Faber Book of Blue Verse, the thing you'll like best

[slemslempike]

A little bit ago nineveh_uk posted about The Faber Book of Blue Verse, and I liked the poems she posted so much I went and got myself a copy.

I found it an odd read. It's not a collection of erotic verse - the blurb calls it "candidly sexual literature", and says that the collection features work which "demonstrated humankind's touching, tender, ribald, coarde and technically adept explorations of that perennially fascinating subject - sex".

There are a couple of poems I really liked, and lots that made me laugh. Some I found very jarring though. There are quite a few poems that are about rape, some overtly ('Rape' by Tom Pickard), some less so. The collection opens with 'Eskimo Nell', which I didn't know, and which has a man shoot a woman through the vagina in an attempt to kill her. I was feeling pretty angry about this, because I felt that a collection that purported to be about sex ought to be about consensual acts rather than sexual violence. Thinking about it though, I think that as its not erotic, it's more blurred and perhaps should include a broader collection of experiences than I first thought.

Then I realised that this thing that bothers me is that it's all one sided. There are only poems about the experiences of rapists - there is nothing comparable about the experience of women, or men, who have been raped or sexually assaulted. So "blue", which implies something playful, something designed to offend people but make other people laugh, can encompass the experiences of being the one who assaults, but the experiences of those who are assaulted are not admitted, as this might undermine the whole thing. Ugh. I'm not explaining this very well, it went much better when I was thinking about it in bed. I should never have got up.

The closet the collection comes is

the thing you'll like best

thie thing you'll like best about going to bed with men
is their astonishing bigness.
even the little ones are bigger than us
yet they take care to fit.

the thing you'll like best about going to bed with men
is their pleasant politeness.
lips that would say ughnastyswampcunt
dip tastefully to kiss it.

the thing you'll like best about going to bed with men
is th featherbrush of hands like spanners
on anxious buttons; the way they don't
complain if service is long arriving.

the thing you'll like best about going to bed with men
is the vigour of the arms that hold you
not to imprison, not to lay waste,
but to encourage for some ordeal
where you'll prove you're not a witch by drowning.

the thing you'll like best about going to bed with men
is the sense of being let off.

Zoë Fairbairns

I really, really like that.

I also liked Lady Mary Wortley Montagu's response to Jonathan Swift's The Lady's Dressing-Room, which is The Reasons That Induced Dr Swift to Write a Poem Called 'The Lady's Dressing-Room', which ends:

'She answered short, I'm glad you'll write.
You'll furnish paper when I shite.'

Comments

[oursin.livejournal.com]

Does it even include Aphra Behn's poem on premature ejaculation? - I think it's called The Imperfect Enjoyment: but even that is about the male rather than female disappointment, as I recollect.

[slemslempike.livejournal.com]

Nope - and I don't know that one either, I'll go and see if it's on google in a bit.

I'm trying to work out what I think is meant by "blue", and what the editor's selection seems to imply. It's a weird one, I think. To me, "blue" is a mostly male concept, with male comedians/ "wits" talking about mostly women's bodies and almost entirely heterosex. The collection is more wide-ranging than that, there are quite a few peoples about and by women and by and about gay men (I don't recall any about lesbians, but I've been reading it in dribs and drabs and might have overlooked something).

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

(I meant to do a follow-up post about the more problematic aspects of the collection itself, but didn't get round to it, so I'm gald you have).

I think there is a very strong 'male' slant to the book - it might have been called "Poems, Many Humorous in Some Way, About Men Fucking", and in fact I can recall only one poem about lesbians. The latter was a lack I didn't notice when I first read the book, because I had not then coem across lesbianism as a concept, and as I did remember there being poems by and about gay men, I later assumed that there were probably equivalent ones for women, I just didn't remember them because I _had_ heard of male homosexuality at the time.

[slemslempike.livejournal.com]

I sent those Gavin Ewart semantic limericks to my grandfather, who really enjoyed them! He sent me a near-illegible letter which said something about their "anglo-saxon" roots. Possibly. It might just have easily have been "angie's klaxon".

I'm really glad that you posted them, as I think it's a really interesting collection, and I probably wouldn't have come across most of the poems elsewhere. I kept contrasting it to The Virago Book of Wicked Verse, which I love. The Virago collection isn't just about sex, but it's still the same feel of humour and pomposity-pricking and enjoyment and undercurrents of transgression and sauciness, but I would never have thought of calling it "blue".