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This collection is no place to look for real personal insight about Franco, but it does master the craft of persona in many little ways. They kiss. There have been rumours about James Franco’s sexuality for years, now the year-old actor has finally come clean. Yes, in the sense that I am as James Franco, but no in the sense that it is a public statement in an entertainment magazine, which means that it is part of my public persona and not my private veridical self.

He also draws connections to his process of exploring masks, with the process employed by poet mentor, Frank Bidart, and other artists he admires, Lana Del Rey and James Dean. James Franco sets the record straight about his sexuality IS HE or isn’t he? Yes. This collective work falls in line with poetic performance art pieces more than it does a poetry chapbook as James Franco explores many aspects of persona.

There is a darkness waiting to be understood. Straight James / Gay James is a poetic bildungsroman—raw, candid, and uninhibited. If I ever got high, it would be to be The woman. But I will never be woman. So rather than shirk the mantle, he embraces it through caricatures of himself, not unlike his self-portrayal in This is the End.

His open awareness of putting a collection out there as a celebrity is enough to assign the entire speaker voice to character-public persona. Franco's poems delve into issues of identity, sexuality, private and public life, being a brother, a son, an artist and actor.

The chapbook also contains an interview of Gay James conducted by Straight James. James Franco is famous. Ironically, Straight James plays more coy, while Gay James plays it more, er, straight:. I have no escape from this body. I just want to be woman. I received my copy of this collection through NetGalley.

The poetry varies from the imagistic to the prosaic. The poetics by itself is passable but never sublime. Throughout them, one gets the sense that James both sees himself more clearly and loses himself in them. And in recent years. SJ: Yes and no. However, the teasing and toying of personal versus public persona and the concept of a person as a series of situational masks work together to elevate this collection into something greater than the sum of its parts.

I like my queer persona. Not that I do what I do to confuse people, but as long as they are confused, I get to play. Meanwhile, one must assume that the closest he gets to being away from the celebrity persona is with his own family which makes many appearances throughout the collection.

And not without humor:. Main menu Skip to content. Also present are masks that he ascribes to devils and serial killers. Their looks are so similar They could be twins, But inside, one takes the dark Road, and one takes the light. He knows it, as does his reader. Straight James / Gay James, actor James Franco’s new chapbook of poems, explores the facets of his public and private personas.

Like Loading GJ: Is this interview a nonfictional statement about who you are? Actor James Franco's chapbook of poems explores the different personas he uses in his writing, art, acting, and filmmaking. I am man, trapped in man. SJ: You got it, baby. But as his resume has become more diverse and admittedly more impressive, an eyeroll seems just as likely.

Sexuality is yet another mask for James, but gender is not. Actor, director, artist, fiction writer and poet James Franco knows how to get a reaction. Perhaps the prevailing response to him remains a swooning and fanning-of-self on the part of many women and men alike, a holdover from his days as an undifferentiated teen idol.

Ironically, Straight James plays more coy, while Gay James plays it more, er, straight: GJ: But my question is, who is the real James, and who is the mask?