The Naughty Bits Read Online Free PDF Page A

most nail biting.
    Not innocently or guiltlessly do I excerpt the lines below—the most physically explicit part of the poem. They concern Lucrece’s breasts, which Tarquin sees and gropes while Lucrece is sleeping. In doing so he wakes her but also wakes a certainty that he will carry out his treacherous plan. My selection is not an endorsement; it is a chronicle. And if you find it arousing, let it remind you of the twin-edged power of the pen and the need to retain separation between reality and the outer corners of the imaginable.
    Her breasts, like ivory globes circled with blue,
A pair of maiden worlds unconquered,
Save of their lord no bearing yoke they knew,
And him by oath they truly honoured.
These worlds in Tarquin new ambition bred;
Who, like a foul ursurper, went about
From this fair throne to heave the owner out.
His drumming heart cheers up his burning eye,
His eye commends the leading to his hand;
His hand, as proud of such a dignity,
Smoking with pride, march’d on to make his stand
On her bare breast, the heart of all her land;
Whose ranks of blue veins, as his hand did scale,
Left there round turrets destitute and pale.
    They, mustering to the quiet cabinet
Where their dear governess and lady lies,
Do tell her she is dreadfully beset,
And fright her with confusion of their cries:
She, much amazed, breaks ope her lock’d-up eyes,
Who, peeping forth this tumult to behold,
Are by his flaming torch dimm’d and controll’d.
    Imagine her as one in dead of night
From forth dull sleep by dreadful fancy waking,
That thinks she hath beheld some ghastly sprite,
Whose grim aspect sets every joint a-shaking;
What terror or ’tis! but she, in worser taking,
From sleep disturbed, heedfully doth view
The sight which makes supposed terror true.
    His hand, that yet remains upon her breast,—
Rude ram, to batter such an ivory wall!—
May feel her heart-poor citizen!—distress’d,
Wounding itself to death, rise up and fall,
Beating her bulk, that his hand shakes withal.
This moves in him more rage and lesser pity,
To make the breach and enter this sweet city.

from Roughhouse
     
    THADDEUS RUTKOWSKI
    Although I normally find no ethical compromise in taking elitist potshots at all but the most rarefied of literary production, I can be won over by things outside the Norton Anthology. The stray song lyric strikes a chord (Cream’s “I’ll soon be with you my love / And give you my dawn surprise,” for example); once a blue moon I’m taken with something I read in a ’zine ( Bust has always been a favorite); and every odd year I find myself capable of taking in a little Charles Bukowski and the like. But most of the time, being an editor, I think that writers need an editor. And in some cases the editorlessness is all too pronounced.
    But perhaps it’s confession time. My virulence against mediocre writing is clearly backlash against the embarrassment I feel at my own earliest attempts. Truth be told, freshman year I arrived at my college dorm and, with a black indelible marker, proceeded to cover the walls in poems. And yes, Houston, they were bad. Real bad. Real good-god-does-anyone-still-remember bad. If memory allows me to dredge the floors of the great seas of shame, I believe that most of them were unapologetically Pink Floyd–inspired—as damning an epithet as could be attributed to any production of the pen. Had my roommate only been there to read them in advance, to help me see with an eye other than my own, then maybe I would have realized the error of my ways, capped the Mr. Marks-a-Lot and put up a few Vanilla Ice posters like everyone else.
    All this was running through my mind when a friend suggested I go see S/M slam poet Thad Rutkowski. My first thought: slam poetry, S/M slam poetry—now there’s a subgenre. And a subgenre it is, but not without bright spots. Rutkowski live was quite compelling, so I got my hands on his novel, Roughhouse. And though it’s clear that he, like Eliot, could have