Friends by the bedful, lounging on one sheet, Playing cards, smoking, while the drugs come on, Or watching the foot-traffic on the beat, Ready for every fresh phenomenon. There's humor in the notion that in those imagined corners where immobilizing trumpets blow, the triple tonguings of narcissism can make even the certain rejection of an elderly queer by a ballsy young straight the stuff of art and therefore meat for the heterodox maw of Gunn's poesy. No question, then, but that a sizeable chunk of Gunn's poetry consigns itself to the exotic bin where few but the curious and the ambidextrous will care to browse for long. His manner of writing may indicate that he is for everyone sharing his world, but only a multiculturalist asleep in his boots could fail to see that his world is just not for everyone. Perhaps Boss Cupid is best read as a travel book, superbly crafted and spun as a rotogravure of the gay life's Kodak momentousness, without any of the weekend supplement's sentimentality or lugubriousness.
Cupid is boss .