J.D. Salinger uses the word "flit" twenty times to reference a homosexual male in his classic 1951 novel, Catcher in the Rye. Not to suggest the celebrated writer was homophobic. But it was in his book that the word entered common parlance. Poet and author Dennis Milam Bensie tackles the work of Salinger and thirty-nine other famous authors, including Melville, Dickens, Tolstoy, Twain, and Forrester, and mashes them up into his own concoctions. These poems offer intriguing snippets of gay life, from cruising bears (furry men sailing the ocean blue) to Log Cabin Republicans, to youths subjected to sexual conversion therapy. Every poem in Flit: A Poetry Mashup of Classic Literature is built entirely with words from one classic book or play.
Author Biography
Dennis Milam Bensie's poem "Eight Ball" was published in Greater National Society of Poets, Inc. in 1980 when he was a freshman in high school. It was featured thirty years later in his first book, Shorn: Toys to Men. His short stories have been featured in The Rain, Party and Disaster Society, Talking Soup, Chelsea Station, Short Fiction Break, The Ink and Code, Everyday Fiction, The Fem, Bare Back Magazine, The Round Up, Specter Magazine, Fuck Fiction, Cease Cows, and This Zine Will Change Your Life. His essays have appeared in the Huffington Post, Boys on the Brink, and the Good Men Project. Bensie's second book with Coffeetown Press, One Gay American, was a finalist in both the Next Generation Indie Book Awards and the Indie Excellence Book Awards. The author has been a presenter at the Saints and Sinners Literary Festival in New Orleans and at Montana's very first gay pride festival. Dennis lives in Seattle with his three dogs. For more information, go to dennismilambensie.com.
