De Beers Diabolique

Wow Will. I didn't visualize that ending coming. But I think I "get" it, I'm not brave enough to try to dissect poetry yet. But this does mean something to me, if that matters...

though i found the image vulgar, a plastic doll made from glass, the words were amazingy suitable, describing a decadence you seem familiar with..
i guess you are either not getting any action or can not get any satisfaction, either way i am feeling in a way blessed to have that age behind me when i cared more about that particular field of interest than anything else..well it was a short time anyway you reminded me of,. these days i am attending the news and feeling the world becoming more cruel and am feeling blessed that my ultimate test in life is no longer in the bedoire but rather in the ultimate test of standing for what i believe!

NOW, thats a full body condom!

Wonderfully erotic, Will..

Very intense imagery; it seems to take your mind in a few different directions—I see the woman first as someone you're trying to capture physically, then as someone you want to capture on canvas but can't get it right. The writing here is beautiful.

And on a completely different note: how lucky you were able to find an image of a woman in the rubber vaccuum bag. I only ever seem to see unattractive older men going in those things. Seeing the latex conforming to a beautiful female figure is gorgeous.

(on a completely related topic - this poem and picture have nothing at all to do with sexuality, or, more precisely, only the most tangential relationship to sexuality) - w

You do more with your "clotted paintbrushes
and second hand adjectives" than most.
There are so many images, shapes, colors and it IS erotic.
I love the last line. (Check out the typo-blamed.)
Vinegar and vanilla sum it up for me.
I love the alliteration and all the Vs
Will you be my valentine!?

Thanks for the heads up Jan - as for valentine - I'm not catholic, so the holiday means little to me.

Futility once again, only in a much different way this time. This was great, Will, and I like the picture except for the rubber tube. To me it looks like shiny, polished, dark glass and her prone position an invitation to her lover.

Will, excellent writing.. loved the alliteration in the beginning... and the ending... "flawed diamonds, dripping in crimson regret"... a great line... Excellent job! The pic of me has to go though... ;)

But Tina - that picture is the best I have of you.

I know, but you promised to keep that one a secret... the tube just choked me a little too much... and that bondage mask I make you wear... thats "our" little secret... Some things are better left unshown...

I have changed the image to be more "fitting" with the article.

Oh person with no name, no picture and no profile - where did you see the Modigliani exhibit? I would love to see that - definitely one of my favorite early 20th century artists.

Each time I consider a comment on a piece of your extended mind, I find myself intimidated, I think that's the word, by the sheerness and nearness of your words, and I ask myself, why the hell is that? And there is no answer, except perhaps my own insecurity about the honesty of my efforts. You always hit me in an honest frame, either that, or you are so fiendishly clever that you really only amuse yourself. I enjoy reading all that you write, even though I find at times an obscurity in your clarity. The sharpness of your images and the attack of your words engages my mind in an almost perplexing quest for understanding. I do not purport or care to analyse the words I read, but instead let them wash over and through me, tickling and nibling at my perceptive edge. You sir, are a very challenging and exhilarating read. Never predictable. Never trite. Never less than promised. always engaging. I'm a fan. You are a lesson in focused free flow and association for me. Enough. Methinks I blather.

Perry - you are hitting these words exactly the way they should be. Some could read these words with a dictionary and wikipedia at their fingertips - but I wouldn't. A better way is to see them almost as zen koans - perhaps there is nothing of meaning in the text but the reaction you feel, as the read - the real content is there, not buried in the structure of the sentences.

Obviously, my sickness has almost passed - no more NyQuil and hot tea for me. I just made a huge pot of vegatarian chili made with hot chili peppers I grew myself. That should clear out my congestion.

Thanks Perry.

Wow Jill, seems like you had quite a "walk-around-the-park" quite literally.

I like your new medication. But it's not an either/or proposition - a girl can have her art and drink it too!

Tina, you spoil all the fun. Will, glad you're feeling better and your chili sounds delicious!

Laurie never complained about the bondage mask :-)

LOL! Hey now you're spilling ALL the secrets. But you forget that I did...until you cut the hole out for your tongue.

With the picture changed to Modigliani from the previous pciture to protect the innocent (or not so innocent) some future visitors to this page may have no idea what we are bantering on about, but as to Laurie's last statement, I would refer you to her Entrance to the Magic Kingdom, specifically #8, which should be read, learned, and committed to memory by every man.

Thank you, Will. You are doing a good service for women everywhere. Perhaps I should create Chapter 2, "Once You've Passed the Gate." ;-)

will - this is just beautiful. i love the art intertwined with the sensual. whew!

Dammit - I try to be vulgar, and you call it beautiful. Fuck. Then I create beauty, and people call it obscene. I write profanity, and people call it spiritual. I just can't win.

American express is watching Will........Dark secrets are not the American way.......Tina and Laurie are taking you to the Dark side...........get your mind in the gutter and keep it there Mr. Evans..............

P.S. Will found this note in my P.F. flyers............

Very well written erotic poem ...

I hope people read Will's comment that this is NOT about sex even though it is about pygmalion longing and artificial prosthesis and the artist's indifferent regard for beauty through simalucra and William Gass' notion of the fidelity of mimesis in the replication of reality and Baudrillard's apercu that the play of seduction is
is more important than the object of desire.

If you're still confused by the copy of the copy of the Real, which is maya anyhow, and didn't get that from prima facie observation of Will's panurgic title for the poem, then I suggest you go to http://www.realdoll.com because you will always find the Modigliani lacking.

I entered this poem as a sybarite and exited its deceptive surface ( which is, in the purest mobius strip fashion, nothing but depth, and a moire pattern profundity at that) as a stoic.

