{"id":947,"date":"2016-02-27T10:21:21","date_gmt":"2016-02-27T18:21:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/guysreadingpoems.com\/?p=947"},"modified":"2016-03-31T21:16:07","modified_gmt":"2016-04-01T04:16:07","slug":"cross-cut-on-inheriting-the-poems-of-steven-reigns","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/guysreadingpoems.com\/grp_wordpress\/2016\/02\/cross-cut-on-inheriting-the-poems-of-steven-reigns\/","title":{"rendered":"Cross Cut: On Inheriting the Poems of Steven Reigns"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Stephen S. Mills<\/strong><\/p>\n

It seems fitting that the first time I met poet Steven Reigns we were in a seedy gay club (and\u00a0motel) that has been a fixture of the Orlando gay community for forty years. I was living in\u00a0Orlando at the time and spent many of my nights in that very space, but on this one I was\u00a0there to meet up with Reigns, who was just passing through.<\/p>\n

\"Poet<\/a>

Poet Steven Reigns<\/p><\/div>\n

When you first meet Reigns, it\u2019s hard not to notice his piercing blue eyes. There\u2019s an\u00a0intensity to them that\u2019s both inviting and intimidating. But then he also has a genuine wide\u00a0grin that undercuts that intensity. We met up in the drag theater for a show where we easily\u00a0fell into conversation. We spent the rest of the night drinking, laughing, and dancing. In fact,\u00a0I have a\u00a0snapshot of us on the dance floor: his arm swung around my shoulder showing we\u00a0were quick to bond (alcohol helps of course).<\/p>\n

We both share an interest in poetry, but also in the dark side of things. And we both have a\u00a0somewhat innocent outward appearance that is undercut by actions and words. We aren\u2019t\u00a0exactly what we appear to be, which is a good quality in a poet.\u00a0Of course, like many writers, I really met Reigns first on the page. I met him through his\u00a0poems. It was through his work that I found a kindred-spirit. I found a poet that spoke in\u00a0truths. A poet who exposed something raw about our existence as human beings. As men.\u00a0As gay men.<\/p>\n

We read poetry for many different reasons. We read for enjoyment, for education, for\u00a0information, or out of curiosity or intrigue. But sometimes we read for a link to something\u00a0familiar, or something we can\u2019t quite put into words ourselves: a mirror of sorts. We search\u00a0for a way to make sense of the world around us\u2014a world that is often cruel, confusing, and\u00a0difficult to navigate.<\/p>\n

In Reigns\u2019 work, he reflects on the disappointments of family, love, and life. How we inherit\u00a0more than just our family\u2019s genes and money. We inherit our way of being from the people\u00a0who raised us through their actions, their choices, and their failures (whether we like it or\u00a0not).<\/p>\n

Reigns\u2019 poetry collection Inheritance<\/em> dives into the pitfalls of those failures and of the\u00a0American Dream and how it is often anything but a dream. He questions what happens\u00a0when things fall\u00a0short? When things don\u2019t go as expected?\u00a0He opens the collection with a poem titled \u201cDad\u2019s Empire,\u201d which begins with these lines:<\/p>\n

\"'Inheritance'<\/a>

‘Inheritance’ by Steven Reigns<\/p><\/div>\n

\u201cHe rubbed my mother\u2019s swollen belly. \/ Dreamt of the All-American Boy he\u2019d raise, \/\u00a0games of catch, putting worms on hooks, \/ and giving advice on the ladies.\u201d<\/p>\n

This poem sets\u00a0up the various complications of falling short of a father\u2019s expectations and of not living up\u00a0to the image of the \u201cAll-American Boy\u201d (capitalization is important here\u2014it\u2019s basically a\u00a0product). Many boys, gay or straight, can relate to falling short of a parent\u2019s expectations or\u00a0of society\u2019s.<\/p>\n

In other poems, he exams how our perspective changes with age. In \u201cPut Your Head On My\u00a0Shoulder,\u201d the speaker of the poem watches his grandfather hold a grandchild (the speaker\u2019s\u00a0nephew) to his chest and sing to him. In this small moment, the speaker realizes that his\u00a0grandfather most likely did this to him when he was just a little boy too. It is this reflection\u00a0on innocence that is both sweet and saddening. For Reigns writes at the end, \u201cI think of him\u00a0dancing and \/ holding my body before my parents hurt me, \/ him holding me at the only\u00a0time I can reflect upon as innocent.\u201d<\/p>\n

This poem reminds us that there was a start to all of us:\u00a0a moment when we were all innocent. A moment before X happened. Whatever X might be.\u00a0A time before people hurt us or disappointed us. In this we can all connect.<\/p>\n

Reigns also digs into the psyche of the adult gay man as he navigates the world of love, sex,\u00a0and dating. In many of these poems, the past also plays a heavy role. How do we trust\u00a0someone else with all of our own baggage? How does our past inform our future and our\u00a0present? In a short poem titled \u201cThe Ones Before Him,\u201d he writes, \u201cA lover I don\u2019t trust \/\u00a0because of the past. \/ Not the past with him \/ but my past.\u201d<\/p>\n

