The letter \u201cB\u201d in the acronym LGBTQ+ stands for bisexual. Bisexual poets have been around from the time of Sappho in\u00a0ancient Greece to the present day. Several of Shakespeare\u2019s love\u00a0sonnets are written to men. We know he was married to Anne\u00a0Hathaway, but to this day it is unknown for whom he was writing\u00a0them for. He wrote them before he met Anne. Several scholars\u00a0and biographers have suggested that Emily Dickinson, a very\u00a0private person, may have been bisexual.<\/p>\n
Two 20th<\/sup>\u00a0century American poets, Edna St. Vincent Millay\u00a0(1892 -1950) and Adrienne Rich (1929-2012), were open about being bisexual.\u00a0 Millay became an avowed feminist in 1917-1918 and sought\u00a0 to liberate women from their traditional roles. The Encyclopedia Brittanica says of Adrienne Rich, \u201cThroughout the 1960s and \u201870s, Rich\u2019s increasing commitment to the women\u2019s movement and to a feminist and\u2014after openly acknowledging her homosexuality\u2014lesbian aesthetic politicized much of her poetry.\u201d<\/p>\n The following poems are excerpts from longer poems shortened\u00a0due to space and hoping readers will look up the original version.<\/p>\n What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p>\n By EDNA ST.\u00a0VINCENT MILLAY<\/p>\n (This is the octave from her Petrarchan sonnet)<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n What lips my lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why,<\/p>\n I have forgotten, and what arms have lain<\/p>\n Under my head till morning; but the rain<\/p>\n Is full of ghosts tonight, that tap and sigh<\/p>\n Upon the glass and listen for reply,<\/p>\n And in my heart there stirs a quiet pain<\/p>\n For unremembered lads that not again<\/p>\n Will turn to me at midnight with a cry.<\/p>\n Diving into the Wreck\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n By ADRIENNE RICH<\/p>\n (Beginning, middle, and ending segments of a 94-line poem.)<\/em><\/p>\n First having read the book of myths,<\/p>\n and loaded the camera,<\/p>\n and checked the edge of the knife-blade,<\/p>\n I put on the body-armor of black rubber<\/p>\n the absurd flippers the grave and awkward mask,<\/p>\n I am having to do this not like Cousteau with his<\/p>\n assiduous team aboard the sun-flooded schooner<\/p>\n but here alone \u2026<\/p>\n This is the place. And I am here,<\/p>\n the mermaid whose dark hair streams black,<\/p>\n the merman in his armored body<\/p>\n we circle silently about the wreck<\/p>\n we dive into the hold.<\/p>\n I am she: I am he\u2026<\/p>\n We are, I am, you are by cowardice or courage<\/p>\n the one who find our way back to this scene<\/p>\n carrying a knife, a camera a book of myths<\/p>\n in which our names do not appear.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The letter \u201cB\u201d in the acronym LGBTQ+ stands for bisexual. Bisexual poets have been around…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":387597,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-394980","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-opinion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/394980","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=394980"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/394980\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/387597"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=394980"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=394980"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=394980"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}