelties, and steadfastly continuing.