Erudite Dirt --- not erotica but let's pile it here for now.

Dirty Poetry comes in many types but, like all poetry, little of it is intellectually satisfying. This forum is for that little. Some in EJ Burford's Bawdy Verse, such as the take-offs on Pope attributed to Wilkes (An Essay on Women and Cunno Opt. Min.), is such. There are pinnacles of Grossness to be scaled but truly good books on/of limericks are rare (I only know of one, a wee numbered collection by Robin Douglas -- unfortunately, i have no copy and, if Touchstones is correct, he is not in the LT collection (anyone?). 18-19c Japanese dirty senryu are as gross as limericks and more than make up for the lack of rhyme in pun, allusion and riddles. I introduce 1,300 of them to English speakers in my just-out book, but am finding it very hard to define the content in English. Few are bawdy, many are black humor, hardly any are erotic . . . I say this because I hope to get some reader input early on from people who mine the erudite dirt I mention. I sent some copies in to LT (not as many as proper for I am a pauper) and cannot wait to hear how they stack up against other books in the field. I will make mine a separate forum if there is interest. Ah one question, to start off with: I have not read another book (not Burford's) I have seen mentioned on the net, "When Word is made Flesh" or something like that. How do they compare? Sorry for the messy start!

The latest encounter I have had with erotic poetry is a work I bought at the Baltimore Book Festival, in September 2008, called 'Libidacoria, in a Plain Brown Wrapper' by Kristie LeVangie. It appears to be self-published and is graphic about an erotically charged woman who does not want to wait for a man to take her but starts being assertive herself before surrendering to his, sometimes cruel, erotic domination and physical demands, not all of which she enjoys, but loves to be the object of. She apparently yearns to be totally wanted, used, invaded, possessed and helpless.

Lecherous Limericks by Asimov. What hasn't he written?

That certainly did look like a bit of vanity publishing that you would expect to be rare. But no. I looked at abebooks and nine shops had copies for sale, some of them in U.K. and some in U.S.A., and one in Australia. I published some titles like that many years ago and I have never seen any of them on sale anywhere. They were limited to a few copies of each title, never exceeding 30. I know that some people destroyed their copies when the books were all banned, but some people must have kept them. These books were published by Postbooks Company. Glen Ralph

Why would anyone want to destroy a book that someone has banned?

People do strange things when they think they are under threat....

Surely a banned book is the sort you would squirrel away somewhere safe... its future value due to rarity would be mtoivation enough, one would think....

That's a good question. The fact that the book was banned would lead you to expect that its selling price would rise. But, at the time the position with regard to erotic books was the worst it had ever been in the history of Australia. Police and Customs were working to stamp out all indecent material and was really a witchhunt. My home was raided by 2 policemen of the most ignorant description and they seized books right and left if they looked or smelt indecent. One book, which was entitled "The House at Pooh Corner," atttracted the eye of the senior detective. "Is that a dirty book?" he asked. He saw "Josephus" on the shelf and regarded it with suspicion. Many titles in French went in their bag, and they took "The Muria and their Ghotul" by Verrier Elwin (I never got it back) and "Des Divinités Génératrices" by J. A. Dulaure, and they seized with great triumph the manuscripts of my translations of the "Kama Sutra" and a little French book entitles "Jupes excitantes," but didn't worry about the original, which I still have. A number of other people in the city were raided at that time and people were being brought before the courts and charged with offences relating to indecent matter. People who had bought my books were on my mailing list, which was taken by the police, and I told them all. Some people told me they had desrtroyed their copies. As far as I know, nobody was raided by the police. It took me a long time to replace the books that were not returned. The serial publications that were taken were irreplacable. There was certainly great fear in the community at that time. Although I was not fined I stopped writing, and it was nearly 20 years before I wrote another book. I still have copies of the books that were condemned and destroyed and one day I may issue new editions. I hope that explains the matter. Glen Ralph

I must admit to a being a little careless in my remark having forgotten what it was like in the late sixties (given I was just a young thing)

I do remember a most remarkable incident involving my neighbour - he was in his first year of university at the time. I met him on the way home from school one afternoon and he was carrying a brown paper bag with a book in it. With the innocence of a 14 year old I asked him what he was reading - he blushed heavily and stuttered - searching for a reply.

Eventually he admitted to having just purchased a copy of D H Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover. So? I asked. It had only just come off the banned list and it was a book that was regarded as being a corrupter of the moral standards of our young and impressionable. It wasn't something you were safe to admit you owned. He had a list of friends waiting in line to borrow his copy as soon as he had finished it!

