ugh Coyle’s poem “Love
H or Nothing” has been

chosen to appear in the
annual Pushcart Prize: Best of
the Small Presses. The antholo-
gy series, which has been run-
ning for more than two
decades, is recognized as a
consistently outstanding col-
lection of current American lit-
erature.

The list of Pushcart authors
is long and impressive. The
knowledge that his name will
be added to this group has
Coyle awestruck. “The list
contains all kinds of touch-
stones for me, from early icons
like Italo Calvino to more con-
temporary influences on my
work like Mark Doty and
Charles Baxter.”

Coyle has twice served as
the editor of Out in the
Mountains. A 1983 graduate of
Middlebury College, he has
also attended the University of
Iowa’s Writers’ Workshop and
the University of Montana.
Magnetism, his novel in
progress, garnered him the
James Fellowship from the
Heekin Foundation, and his
work has been published in in
Christopher Street, The Boston
Review, The Green Mountains
Review, Vermont Magazine,
The Harvard Gay and Lesbian
Review, and Bay Windows. He
currently serves on the admis-
sions board for the Bread Loaf
Writers’ Conference and has
participated in the Bread Loaf
School of English for 12 years.

Despite his upcoming move
to New York City, where he
will be further developing his
association with the writing
world, Coyle plans to return to

A Pushcart in

 

the Hand is Worth

Two Stints as Editor

Vermont often and dreams of

settling here again some day.
“However,” he states, “I would
like to make it clear that if and
when I do, I have no intention
of being editor of OITM a third
time! At least not yet.”

Comments on the
Prize-winning Poem
From the Poet

“There are so many aspects
of my current life in that poem,
even though it has all been very
much transformed in the cre-
ative process.

“To be honest, the idea
began on a walk to work,
which takes me past a nearby
cemetery in which there is a
cluster of tombstones that look
just like stone phalluses. There
was symbolism there,‘ to be
sure, but I wanted to push it
further — to take it beyond the
realm of the significant and

‘place it into the world of the

relevant. I commonly pass by a
deer as well on my way to
work, and that provided a nice
counterpoint to the image. So
the poem began as a kind of
meditation on the two images,
and when I imagined someone
else contemplating similar
things, the main character in
the poem was born.

.“The poem concerns this
man, who has had HIV for the
past 15 years and suffered
some rather devastating ill-
nesses in that time. Now he
lives in subsidized housing
with two other HIV+ men, both
of whom are living well with
the new drug cocktails." A
fourth room in the house is
empty, a symbol of the chang-
ing face of HIV and AIDS.

They call the room “hope,” but
it’s up on the second floor of
the house, and the main charac-
ter is pretty much confined by
his wheelchair to the first floor.

“The choice to write the
poem in the first person was
both a risk and a challenge. I
wanted to be able to speak
freely and clearly at the end
about love and other matters of
the spirit, and in particular
about the possibility of life
after death. It’s always a risk to
do that in poetry, because
there’s the possibility of melo-
drama and sentiment creeping
in. The challenge is to let the
character speak openly and
honestly, and hopefirlly in a
seemingly undirected manner.
It has to come naturally and
organically from the character,
not just from the poet.

“The poem itself evolved
through several conversations
with other poets last summer
up at Bread Loaf, where I work
at both the School of English
and the Writers’ Conference. I
decided to read the piece at the
staff reading at the Writers’
Conference, and that’s when
the director, Michael Collier,
first heard it. A month later, I
read the poem to my friend
Paul Harris, whom I had met
through the on-line writers,
group Q!Ink. He liked it
enough to send it on to David
Waggoner, editor of Art and
Understanding (A&U) maga-
zine, and I subsequently
learned that they had accepted
and published the piece in
November of last year. A few
months later, I received word
that Michael Collier had nomi-
nated the piece for a Pushcart
Award.

“I’m incredibly grateful to
the editors of the Pushcart
Press for including the poem in
the upcoming anthology. It
gives the poem a much longer
life, and a chance to speak to a
much larger audience. I’m
hopeful that it will also fit into
some sort of historical context
that years from now, people
may look back to that antholo-
gy and continue to gain some
insight into the spiritual lives
of gay men and the role that

AIDS has played in that ongo-
ing development.

“In the end, I guess I’m hap-
piest that the spirit of the poem
has lived on beyond its initial
publication, and that it can con-
tinue to speak its many
thoughts and emotions into the
future. For me, that’s what
writing is all about — sending
a creative idea into cultural cir-

‘ culation and seeing what kind
of effects it can have. I’m over-
joyed that “Love or Nothing”
will continue on in such distin-
guished company, and I’m
hopeful that its inclusion in the
anthology will bring renewed
attention to the changing yet
still-lasting effects of the AIDS
pandemic on the gay commu-
nity.

“With that in mind, would I
call my writing activism? I
suppose so. Is it political?
Probably. But those aren’t the
only choices available to us,

and they’re not exclusive of
other descriptive terms, partic-
ularly in the arts community.

“More than anything, I con-
sider “Love or Nothing” to be a
spiritual statement, and that’s
why the title of the poem is
rather bold and forthright.
People who have read and
heard the poem sometimes
have different opinions about
its ultimate meaning, and I
think and feel different things
myself whenever I go back to it
myself. That’s a good sign. It
tells me that the work is evoca-
tive, that it’s alive somehow. If
it can prove itself on those
terms with other readers as
well whether _ they’re
straight or gay, living with
AIDS or uninfected — so
much the better. V

The winning poem, “Love
or Nothing," is featured in its
entirety at right.

I'm happiest that
the spirit of the
poem has lived on
beyond its initial
publication, and
that it can contin-
ue to speak its
many thoughts and
emotions into the

illtl||‘B.