larryhammer: topless woman lying prone with a poem by Sappho painted on her back, label: "Greek poetry is sexy" (classics)
[personal profile] larryhammer
Chuffery abounding. Today's mail brought a contributor's copy of Rhymes for Adults, a chapbook anthology edited by Mary Alexandra Agner. A garland of some of the best young formalists of today, including A.E. Stallings,1 Peg Duthie, and Mike Snider. It's got sonnets of workplace seduction and existential depression, ballads about grown children living at home and the love-lives of endangered species, even a ballade with engineers watching a Hooters photo shoot. A sharp collection of strong, witty poetry.

My contribution is translations of seven dirty Latin epigrams from the Priapea:

Why look, you eager girls, with eyes askance?
   My prick does not stand hard and tall, but loose.
But though I have a lifeless wooden lance,
   Give me your altar—then I'll be of use.2

To give one example. Classical smut, replete with talking ithyphallic statues, blushing virgins, lusty matrons, and a justifiably unhappy apple tree.

You can purchase a copy here -- just $5 each, a tasty meal of a poetic deal.


1. I'm trying not to fanboy over being in a chapbook with A.E. Stallings. Is there any way to squee in a professional manner?

2. Obliquis quid me, pathicae, spectatis ocellis? / non stat in inguinibus mentula tenta meis. / quae tamen exanimis nunc est et inutile lignum, / utilis haec, aram si dederitis, erit. (Buecheler-Heraeus #73)


---L.

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