Ken, "this odor of formalin" gets it exactly right. Hefner should be
entombed like Lenin.
> What would be really interesting...a portrait of Ann Coulter as a
former Playboy Bunny.
Is Ann Coulter a former Playboy bunny or does she just play one on TV?
Anyway, thanks for the good words--and thanks to Ivy too.
Rachel
----------------------------------------------------------
People that are really weird can get into sensitive
positions and have a tremendous impact on history.
--J. Danforth Quayle
Rachel Loden
The Richard Nixon Snow Globe:
http://www.wildhoneypress.com/BOOKS/RNSG.htm
[log in to unmask]
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Poetryetc provides a venue for a dialogue relating to
> poetry and poetics [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On
> Behalf Of Kenneth Wolman
> Sent: Saturday, July 02, 2005 5:29 AM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: my Hugh Hefner poem
>
>
> Rachel Loden wrote:
>
> >If you're so inclined, "Miss October" is at Poetry Daily today and
> >afterwards for a year in the archives.
> >
> >http://www.poems.com/today.htm
> >
> >(Apologies to anyone who's getting this announcement more
> than once. . .
> >. )
> >
> >
> Remarkable thing, this poem. Hefner about to be ferried
> across the Dark
> River in that barque...the thing smells of death the same way Hef has
> spent the last 20 years giving off this odor of formalin, which would
> suggest he was either a fire ant or a corpse. It actually reminds me
> quite a bit of the English Jacobeans, especially Webster.
> Eliot wasn't
> wrong when he talked about Webster seeing the skull beneath the
> skin--here too. A look at Hefner not as Mr. Suave who can please the
> women in their 20s who have flocked to his bed, but as
> someone to whom
> you give the feeling of rotting from the inside. Maybe a
> sort of Dorian
> Grey.
>
> Male point of view? Not everyone loved Hef. Not even people
> who used
> to whack off to the Playmate of the Month. Oh, most of us
> intellectual
> types read the stories by Roth, Malamud, Fuentes, or whoever
> got paid a
> shitload of money to write for the magazine. Yeah, right:-). Hefner
> created for many guys including mysel a world of envy, a world where
> someone was Getting More, and was getting it from untouchably
> beautiful
> women. Hefner cocooned himself (we didn't know that) in a persona of
> Mr. Urbanity with the pipe and smoking jacket and probably
> silver-plated
> reusable condoms. People hated Hefner but Playboy was addictive. It
> couldn't give you lung cancer but it could destroy reasoning.
>
> But the older I got...let's say over 25...the less interesting became
> the monthly Babe-a-licious offerings, the more styrofoamish and
> untouched by reality. Yet that's what Hefner
> sold...StyroBroads...artificial vaginas purchased from online sex toy
> outlets...strap-ons...nothing quite connected with anything
> else. The
> idea of calling what he wrote a "Philosophy" isn't so much
> insulting as
> outright pathetic, like this man thought/thinks he has
> anything to offer
> beyond "fuck early fuck often, make sure they're stupider
> than you are,
> and be sure you believe them when they fake an orgasm."
>
> What would be really interesting...a portrait of Ann Coulter
> as a former
> Playboy Bunny.
>
> Ken
>
> --
> Kenneth Wolman http://kenwolman.com
> http://kenwolman.blogspot.com
>
> --------------------------------------
> "Only silence is shame."--Bartolomeo Vanzetti
>
|