The American Byron: Homosexuality and the Fall of Fitz-Greene HalleckHailed in the mid-nineteenth century as the most important American poet of the period, Fitz-Greene Halleck was a close friend of William C. Bryant, an associate of Charles Dickens and Washington Irving, and a celebrity sought out by John Jacob Astor and American presidents. Halleck, an attractive man of wit and charm, was dubbed "the American Byron" because he both employed similar poetic strategies and challenged the most sacred institutions of his day. A large general readership enjoyed his verse, though it was infused with homosexual themes. Indeed, Halleck's love for another man would be fictionalized in Bayard Taylor's novel Joseph and His Friend a century before the Stonewall riots. |
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... However , his mood was anything but gay , as ironic as that may be for the best man at a wedding . Typical of Halleck , his duress was expressed in jest and in earnest . More than " reluctant " to perform his “ lukewarm 55 Love and War.
... expressed the thrill of seeing and hearing themselves " praised , puffed , eulogized , execrated and threatened . " 17 The Croakers enjoyed the highest form of flattery , imitation . Hundreds of bogus poems arrived daily to newspapers ...
... expressed " than in the enclosed poem.121 Halleck also refused requests for poems on the Civil War . Not even Abraham Lincoln's praise moved Halleck to write on that subject . In 1860 , Lincoln wrote a mutual friend : " I am greatly ...