Boys Gone Wilde – A Queer Poetry Salon

“Wilde Boys is a queer poetry salon for beautiful boys who write and appreciate beautiful poems”, as its creator Alex Dimitrov puts it. The salon brings together established and emerging queer poets in New York City.

Organized and run by Dimitrov, a 2009 Sarah Lawrence graduate who now works at the Academy of American Poets, the salon meets monthly in Manhattan and Brooklyn at the apartments of various salon members, and frequently at poet Tom Healy’s West Village apartment. The first meeting was held there this past May and began with a reading and discussion of the poems of James Merrill.

“I wanted to create a smart and sexy gathering of queer poets where aesthetic, formal, and political issues pertaining to contemporary poetry could be discussed without pretension,” says Dimitrov. “I was, of course, inspired by the original French salons of the 17th and 18th century, and I also wanted to adopt Oscar Wilde as our patron saint.”

“Our salon isn’t modeled after the traditional workshop or academic setting by any means. It’s more about our personal relationships with poetry, creating a community, and remembering that being a gay poet in New York has everything to do with pleasure. I mean, why else do you think I called the group Wilde Boys?”

Among the Wilde Boys are poets Mark Bibbins, Jason Schneiderman, David Groff, and Tom Healy. The salon usually hosts anywhere from fifteen to twenty-five poets. The reading list is a mix of contemporary and classic queer writers including Hart Crane, Richard Howard, Mark Doty, Frank O’Hara, Henri Cole, Walt Whitman, Carl Phillips, and John Ashbery.

“If you’re a queer poet and are interested in coming to one of our salons, all you need to do is drop me a line. A passion for poetry, and boys, is all that’s needed.”

Photograph: French Chris on the Convertible, NYC, 1979, Nan Goldin.

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