Hey, I’m just passing this along:
Here’s the first thing I saw when I went there: “I tear the colostomy bag out of my ass and run with abject abandon screaming / at the nurses of the emergency room as flat as tires of polythene / and fluttering down the row of offices and into the hospital waiting room.” Maybe this gets better. I’ve mentioned Genet before, and there are other people who aim at what you might call disgusting or pornographic with a very serious and useful intent. And there’s something to be said for the obscene, in that it’s literally what is normally behind the curtain or off-stage in our work.
But coming from mine and Meg’s attempts at writing the erotic, and noticing how many of you all bailed(?) on that project, I wonder which is more obscene in the strict sense, the erotic or the disgusting? I think it would be very easy for me to sit down and write something disgusting. My partner claims I’m quite capable of being casually disgusting in some of my personal habits, snorting snot back up my nose being high on that list. But I found trying to put my own sensual, erotic nature into words to be so discomfiting that I fled into particularly coy series of poems.
Does this hold true for you as well?
Are there erotic poems that you do like? I like Stein’s Lifting Belly, but it’s not exactly explicit, aside from some heavy-breathing mimetic effects. I have taught a poem by Sharon Olds, “The Connoisseuse of Slugs,” that I don’t like but which I think is a good example of more explicit erotism. The poem is an extended analogy between a slug’s antennae and the emergence of the glans of the penis from the prepuce (I am basking in and cowering behind medical Latin). Here’s the end of the analogy, after some alarming lines with salt in them:
There’s a breath-basedness to these lines that gets on my nerves a bit, but that last enjambment is nice. I think I like that turn because it goes with something else I like about the poem, in a purely self-serving way: it’s nice to read such a cosy appreciation of an erection. After all, erections embarrassed me throughout third and fourth grade by popping up for no good reason at all, which is probably true for most men reading this. So it’s nice to have the little fellow welcomed into the room cordially. And that brings me back to my initial discomfort with erotism. Oh well. Thank me for sharing.
(So, does it surprise you too to know the volume this poem is in, The Living and the Dead, is dedicated to George and Mary Oppen? If I were to type the whole poem (sorry), you might see some objectivist tendency in the attention, but the form of her poems is pretty boringly, consistently four or five stresses per line with very little of the excitement, tensions, or minimalism of Oppen’s form.)
Hello All,
Death Metal Poetry <http://death-metal-poetry.com> is a new online poetry journal(sorely needed, I know) based out of Athens, Georgia. DMP<http://death-metal-poetry.com>is now (and always) seeking submissions of poems and anything else you decide to send. Recently published poets are Noah Cicero, Daniel Spinks, and Ian Davisson. Submission guidelines can be found at http://death-metal-poetry.com. Response to submissions will be alarmingly quick.
Cheers,
Ryan Downey
Here’s the first thing I saw when I went there: “I tear the colostomy bag out of my ass and run with abject abandon screaming / at the nurses of the emergency room as flat as tires of polythene / and fluttering down the row of offices and into the hospital waiting room.” Maybe this gets better. I’ve mentioned Genet before, and there are other people who aim at what you might call disgusting or pornographic with a very serious and useful intent. And there’s something to be said for the obscene, in that it’s literally what is normally behind the curtain or off-stage in our work.
But coming from mine and Meg’s attempts at writing the erotic, and noticing how many of you all bailed(?) on that project, I wonder which is more obscene in the strict sense, the erotic or the disgusting? I think it would be very easy for me to sit down and write something disgusting. My partner claims I’m quite capable of being casually disgusting in some of my personal habits, snorting snot back up my nose being high on that list. But I found trying to put my own sensual, erotic nature into words to be so discomfiting that I fled into particularly coy series of poems.
Does this hold true for you as well?
Are there erotic poems that you do like? I like Stein’s Lifting Belly, but it’s not exactly explicit, aside from some heavy-breathing mimetic effects. I have taught a poem by Sharon Olds, “The Connoisseuse of Slugs,” that I don’t like but which I think is a good example of more explicit erotism. The poem is an extended analogy between a slug’s antennae and the emergence of the glans of the penis from the prepuce (I am basking in and cowering behind medical Latin). Here’s the end of the analogy, after some alarming lines with salt in them:
[. . .] Years later,
when I saw a naked man,
I gasped with pleasure to see that quiet
mystery reenacted, the slow
elegant being coming out of hiding and
gleaming in the dark air, eager and so
trusting you could weep.
There’s a breath-basedness to these lines that gets on my nerves a bit, but that last enjambment is nice. I think I like that turn because it goes with something else I like about the poem, in a purely self-serving way: it’s nice to read such a cosy appreciation of an erection. After all, erections embarrassed me throughout third and fourth grade by popping up for no good reason at all, which is probably true for most men reading this. So it’s nice to have the little fellow welcomed into the room cordially. And that brings me back to my initial discomfort with erotism. Oh well. Thank me for sharing.
(So, does it surprise you too to know the volume this poem is in, The Living and the Dead, is dedicated to George and Mary Oppen? If I were to type the whole poem (sorry), you might see some objectivist tendency in the attention, but the form of her poems is pretty boringly, consistently four or five stresses per line with very little of the excitement, tensions, or minimalism of Oppen’s form.)
