In the apartment across the street a lesbian couple are making love with the curtains open*
by kvennarad
© Marie Marshall.
*This happening was recently featured in the advice column of a UK newspaper.
kvenna ráð
See what I did there?
© Marie Marshall.
*This happening was recently featured in the advice column of a UK newspaper.
you paint such a vivid scene…great capturing title, loved also the part with the cardboard and the wallpaper mention in the closure…the marble columns..intriguing
The marble columns are, of course, the naked bodies of the two women; in the poem as a whole I was attempting to express a tension between voyeurism and detachment. The NY poet Frank O’Hara was chatty and coyly open about being gay in a time when it was still rather taboo; he died in an accident in 1966, on the cusp of what people call the ‘sexual revolution’. I don’t often try to explain my poems, do I.
I don’t understand this poem at all. The imagery is confused & random & the title is pointlessly pornographic & gratuitously PC. It’s just a mess.
I do not always expect my poems to be understood or liked, so you are perfectly entitled to your opinion. The random imagery you describe in the poem is deliberate, there is a point to them, which I won’t bother to explain; I’d rather leave your confusion as one of the legitimate effects of and reactions to the poem. However, I wonder how a title can be both ‘pornographic’ and ‘PC’ at the same time; that seems to be an oxymoron, so perhaps you would explain. What words do you feel are pornographic? ‘Lesbian’? Are you somehow prejudiced against gay people and therefore feel that what they do is inherently pornographic? ‘Making love’? People make love all the time – how is that ‘pornographic’? It is certainly true that I intended the title to catch the eye of WordPress surfers, but it describes an actual situation brought to the attention of readers in the advice column of a newspaper, inviting comments about the possible social, moral, and legal situation involved – was that also ‘pornographic’ in intent or effect?
If the title is meant as a simple statement of banal everyday fact, then it is neither pornographic nor gratuitous, but obvious and trite. The poem is better than that. but as well, it seems not to be about the lesbians in question but the self-absorbed voyeur who is so distracted by their own scattered, myopic thinking (a voyeur with ADHD? Interesting) that the said lesbians appears as only a passing notion, so yes, that is by definition ‘gratuitous’. “Making love” is pornographic, as I understand it, as once I saw a girl on her knees in Central Park giving a guy a blowjob. Both were doubtlessly enjoying the experience but seeing someone suck cock (which is an entirely natural act for a girl to do of her own free will) in what is generally considered a public area (I’ve had my own cock sucked in such a circumstance, and observed by a gay man I was offended and told him so) is “pornographic” regardless of the feelings, sensitivities & passion of the persons involved. I suppose the conclusion by the said lesbians themselves would be similar to my own, “Why are you watching me?” It is the persons making love who should be offended not the disingenuous peeping tom pretending to be a disinterested poet.
“It is the persons making love who should be offended not the disingenuous peeping tom pretending to be a disinterested poet.”
Interesting. Actually I wasn’t there; however the opinion you expressed was one of the several which were expressed in the comments to the original item in the newspaper. Yes, the poem’s about the self-absorbed observer.
And it seems to me that you’re the one with the problem here. This exchange is now closed.
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open* kvenna ráð” along with my close friends on facebook .
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Many thanks, Irving
Thank you Irving.