Seven Hundred Kisses by Lily Pond
book 58: Seven Hundred Kisses by Lily Pond
This is an anthology of erotic literature (short stories and poetry) put out by the editor of Yellow Silk, which is evidently a magazine that caters to promoting erotic literature. It has some major authors in it, like Tobias Wolff, Jane Smiley, Dorothy Allison, and Walter Mosley, but for the most part I was unimpressed. It's not meant to be titilating, like pulp erotica. The works have more weight and have more variety of purpose than just causing arousal. At the same time, I guess I'm not into reading things that are primarily about sexual love without 1) purposefully looking to get off (although even then reading stuff rarely does it for me) or, more importantly, 2) having a primary story that is not focused on the sex. Don't get me wrong. I can enjoy a good sex or romantic love scene in a novel, but I really need something more as a background to support the act, if you understand what I mean. Some of these do have other themes: loss, freedom, understanding, but for the most part they didn't really capture my imagination well. Well, live and learn. I now know that I'm not really into erotica, even if they try to dress it up in literary words. If I have to pick a few that I thought were worthwhile: the poem Coyote and the Shadow People by E. Beth Thomas (about loss through death and undeniable longing), the poem July Lover by D. Nurkse (has a nice subtle insistency), and Pushing Me into the Past by Richard Zimler (found this fairly erotic, I always wonder why gay erotica is so appealing to some heterosexual women, like myself).
This is an anthology of erotic literature (short stories and poetry) put out by the editor of Yellow Silk, which is evidently a magazine that caters to promoting erotic literature. It has some major authors in it, like Tobias Wolff, Jane Smiley, Dorothy Allison, and Walter Mosley, but for the most part I was unimpressed. It's not meant to be titilating, like pulp erotica. The works have more weight and have more variety of purpose than just causing arousal. At the same time, I guess I'm not into reading things that are primarily about sexual love without 1) purposefully looking to get off (although even then reading stuff rarely does it for me) or, more importantly, 2) having a primary story that is not focused on the sex. Don't get me wrong. I can enjoy a good sex or romantic love scene in a novel, but I really need something more as a background to support the act, if you understand what I mean. Some of these do have other themes: loss, freedom, understanding, but for the most part they didn't really capture my imagination well. Well, live and learn. I now know that I'm not really into erotica, even if they try to dress it up in literary words. If I have to pick a few that I thought were worthwhile: the poem Coyote and the Shadow People by E. Beth Thomas (about loss through death and undeniable longing), the poem July Lover by D. Nurkse (has a nice subtle insistency), and Pushing Me into the Past by Richard Zimler (found this fairly erotic, I always wonder why gay erotica is so appealing to some heterosexual women, like myself).