The language recalls the supremely talented and confident Guillaume Apollinaire of ZONE and CALIGRAMMES, who was not only the precursor to Surrealism but whether Andre Breton would never admit it a vastly superior poet. Baudelaire comes to mind, as well, in his apotheosizing of the Caribbean whores that he manhandled so tenderly and who invoked in him unbearable desires for "Le Voyage" to places distant, exotic, tropical, and preferably diseased: Anywhere but the French street below him, where he could see sans culottes selling clochards two day old baguettes as if they were fresh from their diabolical ovens.

Jan Hersh's insightful comment on alliteration I second; since the subject of the imagined text object from the effigy of the actual model of the nude woman is her V's cathective power over the speaker, the use of "v" fronted words to vibrate about the void surrounding the vortex of psychological thrall is a gimcrack literary strategy of the first order.

The speaker makes a series of descriptive observations about her that show her collective power over his psyche. "She was veritas and vanilla, vaseline and vagina." Telling statement. In all the multiple interpretations possible--and the first several readers seemed to have inferred she must be a plastic, bedizened doll--no one has even considered the even more unwholesome possibility that this is a mystical psychopathic serial killer speaker in the poem, contemplating the woman he has just killed and necrophilically made love to, who now is regarding her rapturously and sadly in postcoital letdown which lends itself to cosmic consciousness, a meditation on his "necrotic bloom."

Of course, that morbid possibility is just another reading, and Will please disavow me if you think I am trangressing, but I think you wanted to leave this open to polyvalent ending, as I did with my "is it rape/murder or is it liberating ritual sonnet", ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE SIERRAS.

The fact is, she could be a live model as well, and Will is expressing the terminal boredom of a man and a woman trapped in the same room, no matter how suggestive the seemingly erotic context of the woman disrobed as a bejeweled "odalisque." She smokes a cheroot, (unless the killer put it between her lips) and in highly figurative language (which could be taking place in the speaker's mind) she "blamed then/devoured my strong ancestors:/she who left Christ crying and gasping for breath. " The stakes of the poem are very high; it is a battle for the poet's wholeness, his hermaphroditic soul, anima and animus facing off in the field of the painter's art.
The ending is mournful and bleak; this particular speaker sees continuation of his painterly quest to represent female beauty as only " a glassy cold pit."

The image of diamonds dripping not tears, but blood, almost confirms my own failed pygmalion psycho killer analysis in the most bloodcurdling of ways. DIABOLIQUE, incidentally, was the name of a Claude Chabrol film about killing a woman, but she doesn't die, so she has to be killed again. It made most of Hitchcock's films look like child's play.

However you read it, this poem is an indisputable masterpiece that extends the grand "poet maudit infernal" tradition from French letters into the American vernacular in a spectacular way. Will Evans no longer needs to pretend he is a dilettante in quest of a poetic voice, it is obvious to this reader he is one of the handful of major poets on Gather.

And beautiful or repugnant, aesthetic or barbaric, exquisite or prurient, in the eyes of the readers of this poem, NOBODY--except of course the SLOBBERING CRETIN who remains MINDLESS and FACELESS and consistently drops '1's cuz once upon a time we booted him from our midst, and flamed this well-cut gem meant to "last forever"--can deny the power, the force, and the absolute grandeur of this artistic lament. Congratulations, Will.

And for those of you who think my comments are overlong and I should just say, "Will, how beautiful," I am trying to do justice to a work of art that is deliberately complex, multi-faceted, shadowy and luminous, paradoxical, life-affirming, and at the same time more dangerous in spirit than Lautreamont's Maldoror.

I have recently noticed a few comments suggesting I write less on people's articles, and I will simply reply the way General Anthony did back in 1944 when surrounded in the Nazi bulge: "NUTS!"

Ooooo, lala...erotic....

Juan dice que tu eres uno de los poetas y escritores con mas talento en Estados Unidos. Cuando voy a conocerte aqui en Andalucia?
Vas a venir a ver a Juan?
Puedes quedarte con nosotros en un pueblo cuando no estas en el piso de Juan.
Un abrazo.

Casi olvidaba decirte que tu poema es muy bueno, aunque solo pueda entender la mitad con este programa de traduccion que tengo. Pero la mitad de tu poema vale mas que cinco de otros poetas.

A Gustave Klimt might have been more a propos mon vieux. Loved it Will. Kiss me now or lose me forever!

smooches, Ludi!

Tongues?

Speaking of which - best damn picture of you yet - RocheMuncher - almost - um, whats the word?

the word of the day is rug muncher... take it as you will, will...

There is nothing wrong with rug munching.

There is something wrong with the Rochemuncher, however

Whomever ludo wants to munch is fine by me... but if its you, john and ludo going at each other... I'm getting a ticket for the front row.

NOW you tell us, Tina. The day is almost over. Speaking of which...I did write List #2 :). This reminds me of a funny South Park episode...

List number #2 - excellent. But - Will needs sleep, perchance to dream - he's been up since 4, and he needs to recharge if he'll be any use to anyone tomorrow - which is not bloody likely.

Don't worry Laurie.. I'll get you a ticket too... I think I know the episode you are referring to.... But for now, the sandman is beckoning me to sleep.... manana...

speaking of munching - when i last took Tina to the park I told her I must get some new glasses and she said" Yes, you've been munching grass for the last half hour Ludo!"

Yup bedtime for me, too. Sleep? Who needs sleep? Apparently we all do.

Tina, order a pitcher of Sangria and I'm there (although I may have to cover my eyes if things gets too out of hand).

Will, John: I am happy to revisit this poem and John's comment. All kidding aside, this is an amazing poem regardless of image (i liked them both)
You rock Will...even if you don't get my first comment.
Valentine mine, you are in my Vocabulary.