Three years later I was reading the likes of Henry Miller and Xaverier(sp?) Hollander - Lady Chatterley's Lover might have been considered scandalous and bannable by some but it wasn't by me.

I guess the modern comparison is internet porn and the police taking away hard drives to search for evidence of "foul play"!

Thanks, Jim, for the LeVangie reference.

Glen, you don't say when this Australian repression period was ... Could you give more information, please? Was it driven by some event, legislative or otherwise, or politician? And how did it end? I have heard it said that erotic books are hard to find in the Antipodes. Is this cultural, driven by the moral repression of the populace, or related to some legal structure?

You have my deepest sympathy regarding your losses. I assume there was no point in your complaining, or requesting receipts ...?

I am always keenly aware that this form of legislation is usually allowed eventually to become dormant, but it is always there 'on the books', to swing into repressive action if there is some moral shift, or if someone in authority wants a way to give an individual a hard time. UK recently enacted legislation that would allow confiscation of materials depicting erotic flagellation ... spanking, etc ... because it is 'violence against the person'. This despite the probability of consensuality, or indeed the bookshelf popularity of the practice (as yet uncurbed, try motorway services!).

Fortunately, attention of the enforcers is currently directed at the internet ...

Hi, Jim,

I just wanted to thank you for telling people about my book, Libidacoria: In a Plain Brown Wrapper. I was turned down by several publishers for my use of language, but decided in the end not to sacrifice the semantically jolting nature of the work by censoring the content.

If anyone is interested in securing a copy, I am selling them through my website (www.libidacoria.com) or through eBay (Seller name shades_of_k).

I'm off to check out some of the other works referenced in this discussion.

Kristie

So far, Kristie, I've only sampled, not read. But yours is a significant achievement, to have charted the wilder shores so well, both within and without.

For lily-livered publishers to have been shocked, when none of your words cannot be found, ankle-deep, on any top shelf, is a compliment, however unwelcome.

They obviously take you seriously.

Congratulations!
.

Thank you very much. And if you want the full experience, I would be glad to sign all copies sold through the Libidacoria site or my eBay seller account.

I like "charted the wilder shores." It's truly fitting.

Kristie

For another tale about a woman who does not deny her yearning to be totally Possessed, see THE SURRENDER: An Erotic Memoir (2004) by Toni Bentley, the true story of woman who finally realized that it was foolish, and unnatural, to try to deny her need to be totally owned and used by the man she loved beyond reason. She found her greatest joy and satisfaction in surrendering not just to him, but to her own nature and desires. This is not a romance, and not for those of delicate sensibilties.

Once upon a time when I was hot stuff in Japan, I was approached by a reader at a book-signing in front of the oldest bookstore in Ginza (Tokyo) and asked to produce a book I had never heard of. He insisted it was my book and I told him that a book is not a baby and a man cannot forget making one and disappeared into the store and came out with a book by one "Robin Gill." I signed it to humor the fan-atic. It was by an English theologian and is one reason why I chose to use my middle initial when writing in English. But, to tell the truth, I did forget starting this topic!

Eventually, I hope to check out the books mentioned, but to be safe, please let me rudely remind participants that I am aiming for erudite dirt.

Fool that I am (it is even in my Japanese pen-name 敬愚if you are Asian language enabled), I did not give the name of my book, The Woman Without a Hole (or "Octopussy, Dry Kidney & Blue Spots" which fails to load here) -- you have a choice of two title names for one book. I have no decent reviews in English, but I know a professor quoted a poem from the chapter on "The Isle of Woman" and a delightful letter from a German translator of erotica I will put below as this message is hopping around.

> > Dear Mr. Gill,
> >
> > I normally don't annoy authors, but I simply need to tell you how happy
> your "woman without a hole"-book made me. It's so interesting, funny and
> well-presented, I loved it to bits, and I don't even speak Japanese.
> > (perhaps I should add that I translated (and published, which was kind
> of not easy) Lord Rochester's poetry into German; which makes me, kind of, a
> colleague?)
> >
> > Thank you very much!
> >
> > Christine Wunnicke

Christine was kind enough to write I could use her words as pr.
And, I, having seen her translation of Rochester am honored. Though my only knowledge of German comes via the Swedish I learned while working on freightors, it is so lively, I can well understand why her translation was reviewed in a major paper and the book reprinted by a major publisher.

