$16.00
ISBN 0971662347
available through Clean Sheets or
Amazon
Reviewed by Janice Callisa
(08/06/03)
I have to admit that I'd never considered tying my lover up and then using his erect cock to catapult M&Ms into his mouth. Never! Nor had I thought to read a good book while kneeling over his face and letting him service me. But I did know, along with Chris Bridges ("25 Things To Do To a Tied-Down Lover"), that chocolate laid on a man's chest will melt after while, and that it's great fun to lick it all up.
So next weekend I'm going to try the book trick, but I'm going to read out loud to him while he pleasures me, and I can't think of a more suitable book to read than From Porn to Poetry 2. I will make him laugh ("let me tell you the story of a girl named tomato who calls men nicknames like Bratwurst, Bacon, Sirloin"); I will make him even hotter by reading my favorite story that has a woman getting dommed into being tied in rope in a bathtub, and then later forced to look out the window up close on the 24th floor to deal with her fear of heights (Jane Duvall's "All I Want Is Everything"); and then maybe I can make him cry by reading Aria Williamson's essay ("Let's Roll") about loving a man in a wheelchair, even though it has a happy ending.
That's just one use for this fabulous book. Here's another -- use it to pick up people while traveling. I took From Porn to Poetry 2 with me on the train to Paris last week, and it's a magnet for sexy people wandering about. Men and women both paused to glance at the cover, several conversations were struck up about erotica, about poetry, about writing, and of course, about sex. These conversations are not started by dull folks, and all of them were quite fun. It's a handy multifaceted book -- I could be political ("here, you should read the poem called 'The General's Dream'"); I could be humorous and dirty at the same time ("try reading 'God of Fuck,' it's hilarious"); and in one case I read the poem "I Do" out loud, which will probably get you laid immediately just by the heat contained in it, with nary a dirty word to be found:
I want your legs to loop my waist,
your arms to hoop my kiss. Like...this.
I want to canter camelback
to saddle-vault and sally -- I do...
...I want the rush of mountains
in our arms. I do.
And then to laugh like tasseled bells.
Our eyes are spilling jewels.
Our plainsong throats.
I want I do. A peace
like horses, running on the hills.
I do. I do.
All of the sexy poetry in this book soars. The essays inform and entertain. And the twenty-two short stories are remarkable, with not a dud among them. There's a stunning story from Kim Addonizio about an ex-husband and remembering love that was almost painful to read in its intensity, but yet I had to go back and read it a second time just for the perverse pleasure of that. The sexiest film I've seen in years is reviewed beautifully ("Y Tu Mamá También"), and I'm going to set a new goal to become a charter member of Diane Fisher's "Lucky Dick Club."
So I recommend that you buy this book immediately and then go use public transit as often as possible and watch what happens. It's a bit like carrying Clean Sheets around with you, pocket-sized. Me, I've got From Porn to Poetry 2 packed permanently in my carrying case, to pop out at opportune times. I'll be flying trans-Atlantic next week (hours and hours of new possibilities), and will try to influence everyone I come across -- "What are you reading -- the usual murder and mayhem? Not me, I just go from porn to poetry." And, I do.
