Don't Leave Me This Way

by Eric Sneathen

A textual and historigraphical odyssey imbued with queer intergenerational yearning and loss.
Don’t Leave Me This Way blends archival research with sexual fantasy to produce a series of sonnets inspired by Gaétan Dugas, named by Randy Shilts as “Patient Zero” of the AIDS epidemic in North America. Committed to the utopian possibilities of elegy and pornography, Don’t Leave Me This Way exploits the absurdist beauty of the cut-up technique to voice a chorus of lost spirits: poignant, vengeful, and ready to ball.

Genres: Poetry, Queer, LGBT, Nonfiction

80 pages, Paperback

Published August 8, 2023

Reviews

[Leo · Rating 5 out of 5]

“queer[ing] the sonnet” is in fact my preferred type of literature. ugh. stunning.

for fans of Robert Glück’s About Ed and Kay Gabriel’s work

[endrju]

Being "about" Gaétan Dugas, the "Patient Zero" and its "ghostly" positionality in relation to contemporary post-AIDS queer life, it got me thinking how different experience of becoming queer has been for those of us who live in non-Western countries. While are all "haunted" by the ghost of Gaétan Dugas through the AIDS pandemic, it makes for quite a different reading and imaginary being removed, temporally and spatially (but also politically and economically), from the whole social context where such bodies, images and texts have been able to circulate to produce Sneathen's poetry. I wanted to write that it makes for a "lateral" reading, but I'm not sure about spatial metaphors in this case, as some pieces of experience can be thought-felt across times and spaces (such as the seropositivity), while others can only be imagined and partially at that (bathhouses and similar venues for queer sociality and desire). More thoughts to come in a review in Serbian at some point.

[Sam Skold]

In the epilogue the author writes “I wanted to hear the clamor of a phantasmic bacchanal echoing in the corridor of an ongoing emergency” and that is excellently executed. These poems are simultaneously erotic and afflicting, due to what we now know of the AIDS epidemic.

[theorionhunter · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beautifully tender poems that feel alive with each word, each breath and touch lingering after the turn of the page. The connection to The Odyssey through imagery and snippets creates a feeling of myth making, of the inevitable beauty and tragedy of the lives recorded here. Everything recorded here feels so alive, so lived in, it’s hard not to feel the weight of the AIDS Crisis in each line, to feel the shift towards fear and uncertainty and the clamoring for protection and help and the resilience of love and life through it all.

The afterword beautifully ties everything together in the end and bolsters it all as a stunning queer work. The final pages being cut up and recontextualized pieces from an older work on the subject is such a beautiful way to pull history into the present.

[Renee Morales · Rating 4 out of 5]

Powerful and punching. 4.5

There's a ridiculous amount of quotable material here so bear with me.

"I too am chasing paper / Towels out here with the living and loving. / Heat's searing. I reach in. Let me have it."

"... I cease to be terrified. / I begin to masturbate these letters. Try to / Catch all the gnats in somebody else's room, / To kiss them tightly. I couldn't, but I want to."

AHHHHHHHHHHHH

[That One Ryan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Many of the sonnets didn't resonate with me in as powerful way as some poetry has. What I loved though, is the epilogue or, end where Sneathen explains the purpose and passion behind the poetry and project.

[TA Inskeep · Rating 3 out of 5]

I didn’t love these cut-up sonnets, for the most part. But I loved what their author was trying to do with them, and I especially loved his (essentially) afterword about Gaétan Dugas.

[Hannah J · Rating 4 out of 5]

the archival research in this was so interesting

[Nick Melloan-ruiz · Rating 5 out of 5]

Trying to read more poetry

[Justin · Rating 4 out of 5]

sonnets that queer the form and the subjects. I was appreciating the work but somewhat on the fence until the delirious closer "Bronze Age", which stirred me and the end matter which explained that which had come before. Recommend (but maybe start at the end?)