Mark Wunderlich discusses his first connections to poetry, his influences, and an early letter he received from the gay poet Mark Doty.

Kay Ryan, the first out lesbian U.S. Poet Laureate, reads a poem and describes an surprise experience that occurred while reading the funnies in bed with her partner, Carol.

Letter to Peter Doyle
"Dear comrade, I think of you very often. My love for you is indestructible..."

Two Love Notes to Alice B. Toklas
"Dear dainty delicious darling, dear / sweet selected [enemifier?] of my soul..."

LGBTQ
An encyclopedia of gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, and queer literature and culture

Lambda Literary
A resource for LGBT book awards, reviews, author interviews, opinion, and literary news

ONE Archives
An organization promoting the collection, preservation, documentation and understanding of LGBTQA history and culture

May Swenson
Born into a large Mormon family, May Swenson moved to New York's Greenwich Village as a young woman. Her poems often employ sensual images and erotic language.

Frank O'Hara
A figure in both the literary and visual art worlds of the 1950s and 60s, O'Hara is associated with the New York School movement in poetry. His poems were impromptu lyrics, a jumble of witty talk, journalistic parodies, and pop culture references.

Dawn Lundy Martin
As well as being awarded numerous prizes for her poetry, Martin is also the co-founder of the Third Wave Foundation for social justice.

kari edwards
Author of Bharat jiva, posthumously, edwards lived in San Francisco and was active in the local poetry and transgender communities.

Eileen Myles on Allen Ginsberg
"Allen was such a diligent student of ecstasy and vision that he knew that as the swastikas and belt buckles flicker, something happens, the road opens, and a space opens up..."

Carl Phillips on Reading
"What I offer here is less a list of what to read than an idiosyncratic gathering of those writers who have had an influence on me as a writer and human being in general..."

Marilyn Hacker on Love Poems
"Many love poems are actually poems of seduction. I've preferred to choose poems in which love is a presence, not a pursuit..."

Reginald Shepherd on Beauty
"Without a notion of beauty, an embodiment of the possible beyond the abjections of the mundane, I would not have become a poet, would not, perhaps, have left behind the Bronx housing projects and tenements at all..."