Rudy Kikel

I credit William McBrien with steering me away from Business and into Literature--at a college that was not St. Anne's and where Remo Iannucci, my first mentor, taught German. Richard Howard, whom I met through Paul Schmidt, published poems of mine in American Review 18 and New American Review 11. (A friend called me excitedly to report that he'd seen a poem of mine on a Venezuelan bookstand. My chest, not to mention my head, swelled.)

I was an instigator and editor, along with Walta Borawski, Sal Farinella, Charley Shively, David Eberly, and Michael Bronski, of the Boston Gay review. We were so filled with contradictory urges, I'm surprised we got through one editorial meeting, let alone eight. I worked on a first chapbook of mine, called "Shaping Possibilities" (1980), for populist Peter Payack's Imaginary Press. My first "big" book was "Lasting Relations" (1984) with the effervescent Felice Picano. A second was "Long Division" (1993) with Writers Block Publishing Co. and Kevin Sharpe.

Louisa Salerno's been a pal; my twice having been asked to be a judge for her Grolier Poetry Prize (which I won once) gave me the courage to take on an anthology, "Gents, Bad Boys & Barbarians: New Gay Male Poetry," for Sasha Alyson (1995) of Alyson Publications.

By the time I followed "Gents" with a second selection, "This New Breed" (2004), my poetry had found a spiritual home in Windstorm Creative, from which has emerged--along with reprintings of "Lasting Relations" (1980) and "Long Division" (1993)--"Period Pieces" (1997), "Gottscheers" (1997), and "Talks in the Blue" (2008).

By This Author

This New Breed: Gents, Bad Boys, and Barbarians 2 (editor)