David Melnick (1938–2022) was a

gay ''Gay'' is a term that primarily refers to a homosexual person or the trait of being homosexual. The term originally meant 'carefree', 'cheerful', or 'bright and showy'. While scant usage referring to male homosexuality dates to the late 1 ...

avant-garde The avant-garde (; In 'advance guard' or ' vanguard', literally 'fore-guard') is a person or work that is experimental, radical, or unorthodox with respect to art, culture, or society.John Picchione, The New Avant-garde in Italy: Theoretical ...

American poet The poets listed below were either born in the United States or else published much of their poetry while living in that country. A B C D E F G H I–J K L M N O P Q *George Quasha (born 1942 in poetry, 1942) R ...

.Silliman, Ronald. In the American Tree. Orono: National Poetry Foundation, 1986. 602. He was born in Illinois and grew up in Los Angeles, California. He attended the University of Chicago and University of California, Berkeley. Book One of Melnick's

homophonic translation Homophonic translation renders a text in one language into a near-homophonic text in another language, usually with no attempt to preserve the original meaning of the text. In one homophonic translation, for example, the English "sat on a wall" i ...

of Homer's

Iliad The ''Iliad'' (; grc, Ἰλιάς, Iliás, ; "a poem about Ilium") is one of two major ancient Greek epic poems attributed to Homer. It is one of the oldest extant works of literature still widely read by modern audiences. As with the ''Odysse ...

, titled '' Men in Aïda'', was published in 1983 by Lyn Hejinian's Tuumba Press. The farcical bathhouse scenario presented in Melnick's translation suggests underlying

homoeroticism Homoeroticism is sexual attraction between members of the same sex, either male–male or female–female. The concept differs from the concept of homosexuality: it refers specifically to the desire itself, which can be temporary, whereas "homose ...

in the original text. Perelman, Bob.br> The marginalization of poetry: language writing and literary history
(book). Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press. p. 24. . . Retrieved 24 December 2009. Melnick's work has been included in Ron Silliman's 1986 anthology of

Language poetry The Language poets (or ''L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E'' poets, after the magazine of that name) are an avant-garde group or tendency in United States poetry that emerged in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The poets included: Bernadette Mayer, Leslie Scalap ...

''In the American Tree''.

Craig Dworkin Craig Dworkin is an American poet, critic, editor, and Professor of English at the University of Utah. He is founding senior editor of Eclipse, an online archive of 20th-century small-press writing and 21st-century born-digital publications. Ed ...

and

Kenneth Goldsmith Kenneth Goldsmith (born 1961) is an American poetry, poet and critic. He is the founding editor of UbuWeb and since 2020 is the ongoing artist-in-residence at the Center for Programs in Contemporary Writing (CPCW) at the University of Pennsylvani ...

wrote about Melnick's ''Men in Aïda'' in relation to conceptual poetics in 2010's ''Against Expression: An Anthology of Conceptual Writing''. Often grouped with

, Melnick's ''Men in Aïda'' has been compared to Celia and Louis Zukofsky's ''Catullus''Dworkin, Craig Douglas, and Kenneth Goldsmith. ''Against Expression: an Anthology of Conceptual Writing''. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2011. 418. and ''PCOET'' has been discussed alongside

Russian Futurist Russian Futurism is the broad term for a movement of Russian poets and artists who adopted the principles of Filippo Marinetti's "Manifesto of Futurism," which espoused the rejection of the past, and a celebration of speed, machinery, violence, ...

Velimir Khlebnikov's ''zaum'' poetics.Lutzkanova-Vassileva, Albena. ''The Testimonies of Russian and American Postmodern Poetry: Reference, Trauma, and History''. New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2015. 175-181.

Bibliography

* ''Eclogs'', Itaca House, 1972 * "The ‘Ought’ of Seeing: Zukofsky’s Bottom" in ''Maps''. John Taggart, ed. 1973.Mark Scroggins. "David Melnick: PCOET" Culture Industry. 20 April, 2005.
/ref> * ''PCOET'', San Francisco: G.A.W.K., 1975 * '' Men in Aïda, Book One'', Berkeley: Tuumba Press, 1983 * ''A Pin's Fee,'' 1988 * '' Men in Aïda'', The Hague & Tirana: Uitgeverij. 2015. . This edition collects three books of ''Men in Aïda'' in a single volume.

References

External links

text of Eclogs
{{DEFAULTSORT:Melnick, David 1938 births American male poets Language poets Writers from San Francisco American gay writers American LGBT poets 20th-century American poets Living people 20th-century American male writers 21st-century LGBT people Gay poets