These issues coupled with\u00a0outside factors, like the AIDS crisis that haunts many of the poems, create a complicated\u00a0narrative of the challenging landscape of gay male relationships.<\/p>\n

This is not to say that Reigns doesn\u2019t also have a sense of humor and a sense of fun about\u00a0him and his work. Some of the poems are playful like when the speaker contemplates the\u00a0idea of being \u201cversatile\u201d in bed, but ends the poem by saying, \u201cSo I harden in my positioning\u00a0\/ and avoid those that I envy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Inheritance<\/em> ends on a note of hope and a moment of wanting to accept the past (at least to\u00a0some degree). In the final poem, \u201c5th Grade Photo,\u201d the grandfather appears again but this\u00a0time in a conversation with the speaker over a photo of the speaker from the 5th grade (one\u00a0he hates). He questions why his grandfather would still have this photo on display after\u00a0seventeen years. This time the grandfather offers to take it down (something he hasn\u2019t done\u00a0before). The speaker is moved by his grandfather\u2019s offer but tells him he can keep it up.\u00a0Reigns then closes the poem with these lines: \u201cI like that he held his ground firmly for so\u00a0long \/ and silently wonder what he likes about the image, \/ what he loved about the boy in\u00a0the photo. \/ I place it back onto the table, look at the boy \/ and wonder when I might love\u00a0him as well.\u201d<\/p>\n

In this moment we see the speaker wanting to accept his past self and to offer\u00a0that boy love, but he\u2019s not there yet. There\u2019s the saying that we are hardest on ourselves,\u00a0which comes to mind when reading a poem like this. For the speaker, that image reminds\u00a0him of another time\u2014another life. It reminds him of a boy who needed love and\u00a0acceptance, but didn\u2019t have it.<\/p>\n

The book as a whole questions, ‘Can we really move forward without accepting where we\u2019ve\u00a0been?’ Reigns doesn\u2019t over simplify the issue by offering us a clear answer. Instead, we are left\u00a0to wonder, like the speaker there with his 5th grade photo in hand.\u00a0Reigns is an important voice in the canon of gay male literature. He provides a deep\u00a0examination of the struggles of living an authentic life in world that often favors the\u00a0inauthentic (the ‘All-American Boy’). The work he has already produced leaves an important\u00a0inheritance behind for the next generation of gay men searching for their own acceptance,\u00a0identity, and image.<\/p>\n

\"Poet<\/a>

Poet Steven Reigns<\/p><\/div>\n

Author Bio:<\/p>\n

Stephen S. Mills is the author of the Lambda Award-winning book He Do the Gay Man in\u00a0Different Voices<\/em> (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2012) and A History of the Unmarried<\/em> (Sibling Rivalry\u00a0Press, 2014). He earned his MFA from Florida State University. His work has appeared in\u00a0The Antioch Review<\/em>, PANK<\/em>, The New York Quarterly<\/em>, The Los Angeles Review<\/em>, Knockout<\/em>, Assaracus<\/em>,\u00a0The Rumpus<\/em>, and others. He is also the winner of the 2008 Gival Press Oscar Wilde Poetry\u00a0Award and the 2014 Christopher Hewitt Award for Fiction. He lives in New York City.<\/p>\n

Website: http:\/\/www.stephensmills.com\/<\/a><\/p>\n

The\u00a0‘Cross-Cut’ series\u00a0examines\u00a020 poets whose work is included in the\u00a0upcoming neo-noir film Guys Reading Poems,<\/a>\u00a0which combines cinematic narrative with evocative poetry. It is our hope that\u00a0exploring the poets selected for inclusion in the film will enhance the filmgoer’s experience of Guys Reading Poems<\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Stephen S. Mills It seems fitting that the first time I met poet Steven Reigns we were in a seedy gay club (and\u00a0motel) that has been a fixture of the Orlando gay community for forty years. I was living in\u00a0Orlando at the time and spent many of my nights in that very space, but […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":954,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[183,7,9],"tags":[155,157,152,159,156,53,153,154,151,50,158],"class_list":["post-947","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cross-cut","category-poets","category-updates","tag-5th-grade-photo","tag-all-american-boy","tag-cross-cut","tag-dads-empire","tag-gay","tag-guys-reading-poems","tag-inheritance","tag-put-your-head-on-my-shoulder","tag-stephen-s-mills","tag-steven-reigns","tag-the-ones-before-him"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/guysreadingpoems.com\/grp_wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/947","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/guysreadingpoems.com\/grp_wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/guysreadingpoems.com\/grp_wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/guysreadingpoems.com\/grp_wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/guysreadingpoems.com\/grp_wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=947"}],"version-history":[{"count":18,"href":"https:\/\/guysreadingpoems.com\/grp_wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/947\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1202,"href":"https:\/\/guysreadingpoems.com\/grp_wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/947\/revisions\/1202"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/guysreadingpoems.com\/grp_wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/954"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/guysreadingpoems.com\/grp_wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=947"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/guysreadingpoems.com\/grp_wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=947"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/guysreadingpoems.com\/grp_wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=947"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}