Skip to main content

Los Boys

The news that "Los 33" managed their outstanding feats of survival with the help of some Mary Jane, porn, and dreams of inflatable sex dolls, while certainly a bit rock and roll, does rather reduce their moral stature - or does it?  It does raise a troubling question - why do men, locked in darkness a mile below the crust, require depictions of raw sex to keep their spirits alive?  Is love not enough, as Depeche Mode once sang?  I cannot imagine 33 women requiring pornography in such a situation - can you?
Labels:

Comments

Poetry Pleases! said…
Dear Todd

Yes! It is a little known fact that women are every bit as licentious as men. They are just far better at hiding it.

Best wishes from Simon
Tue Feb 15, 10:34:00 am 2011
richard lopez said…
one of the best books i've read about sex, desire, love and porn is TALK DIRTY TO ME: AN INTIMATE PHILOSOPHY OF SEX by sallie tisdale. tisdale writes with candor about her own sexuality and is a validation of being human, i think. even with tisdale's writings about sex i've no idea if women would fantasize about blow up dolls or even fantasize as men do but i believe that women do lust as mightily as men do, but differently. as the poet thom gunn once wrote, 'we are the same in different ways/we are different in the same way'. sex makes love, sex makes babies, the desire for sex makes sex, and sex helps create, in the phrase of joyce, the consciousness of our human race(s). and maybe if the 33 women were like tisdale they might indeed need porn to survive too.
Wed Feb 16, 06:35:00 am 2011
Natalia S said…
Strongly agree with Simon :) How do you think Sapho survived in her island? I doubt that 33 women would use Mary Jane though.
Wed Feb 16, 10:03:00 am 2011
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A  poem for my mother, July 15 When she was dying And I was in a different country I dreamt I was there with her Flying over the ocean very quickly, And arriving in the room like a dream And I was a dream, but the meaning was more Than a dream has – it was a moving over time And land, over water, to get love across Fast enough, to be there, before she died, To lean over the small, huddled figure, In the dark, and without bothering her Even with apologies, and be a kiss in the air, A dream of a kiss, or even less, the thought of one, And when I woke, none of this had happened, She was still far distant, and we had not spoken.
Post a Comment
Read more

Poetry vs. Literature

Poetry is, of course, a part of literature. But, increasingly, over the 20th century, it has become marginalised - and, famously, has less of an audience than "before". I think that, when one considers the sort of criticism levelled against Seamus Heaney and "mainstream poetry", by poet-critics like Jeffrey Side , one ought to see the wider context for poetry in the "Anglo-Saxon" world. This phrase was used by one of the UK's leading literary cultural figures, in a private conversation recently, when they spoke eloquently about the supremacy of "Anglo-Saxon novels" and their impressive command of narrative. My heart sank as I listened, for what became clear to me, in a flash, is that nothing has changed since Victorian England (for some in the literary establishment). Britain (now allied to America) and the English language with its marvellous fiction machine, still rule the waves. I personally find this an uncomfortable position - but when ...
15 comments
Read more

IQ AND THE POETS - ARE YOU SMART?

When you open your mouth to speak, are you smart?  A funny question from a great song, but also, a good one, when it comes to poets, and poetry. We tend to have a very ambiguous view of intelligence in poetry, one that I'd say is dysfunctional.  Basically, it goes like this: once you are safely dead, it no longer matters how smart you were.  For instance, Auden was smarter than Yeats , but most would still say Yeats is the finer poet; Eliot is clearly highly intelligent, but how much of Larkin 's work required a high IQ?  Meanwhile, poets while alive tend to be celebrated if they are deemed intelligent: Anne Carson, Geoffrey Hill , and Jorie Graham , are all, clearly, very intelligent people, aside from their work as poets.  But who reads Marianne Moore now, or Robert Lowell , smart poets? Or, Pound ?  How smart could Pound be with his madcap views? Less intelligent poets are often more popular.  John Betjeman was not a very smart poet, per se....
3 comments
Read more