WHAT IF THIS YOUNG WOMAN, who writes such bad poetry, in competition with her husband, whose poems are equally bad, should stretch her remarkable long and well-made legs out before you, so that her skirt slips up to the tops of her stockings? It is an old story. Then she asks you what you think of the trash you have just read - her latest effort. She is not unintelligent and she is - attractive. A use of the arts perhaps more common than any other in this time. Aphrodisia. Powerful as Spanish fly or the scent of jasmine. The most delicate equivocation about the poem, the most subtle relaxation of critical acumen, will hasten you to bed with her. The poem is about a dream she had. In it she is a little girl. Again. Most of her poems are about dreams. In them she drowns in costume, or finds herself flying naked. At the end of the dream she is trapped. Well, critic, tell her the poem has the clear and unmistakable stink of decay to it. Tell her. Is seeing, finally, the hair glossy between her thighs so important will you lie? About art?
Partially funded by grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and The Illinois Arts Council.
Dalkey Archive Press
1817 North 79th Avenue
Elmwood Park, IL. 60635 USA
First Published by Pantheon Books, 1971
First paperback edition, 1991
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