Gayowulf: The First Openly Queer Epic Poem

Published by Anxiety Press, Gayowulf by G.R. Tomaini boldly claims its place as the first openly queer epic poem, redefining the genre with audacious vision and lyrical brilliance. First appearing in The Rainbow Cantos: Two Attempts at Queering the Canon, this expanded edition cements Gayowulf as a foundational queer epic of the modern age. Spanning fifty-four cantos and narrated by Shakespeare's Weïrd Sisters, Gayowulf fuses passion, tragedy, camp, and lyricism to reimagine the hero's journey. Gayowulf is a visionary fashion designer sculpting identity through fabric and form. Grendel, a tragic artist, is feared for his beauty, while his mother, a faded Hollywood siren, haunts the ruins of her own legend. The Kimono Dragon, a yakuza kingpin, slithers through the narrative as a figure of seduction, power, and danger. With Gayowulf, Tomaini does not simply write a queer epic-he inscribes queerness into the heroic tradition and stakes its claim as canonical.

About the Author
G.R. Tomaini is a poet, philosopher, playwright, theologian, mathematician, and artist with over 200 exhibited works, is the author of ten books, including Ballad of an American Ganymede, The Psalms of Babylon, American Upanishads, and Wittgenstein 2.0. His Encyclopedia of American Idealism-the first original philosophical system in U.S. history-has been praised by Cornel West and Slavoj Zizek, while The Psalms of Babylon was endorsed by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak. His Tractatus Perfectio-Philosophicus has further cemented his title as the dauphin of deconstruction, Tomaini was the protégé of the late Drucilla Cornell, the renowned legal theorist and close friend of Jacques Derrida.