In Chapter 2 we saw how sexual difference and sexual adaptability are important components of the hyperscape. In fact, sexual identity in O'Hara's poetry is characterised by difference: it loops, bends and splinters but never crystallises. In this chapter, I propose that O'Hara is a non-essentialist gay poet whose work presents a ‘morphing’ sexuality, in which one type of sexuality continuously turns into another. This produces an ongoing reworking, fundamental to the hyperscape, of the ontological categories masculine/feminine, friendship/sexuality, sex/gender, homosexual/heterosexual.

These reversals are constitutive of an adaptive sexuality which inhabits unusual spaces and is a form of the hypergrace discussed in the previous chapter. In this context, grace is redefined as a more feminised way of conceiving masculinity, and the adoption of different sexual identities. It also takes the form of emotional juggling; poise amidst emotional complexity, ‘bicycling no-hands’ (O'Hara 1979, p. 297); and the embrace of the body as a carnivalesque site of sensual pleasure rather than sexual sin. Grace, then, is receptiveness to all the variegated possibilities which an adaptive sexuality can produce.

O'Hara's poetry is part of an impressive ‘tradition’ of American gay writing which has had to deal, sometimes evasively, with the penalties of disclosure in a highly homophobic society. It includes Whitman, Crane and Stein but also – contemporary with O'Hara – John Ashbery, Robert Duncan, Allen Ginsberg and John Wieners. At one pole is Whitman's open and brave declaration of homosexuality and his doctrine of adhesiveness – ‘manly attachment’ (‘In Paths Untrodden’; Whitman 1973, p. 188) as a means to democratic egalitarianism (and the metaphorical implications of the term morphing seem in direct contrast to those of adhesiveness). At the other pole is Stein's lesbianism, which emerges in semantic playfulness, elaborate coding, and sly reversals (for example the use of the word husband for lesbian partner) rather than through clear themes and declarations. In this way Whitman and Stein might be seen to represent two absolute extremes, one essentialist and the other non-essentialist, but as Diane Fuss points out, these are always intertwined; one exists in the other (Fuss 1989).