Sex and Poetic Literature

[AbdoRinbo]

The poet and the lover, one bound to the other by a leash.

Who walks whom?

[Cara]

The poet is superior and is therefore walking the lover?
Or maybe the lover could slip the leash and leave the poet bereft?

[AbdoRinbo]

I think action inspires poetry, but that poetry can, in turn, inspire other experiences that entail action. Coincidentally, sex is definitely the most powerful source of inspiration for me. I can prove it (I have nothing to lose other than my propriety): I haven't done it in almost a year, and the thought of it still overwhelms me. I just can't imagine any other experience like it. It haunts me.

But anyway, I hate poets who look for inspiration behind a desk. I think it has to be more of an experience, less an intellectual show of good taste. Of course, they say your average 'pedestrian' poet is just too subjective to create real 'art', but I say I'd much rather read something light and sincere than feel estranged by the aesthetic lords. Anyway, most of those poets don't know how to create beautiful, lucid imagery using everyday vocabulary and dialect. To describe sex with a word that is longer than seven syllables is nothing short of artistic blasphemy.

[sloegin]

Not to make light of the subject...how about, the leash walks them both?

[AbdoRinbo]

The question was meant to be entirely arbitrary (as you saw clearly, sloegin); after all, wouldn't the one at the end of the leash be leading the other along? But we generally see the contrary as being true: that the one holding the leash has control. You could literally debate it to death, in the end all you're left with is a leash.

[AbdoRinbo]

I wasn't gonna kill the topic by saying that until den posted (which she did), so I guess now I don't feel bad for letting the cat out of the bag.

If only it could be let back in . . .

[sloegin]

I've got a tranquilizer gun you can use and a staple gun to seal the bag.
Your question reminded me of a friend I had. He used to ask people (schmucks), 'Does greed cause fear, or does fear cause greed?' There is an answer to this one. It was always good for an askance.

[Munro]

I would have thought that it was the love that accompanies the physical experience that would inspire the poetry, rather than actual sex itself.
I couldn't write a poem about the cold, unfulfilling and purely hormonally driven experience of casual sex, because it is so uninspiring, and so ugly. The spiritual and emotional fulfilment in all its intensity (breathtaking, as Abdo described it) - the love, that is, is something that I want to capture in verse, to try and make a beautiful experience a beautiful poem.

Maybe that's what you meant already, Abdo, but I wasn't sure and so I wanted to make it clear for myself. And in answer to the proposition, I believe the experience provides the crucial matter, and the inspiration of the art, like poetry. Other art can only influence or further inspire, but never provides the matter to write with.

[AbdoRinbo]

Love is such an ambivalent concept. It's simultaneously my best friend and my worst enemy.

[sloegin]

When the aliens designed us...they put it(the concept of love) in, to keep us controlable, to keep us coming back. If it were an easy concept, it would have been figured out long ago.
Imagine a world without love, not sex, but love. With that there would be no more hate, you cancel one and the other goes away. Where everyone one, was just there. What would ever get done? I can't answer, because I'm human and can't remove my own DNA. :D

[AbdoRinbo]

Did you have a little too much of the good stuff? ;)

[sloegin]

Nah, it's just the Siddartha/Buddha in me. I suppose this topic could be avant-garde, why not have some fun with it. And aliens sound quirkier than God. I was thinking of MIB2, with all those little things in the locker; then at the end how they are all in the locker. :D

Edit
Better yet: You caught me, I was hitting the sauce. That '45 Latour is a kick in the pants.

[ihrocks]

I couldn't write a poem about the cold, unfulfilling and purely hormonally driven experience of casual sex, because it is so uninspiring, and so ugly.

Who says you can't write poetry about ugly things? Ugly experiences make up life, too.

Henry Miller (here I go again) wrote about the ugliness of life in "Tropic of Cancer" and made it beautiful and alive.

To me, that's the real challenge of the artist, to take the truth of all life, and make it come to life for the audience.

ihrocks

[Munro]

ihrocks, you are right. :)

Poetry can be inspired by both the beauty and the ugliness of sex. My opinion was influenced by my more personal sentiments towards sex, I didn't think of it in the broader sense.

[Ickmeister]

Do not post in reply to this post unless you have literally thought on this for at least 15 minutes. I mean get out the stop watch, and don't stop thinking until the thing beeps. don't even spend any time waiting for the watch to stop, just think.


What if He leads them both?

Think about all that means. then post... but not until 15 minutes are up.

I'm done....