Other things:

Glen Ralph they mentioned they took "The Muria and their Ghotul" by Verrier Elwin (I never got it back). For anyone who has not studied that subject, let me say that the Muria of -- was it NW india? --- had teenagers rotate their sleeping arrabngements so that ugly girls and weak boys got to sleep with the the beautiful and the strong and, guess what, the culture has almost zero rapes etc. -- i simplify, but let me just say it is one of the cultures i would introduce if/when i ever get to do the sequence to Benedict's Patterns of Culture.

And, re Australian repression, I believe you but it is hard to imagine! I had great help from an Australian friend with my dirty senryu book and was amazed at the openness and vocabulary.

ps my book can be viewed 100% free at Google Books. It could use a review by an adult with a sense of humor!

I cannot help but give you a few lines from Christine's translation:

In the isle of Britain, long since famous grown,
For breeding the best cunts of Christendom
There reigns, and oh! long may he reign and thrive,
The easiest King and best-bred man alive.

In Britannien, wo der Christenheit
schonste Fotzen wachsen weit und breit,
regeiert, und oh! auf dass er lang regier,
der liebste Konig, beste Kavalier.

Pardon the loss of the double-dots.

Peace is his aim, his gentleness is such,
And love he loves, for he loves fucking much.

er will auf Friede und auf Freude blicken,
er liebt die Liebe, denn er liebt das Ficken.

The before and after of the lines changes a bit so this is not fair to the translator, but I trust you can see that she is the all-too-rare live translator.

I shall now see if Library thing is linked up to Germany:

John Wilmot Earl of Rochester Der beschadigte Wustling.

Nope! I tried but all I got was Graham Greene's Lord Rochester's Monkey. I removed the brackets but as I write this the Monkey* remains. We shall see.

ps my penultimate book has a monkey's paw on the cover.

I see a mention of Australia here as regards banning etc. My story is from a different place but has interesting aspects. South Africa, where I live, had not only an Apartheid regime, but also a strong Calvinist tradition as regards sexuality. Subsequently there was absolutely no erotica that could be openly read nor even any nudity shown. Nipples were an absolute no no and so many films were banned it was a joke. There is even a member, BannedBooksLibrary, who has tagged http://www.librarything.com/catalog/BannedBooksLibrary&tag=Censoring+Body%3A....
Subsequently on growing up in the sixties and seventies it was a hilarious trying to obtain books. My quest started at about 15 and my fellow schoolmates passed around dog ear copies that sometimes had chucks of pages missing. Some of these were hardly very erotic but had “passages that described sex”. I read The Carpetbaggers with 50 pages missing. But I did get to read some books that were, not to my knowledge, classics. I read Miller, Cleland and a number of other Victorian Erotica. Where they got it from I never knew. Later in the 70,s and 80’s I scoured bookshops that sometimes had flaunted the laws to find anything vaguely sexual. Over time I managed to accumulate quite a few well known books, Nin, Walter etc as well as a number of American novels that hardly anyone has on their lists.
You must remember that the banning extended to authors such as Lisa Alther, John Updike, Tom Sharpe and even our own Nadine Gordimer. The list was endless even Playboy, Penthouse and any other magazine of that Ilk were also banned.

I have a problem on how to tag a number of books on my list and maybe I can use some help. If you read my other post on erotica in South Africa you will see that books were banned on a regular basis because of a few erotic passages. They were only bought because that was available and in a society that had restrictions you took what you could find. These were sometimes available for a few days from one or two booksellers before they were removed from the shelf. I am honest enough to list these and see that mostly there are fewer than 2 or 3 readers. They were hardly literature but merely pulp (mostly) American novels published in mass for an audience that wanted a bit of titillation. I am new here (10 days only) and have started tagging but am at a loss what to call these. As no one has them on their list I cannot get any idea of what tag to use. If you look at my list you may have a suitable suggestion.

Hi Jim

Here is a link.

http://www.libidacoria.com/index_files/writings.htm

Norman Douglas was an interesting person, one execrated and exiled for his occasionally candid displays of affection. No naughty library should lack a copy of his verse collection, Some Limericks. Many of these some are really really naughty -in the vein of John Wilmot.

Douglas:

http://www.cypherpress.com/books/somelimericks/somelimericks.pdf

>20 Randy_Hierodule: Atlas press put out a neat little paperback edition of Some Limericks recently, designed to their usual high standards - the perfect gift!

Especially with Father's Day this Sunday!

I wonder what Sylvia Plath used to give her Dad?