Peter Michelson

This book studies the literary and cinematic functions of the pornographic as a development from a poetics of obscenity. It focuses on the developments of French, British, and American artistic pornography since the eighteenth century. Discussing female literary figures including Hall, Wharton, Nin, "Reage," Jong, and Shulman; such men as Cleland, Sade, Beardsley, Lawrence, Joyce, and Miller; and film makers such as Brakhage, Jack Smith, Bruce Conner, Bertolucci, Oshima, and Wertmuller; Michelson analyzes both the use of aesthetic pornography and the philosophical, cultural, and legal implications of its use. He proposes that realizing the obscene --in the sense of speaking the unspeakable-- is the principle aesthetic function of pornography.

A Poetics of Obscenity

Speaking the Unspeakable

This book studies the literary and cinematic functions of the pornographic as a development from a poetics of obscenity. It focuses on the developments of French, British, and American artistic pornography since the eighteenth century. Discussing female literary figures including Hall, Wharton, Nin, Reage, Jong, and Shulman; such men as Cleland, Sade, Beardsley, Lawrence, Joyce, and Miller; and film makers such as Brakhage, Jack Smith, Bruce Conner, Bertolucci, Oshima, and Wertmuller; Michelson analyzes both the use of aesthetic pornography and the philosophical, cultural, and legal implications of its use. He proposes that realizing the obscene in the sense of speaking the unspeakable is the principle aesthetic function of pornography.

The Eater

Edward Dorn

“Ed Dorn’s achievement has been to create single-handedly a language of public reference, and to have brought within the sphere of expressive language and poetic experience objects and feelings which had been, literally, unimaginable in those terms. It is in this context that he is one of the masters of our contemporary language.” —Peter Ackroyd “Ed was one of the most thoughtful but penetrating thinkers. There was no PollyAnna in him at all. And that’s what I liked about him.” —Amiri Baraka Along with Charles Olson, Robert Creeley, Allen Ginsberg, Denise Levertov, William Carlos Williams, and others, Edward Dorn taught at and became associated with the Black Mountain school in North Carolina. Although influenced by Charles Olson, Dorn’s poetry was really like no other’s. The Virginia Quarterly Review called him “an experienced and accomplished poet who has absorbed Olson, Williams, and Pound and moved beyond them.” This book is especially important for the way it synthesizes Dorn’s views on poetic experimentation, the distinction between consciousness and sensibility, and “heretical” intellection, which is to say the components of his poetics of aggression.

Peter Michelson

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