Some Notes on "Winter Sex"

I was surprised to see Katy Lederer's Winter Sex, which was published in 2002, still on Jacket's list of unassigned book reviews. She is one of the more well-known of the new younger American poets, and I remember her first book as having gained much notice in the poetry world. This prompted me to go back and re-read the book, taking some notes with an idea that I might write up a review. I couldn't even make it through Jacket's style guide, however, so I'll just offer the following underdeveloped thoughts here in the public privacy of my unread blog.

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Both D.A. Powell (on the back cover) and Paul Stephens (in this review) link Lederer to Robert Duncan. And while such a connection is clearly evident in some poems, overall I read Lederer's Romanticism more in line with Wallace Stevens's contemplative poetry, especially as refracted through John Ashbery and even Ted Berrigan.

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Birds and trees figure prominently in Lederer's poems. They seem to suggest two sides of sexuality. The birds being the active, traditionally male aspect to the trees' passive, traditionally female aspect. From "Dulcinea": "The bird is the result of an expression of desire / and of refinement." Such connotative opposites as "desire" and "refinement" also appear frequently, as might be guessed of a book titled "Winter Sex".

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Since much of the book deals with sexual union, in all of its tenderness and violence, it's not surprising that there is a poem ("According to the Appetites") that reworks the creation myth of Genesis. The poem begins, appropriately, with Lederer's symbol of the Whitmanian "procreant urge of the world," birds: "Let birds, let fly / that it was good." Lederer also conjures up a Blakean prelapsarian world, where the good earth has "no rain, no no." Just those last two words imply a world where Reason has not yet writ "Thou shall not." A world about to be gone with the invitation in the next line: "When you touch delight, you will not die."

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For my money the best poem in the book, the poem which almost summarizes the whole of Lederer's main theme, and which, interestingly enough, is actually the title poem in disguise is "The Epithet Epic" (it can be found online in The Boston Review archives). The poem originally appeared in an earlier version in the seventh issue (way back in 1997) of the now defunct Mike and Dale's Younger Poets (but see Skanky Possum for Dale's [and wife Hoa's] current efforts) under the title "Winter Sex." The poem is a great example of Lederer's ability to deliver deadpan humor even as she maintains a sincere and serious investigation into eros, specifically, and "creative" urges in general. For instance, when the male character deems his ejaculant "epic": "It is early in the morning. When he comes he is ethical. / He will remember it. He will give it the epithet epic and leave it." That "he is ethical" only "when he comes" resonates later, in the second part of this two page poem, when "She tilts her head back and moans. She lilts her voice slightly and asks him if he loves her. / He does love her. He feels a very true love for her." In this poem we have perhaps the most satisfactory description of that welling up of emotion before orgasm which may be true or not.

The poem also achieves its effects by avoiding linear explication of the sex act, of which the literature is not lacking. The poem, like an epic (in another bit of subtle humor), begins in medias res, then digresses to a kind of violent courting scene, before shifting back to the moment at hand.

And here's a good example of revision at work, with lines "before" and "after":

      He commands her to speak in direct discourse.
      He indicates that he wants her to express her thoughts concisely and with precision.
      He finds this romantic.
      Most everything has remained unexpressed until this moment.
      They are in the country and her bodice has been cut with the knife that the two of them have previously purchased.
      Part of it hangs off her shoulder. In the distance she hears the sound of a gunshot.
      This makes her want to fuck the man.
            (from "Winter Sex", 1997)
 
      He commands her to speak in direct discourse.
      He indicates that he wants her to express her thoughts concisely and with precision.
      He finds this romantic.
 
      They are in the country and her bodice has been cut with the knife.
      Part of it hangs off her shoulder. In the distance she hears the sound of a gunshot.
      Their speech no longer serves them adequately.
            (from "The Epithet Epic", 2002)

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Some negatives:
      First, there's the issue, which is not Lederer's or Verse Press's alone, of not getting enough bang for your buck with contemporary poetry volumes, especially debuts. The last poem here is on p. 59, bad enough, but then you look and see that the Arabic pagination begins in the front matter with the half title, that's six pages. Then minus eight pages for part titles with blank backs and you're down to 45 pages of poetry. 36 poems, 45 pages, 12 dollars plus tax. Now, obviously, I didn't mind paying that much, but you can see why poetry is a tough sell, when a reader can pick up a 300 page trade paperback novel for just a little bit more.
      Second, some of Lederer's poems come off as little more than workshop exercises. They may not be, but that's the way some strike me (e.g. "An Interrupted Question" or "A New Way To Live"). If you were to offer me a choice between creativity and imagination, I will choose the latter every time. This is one of the problems, perhaps the main one, of the creative writing program: it encourages creative arrangements rather than imaginative inventions. It gives laurels to, say, James Tate, and leaves relatively unrecognized the likes of Robert Kelly, Clayton Eshleman, or Tom Clark.