FAULKNER: A BIOGRAPHY

FAULKNER: A BIOGRAPHY
______________________

INTRODUCTION:
GAY DELTA PULP FICTION

ORIGINAL SIN
ROWAN OAKS
OLE MISS CAMPUS
HUEY P. LONG POOL

ALLEN HALL
DEEP SOUTH SUICIDE
WALKER PERCY
GOING DOWN ON MOSES

QUEER QUENTIN
ABSALOM, ABSALOM
YOKNAPATAWPHA 
PANDORA’S BOX
___________________

ORIGINAL SIN

“the weariness,
the fatalism”
—William Faulkner
Absalom, Absalom
__________

It didn’t help—
that Faulkner drank
too much all the time

Or that he had—
a Negro there in his
family woodpile
________

What do you—
expect after years
of sex and slavery

Bad seed flows—
thru all Southerners
like Original Sin 

ROWAN OAKS

“entering another world,
transversing another land,
moving in another time”
—William Faulkner
The Marionettes
_________________

One can own—
a big antebellum
plantation mansion

White-washed—
by the slaves into
Greek Revival glory
____________

One can write—
about the Civil War &
the Decadent South

But then there’s—
still behind the façade
Delta Dinge Queenery

OLE MISS CAMPUS

“little postage 
stamp of native soil”
—William Faulkner
_____________

Once I saw Faulkner—
stumbling drunk there
on the Ole Miss campus

Oxford folks just—
pretended to not see
the writer that way
_____________

After all, hadn’t—
he won the prestigious
Nobel Prize, honey?

Writing all those—
novels about Delta
Deep South denouement? 

HUEY P. LONG POOL

“the sybarite,
the steel blade
in the silken
tessellated sheath”
—William Faulkner
Absalom, Absalom
____________

Just take a look—
at the Huey P. Long
Fieldhouse Pool

Once the epitome—
of campus luxury
and student life
________

Spending all my—
time in the Sixties
lollygagging there

Now in ruins-
abandoned, left
to decay and rot

ALLEN HALL

“shadows not of
flesh and blood
which had lived
and died”
—William Faulkner
Absalom, Absalom
___________

It wasn’t just those—
beautiful Thirties WPA 
murals in the hallways

It was William Faulkner—
and reading novels like
Absalom, Absalom
____________

But also Walker Percy—
his novel The Moviegoer
full of filmic nostalgia

Sitting moody—
in his Allen Hall office 
bemoaning his father

DEEP SOUTH SUICIDE

“proud honor
semestrial regurgitant”
—William Faulkner
Absalom, Absalom
___________

It was during the—
Viet Nam War back
then in dark 1973

The campus had just—
been integrated and
things were uptight
____________

I’d graduated but—
still hung around
with nothing to do

I wasn’t drafted—
they didn’t take
queer boys like me

WALKER PERCY

“I came to myself
under a chindolea
bush.”—Walker Percy
The Moviegoer
________

So I sat there—
in Allen Hall in
Walker Percy’s room

Discussing the—
nuances of Southern
Decadent literature
_________

How he despised—
Faulkner but liked
Robert Penn Warren

While Spanish Moss—
hung down from the
mangled Magnolia trees

GOING DOWN ON MOSES

“His own daughter—
his own daughter!!!
No No No Not even him”
—William Faulkner
Go Down Moses
__________

Decadent Southern lit—
full of years of Delta
incestuous miscegenation

Southern slavery and—
the heritage of human
ownership & exploitation
__________

Not just Quentin in love—
with his sister Caddy in
Absalom, Absalom

But Horace Benbow’s—
guilty attraction for his
daughter Little Belle

QUEER QUENTIN

“the blind dark of
time’s silt and rich
refuse”—William Faulkner
Mississippi Poems
_________________

The way Faulkner—
reimagined generations
of his family history

Sons reconceiving and—
figuratively begetting
their own fathers
__________

Tracing the mulatto—
Black prick of slavery
Philoprogenitively

Quentin queer for—
his dinge half-brother
Bon there at Ole Miss

ABSALOM, ABSALOM

“old family sin 
and shame”
—James Watson,
William Faulkner:
Self-Presentation
and Performance
____________

Male miscegenation—
and mixed blood is
nothing new to Faulkner

When Sutpen reveals—
to Quentin that Bon
the Beautiful his brother
___________

Who he’s in love with—
has a black Haitian mother
and that he’s part Negro

Quentin gets mind-fucked—
incestuous miscegenation
his young mulatto lover!!!

YOKNAPATAWPHA

“the blind dark of
time’s silt and rich
refuse”—William Faulkner
Mississippi Poems
____________

After my father—
divorced my mother
I found out the truth

My mother was adopted—
she could pass because
she was cute high yellow
____________

With me though—
My Negro heritage
just couldn’t be hidden

The older I got—
the darker my dick got
my 12” mulatto meat

PANDORA’S BOX

“the ledgers are a Pandora’s 
Box of miscegenation and
incest that Ike opens at his peril”
—James Watson, William Faulkner:
Self-Presentation and Performance
__________

I got along with the Creoles—
the Cajuns, the Cubans and
the cute young Negro janitor

The Shreveport white trash—
hated my guts though, but
I didn’t give a fuck about them
________________

Disillusionment with my own—
white skin and big mulatto dick
was the Cross I had to bare

Absalom, Absalom was like—
POP GOES THE WEASEL when
I read it that very first time