Scarriet: Marla, how do you think this sex and poetry Scarriet 2023 March Madness is going?
M: I love Sri Lanka. I love the sex theme. I think you’ve done a good job with it, Mr. Scarriet. You’ve shown how sex can’t work in poetry and yet hints of it can work, especially combined with death.
S: You can’t be too indirect when you’re talking about sex because then it feels the poet is being too clever and stupid, and you can’t be too direct—that’s almost worse.
M: I was surveying the web and the “30 sexiest poems” lists which are out there. I’m 10,000 years old and I’ve seen it all, but I still like to sneer at what’s new! (laughter) The sexually overt poems fail simply because the moment it feels like porn, it’s not poetry, and on the other hand it’s just as embarrassing when whatever we mean by “poetry” in the phrase, “it’s not poetry,” is used as a stand-in for sex—you want sand and water and seeds and rugs and flowers to represent sex, OK, whatever, not really. (laughter) So the whole sex poetry enterprise is made to fail, but to contemplate the giant failure teaches you something along the way about sex and morality and—beauty in poetry.
S: That’s so true! Bukowski has a poem about two lovers taking a shower after they’ve had sex and he gives us “cock” and “cunt” and “soap” —and Bukowski wins the tournament.
M: Bukowski just goes for it. That’s him. And all the other poets say “Why didn’t I think of that?” And you’re right. Bukowski wins. And all the professors swooning over Sappho can just sit down. Losers. (laughter)
S: It’s impossible to write a sexy poem. The moment it’s sexy, it’s not a poem. Some will say, “But why? Why is it impossible? You’re pushing a theory and just ruining everything. Shut up.” But it really is true. Maybe it’s a “theory,” but it’s correct. A scientist and a child can both see it. There are things which are oil and water, and sex and poetry are oil and water. That lovely thing by Bukowski is not a poem.
M: Sex and poetry might be united… in a poem… about water and oil… (laughter)
S: For some, poetry might simply be this: A really sensitive guy writing porn. (laughter) But then what do the female poets write? (laughter)
M: Porn-poetry about a sensitive guy writing porn-poetry?
S: Sure, guys and gals will find a way.
M: We can approach it from many angles but the fact remains: poetry is spoiled by porn and porn is spoiled by poetry—yet there are professors, certainly, who believe that in some ideal, aesthetic, pagan world in the sky, they unite.
S: I might illustrate the dilemma this way. The best love I had, and the only love I had like it, was when I loved my lover as if she were a porn star. It was involuntary. I couldn’t help it. I never watched porn, and I had this feeling, based on what people would say occasionally, that everyone in the world watched porn but me. And I loved her madly, truly, only focused on her, no one else mattered but her, for years, and I never got tired of her, but she grew uncomfortable under my infatuation, I became too easy to mock, so she dumped me.
M: Yes, I sort of see how that might sum up the dilemma, Mr. Scarriet—and sum up why you are who you are, and why you run these stupid tournaments! (giving him a kiss).
S: (blushing). Uh yeah… Thank you, Marla.
Love’s Philosophy
Percy Shelley
The fountains mingle with the river
And the rivers with the ocean,
The winds of heaven mix for ever
With a sweet emotion;
Nothing in the world is single;
All things by a law divine
In one spirit meet and mingle.
Why not I with thine?—
See the mountains kiss high heaven
And the waves clasp one another;
No sister-flower would be forgiven
If it disdained its brother;
And the sunlight clasps the earth
And the moonbeams kiss the sea:
What is all this sweet work worth
If thou kiss not me?
Colombo, Sri Lanka