David Melnick (1938–2022) was a gay

avant-garde In the arts and literature, the term ''avant-garde'' ( meaning or ) identifies an experimental genre or work of art, and the artist who created it, which usually is aesthetically innovative, whilst initially being ideologically unacceptable ...

American poet The poets listed below were either born in the United States or else published much of their poetry while living in that country. A B C D E F G H I–J K L M N O P Q *George Quasha (born 1942 in poetry, 1942) R ...

.Silliman, Ronald. In the American Tree. Orono: National Poetry Foundation, 1986. 602. He was born in Illinois and grew up in Los Angeles, California. He attended the University of Chicago and University of California, Berkeley. Book One of Melnick's homophonic translation of Homer's

Iliad The ''Iliad'' (; , ; ) is one of two major Ancient Greek epic poems attributed to Homer. It is one of the oldest extant works of literature still widely read by modern audiences. As with the ''Odyssey'', the poem is divided into 24 books and ...

, titled '' Men in Aïda'', was published in 1983 by Lyn Hejinian's Tuumba Press. The farcical bathhouse scenario presented in Melnick's translation suggests underlying

homoeroticism Homoeroticism is sexual attraction between members of the same sex, including both male–male and female–female attraction. The concept differs from the concept of homosexuality: it refers specifically to the desire itself, which can be tempor ...

in the original text. Perelman, Bob.br> The marginalization of poetry: language writing and literary history
(book). Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press. p. 24. . . Retrieved 24 December 2009. Melnick's work has been included in Ron Silliman's 1986 anthology of

Language poetry The Language poets (or ''L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E'' poets, after the magazine of that name) are an avant-garde group or tendency in United States poetry that emerged in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The poets included: Bernadette Mayer, Leslie Sca ...

''In the American Tree''. Craig Dworkin and

Kenneth Goldsmith Kenneth Goldsmith (born 1961) is an American poetry, poet and critic. He is the founding editor of UbuWeb and an artist-in-residence at the Center for Programs in Contemporary Writing (CPCW) at the University of Pennsylvania, where he teaches. He ...

wrote about Melnick's ''Men in Aïda'' in relation to conceptual poetics in 2010's ''Against Expression: An Anthology of Conceptual Writing''. Often grouped with

, Melnick's ''Men in Aïda'' has been compared to Celia and Louis Zukofsky's ''Catullus''Dworkin, Craig Douglas, and Kenneth Goldsmith. ''Against Expression: an Anthology of Conceptual Writing''. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2011. 418. and ''PCOET'' has been discussed alongside Russian Futurist Velimir Khlebnikov's ''zaum'' poetics.Lutzkanova-Vassileva, Albena. ''The Testimonies of Russian and American Postmodern Poetry: Reference, Trauma, and History''. New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2015. 175-181.

Bibliography

* ''Eclogs'', Ithaca House, 1972 * "The ‘Ought’ of Seeing: Zukofsky’s Bottom" in ''Maps''. John Taggart, ed. 1973.Mark Scroggins. "David Melnick: PCOET" Culture Industry. 20 April, 2005.
/ref> * ''PCOET'', San Francisco: G.A.W.K., 1975 * '' Men in Aïda, Book One'', Berkeley: Tuumba Press, 1983 * ''A Pin's Fee,'' 1988 * '' Men in Aïda'', The Hague & Tirana: Uitgeverij. 2015. . This edition collects three books of ''Men in Aïda'' in a single volume.

References

External links

text of Eclogs
{{DEFAULTSORT:Melnick, David 1938 births American male poets Language poets Writers from San Francisco American gay writers American LGBTQ poets 20th-century American poets Living people 20th-century American male writers 21st-century American LGBTQ people Gay poets