West of Yesterday, East of Summer: New and Selected Poems, 1973-1993

by Paul Monette

A selection of poems from the late author's previous poetry collections, including the award-winning Love Alone, is combined with new poems, many focusing on the loss of his lover, who also died of AIDS. Original. QPB Alt.

Genres: Poetry, Gay, Queer, LGBT

102 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1994

About the author

Online Guide to Paul Monette's papers at UCLA:
http://findaid.oac.cdlib.org/findaid/...

In novels, poetry, and a memoir, Paul Monette wrote about gay men striving to fashion personal identities and, later, coping with the loss of a lover to AIDS.

Monette was born in Lawrence, Massachusetts, in 1945. He was educated at prestigious schools in New England: Phillips Andover Academy and Yale University, where he received his B.A. in 1967. He began his prolific writing career soon after graduating from Yale. For eight years, he wrote poetry exclusively.

After coming out in his late twenties, he met Roger Horwitz, who was to be his lover for over twenty years. Also during his late twenties, he grew disillusioned with poetry and shifted his interest to the novel, not to return to poetry until the 1980s.

In 1977, Monette and Horwitz moved to Los Angeles. Once in Hollywood, Monette wrote a number of screenplays that, though never produced, provided him the means to be a writer. Monette published four novels between 1978 and 1982. These novels were enormously successful and established his career as a writer of popular fiction. He also wrote several novelizations of films.

Monette's life changed dramatically when Roger Horwitz was diagnosed with AIDS in the early 1980s. After Horwitz's death in 1986, Monette wrote extensively about the years of their battles with AIDS (Borrowed Time, 1988) and how he himself coped with losing a lover to AIDS (Love Alone, 1988). These works are two of the most powerful accounts written about AIDS thus far.

Their publication catapulted Monette into the national arena as a spokesperson for AIDS. Along with fellow writer Larry Kramer, he emerged as one of the most familiar and outspoken AIDS activists of our time. Since very few out gay men have had the opportunity to address national issues in mainstream venues at any previous time in U.S. history, Monette's high-visibility profile was one of his most significant achievements. He went on to write two important novels about AIDS, Afterlife (1990) and Halfway Home (1991). He himself died of AIDS-related complications in 1995.

In his fiction, Monette unabashedly depicts gay men who strive to fashion personal identities that lead them to love, friendship, and self-fulfillment. His early novels generally begin where most coming-out novels end; his protagonists have already come to terms with their sexuality long before the novels' projected time frames. Monette has his characters negotiate family relations, societal expectations, and personal desires in light of their decisions to lead lives as openly gay men.

Two major motifs emerge in these novels: the spark of gay male relations and the dynamic alternative family structures that gay men create for themselves within a homophobic society. These themes are placed in literary forms that rely on the structures of romance, melodrama, and fantasy.

Monette's finest novel, Afterlife, combines the elements of traditional comedy and the resistance novel; it is the first gay novel written about AIDS that fuses personal love interests with political activism.

Monette's harrowing collection of deeply personal poems, Love Alone: 18 Elegies for Rog, conveys both the horrors of AIDS and the inconsolable pain of love lost. The elegies are an invaluable companion to Borrowed Time.

Before the publication and success of his memoir, Becoming a Man, it seemed inevitable that Monette would be remembered most for his writings on AIDS. Becoming a Man, however, focuses on the dilemmas of growing up gay. It provides at once an unsparing account of the nightmare of the closet and a moving and often humorous depiction of the struggle to come out. Becoming a Man won the 1992 National Book Award for nonfiction, a historical moment in the history

Reviews

[Ije the Devourer of Books · Rating 5 out of 5]

This volume contains a selection of poems by Paul Monette. The first part of the book titled 'New Poems 1987 -1993', has a selection of 11 poems. Then follows a selection of poems from the volume 'Love Alone', poems from 'No Witnesses' and poems from 'Carpenter at the Asylum.'

Paul Monette is one of my favourite writers. Both his fiction and his poetry are deeply emotional and powerful, and still stand as a prophetic voice calling for justice and dignity twenty years after his death.

I don't always understand his poems but the ones I do understand, especially those written when he was in agony over the loss of Roger, move me deeply.

In this volume having familiarised myself with some of his fiction and biographical writing, I feel that I have a deeper appreciation for his poetry. There are some poems that I still don't understand but those are the ones I will return to.

My favourite here is 'Stephen at the FDA.' I am guessing this is about his partner Stephen during a protest. I loved the way in which this poem captures the protest.

I dont generally read poetry and it isn't always my thing but every now and again certain poems strike me and stay with me and I think many of these will now be poems written by Paul Monette.

[Julene · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book includes a selection of his work from some earlier books; but the main bulk here are the poems he wrote after his partner died of AIDS, a series he wrote after the elegies, after he thought he could not write any more. In these he leaves the trappings of grammar in the dust. He was on a train and the speed of his traveling is in the poems. So many beautiful images that are not separated by commas or periods. It is not an easy book to read, each poem needs time, slowness, and then a grief process to release. It also contains his 18 elegies for Roger from "Love Alone." I loved these poignant poems written to honor and remember the love of his life. I want to read his memoirs that he is so famous for. He also has a love poem in here that was written to Roger after he first met him in 1974, that is very beautiful. There are too many good lines to write them here, I strongly recommend this book.

[Pachyderm Bookworm · Rating 3 out of 5]

Nothing shorter than one to two pages per verse. Monette's writing appears to feel artsy and at the same time angsty, almost as if the deceased poet Allen Ginsberg cohabitated with the deceased Doors singer Jim Morrison and produced the illegitimate offspring of the musical group members of Iggy Pop's THE STOOGES and all the collective members of the group MC-5 put together, along with Abbey Hoffman tossed in as a cognizant group of bizarre bedfellows notwithstanding one another or the other.

[Ronald Wilcox · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nice collection of poetry detailing a man’s loss of his lover due to AIDS.

[Ted · Rating 4 out of 5]

Both of his autobiographies are far more poetic and powerful than his books of poetry, I find. Nevertheless he was an excellent writer. There is a deep current running through all his work. I must confess I've yet to read his fiction, though I understand it has a trashier pulp pedigree. I look forward to checking that out!

[Chris · Rating 2 out of 5]

Sadly, only 2 stars for the new poems in this book: the unpunctuated run-on style which Monette so screamingly used in Love Alone, does not work with these lesser new poems. Instead of this book, go read Love Alone in its entirety: that one is a solid 5 stars all the way.

[W.B. · Rating 3 out of 5]

I don't think poetry was really his form. I didn't like the novel I read, but I did like the memoir. He was an interesting figure. Sorry he's gone.

[SmarterLilac · Rating 5 out of 5]

A painful read, filled with daring images from one man's fearless look at acute grief. Not to be forgotten.

[Patricia Boyle · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love Mr. Monette's stories but find the poetry rather difficult to read due to the lack of punctuation and run-on sentences. But, read slowly the poems are brilliant.