Oh, that I could by any chemic art
To sperm convert my spirit and my heart,
That at one thrust I might my soul translate
And in the womb myself regenerate!
There steeped in lust nine months I would remain,
Then boldly fuck my passage back again.
John Wilmot

Anthony Lane qoutes this in his review of the new Rochester biopic The Libertine. He wrote it at 14, or it was attributed to him (it must be remembered that every poem that mentions fucking that sort of lines up w. JW is claimed to him) The thing is, it is astonishing in its pornography, that is a give in, but there is somethng else.

i argued with lisa a few months back, that although his reputation as a libertine is well deserved, his work in the caroline theologic tradtition has been lost. i dont mean the few poems he made as a catholic sick w. the pox, i dont think he wrote those...i mean things like this.

this is like Donne or Suckling or the other carolines--working thru issues of coperality and incarnation. Where does humanity begin, where does god come in wrt sexuality...

in Rochester, the sexual act is an act of commune, literally--the act of sperm into vulva is an act of baptism, consceration, conversion...its a radical position to take.

i am reminded of the poem that he wrote about three people fucking--a man in the front and a man in the back, a woman in the middle...

the trinity, of course, but direct communication is not possible, the only way for intimacy is thru a third, an intereventionist god and an interventionsit sexauilty.

all of this sounds almost like a piss take, a way to be blashpemous, a critical reaction against god, and there has been people writing about rochester, who believe that (and the only way to be really blasphemous is to belive enough in the power of what one is destroying) but seeing this slight small poem, up front there seems to be something larger...