Sabin Howard’s ‘Sculpting Gods’ by N. MacKay – The New Criterion
· ·

Sabin Howard’s ‘Sculpting Gods’ by N. MacKay – The New Criterion

Posted on:

Sabin Howard’s ‘Sculpting Gods’ by Neilson MacKay – The New Criterion

Great article!

Sabin Howard has found his way into these pages before. Back in 2007James Panero visited the sculptor’s studio tucked away in the South Bronx. Last Thursday The National Arts Club raised the curtain on Howard’s latest exhibition, Sculpting Gods, showing through January 15 in the Marquis Gallery. It’s easy to see why The New York Times calls Howard “a sculptor of immense talent,” creator of “some of the last decade’s most substantive realistic sculpture.” Never mind the last decade. Howard’s work indubitably takes its place among the best examples of classical realism America has seen in half a century.

Entering Sculpting Gods, you’d be forgiven for thinking you had stumbled into Cellini’s studio. Busts of deities watch over figures crouched in deep repose. Rippling physiques meet eyes fixed earthwards in inert cogitation. An imperturbable Hermes holds his arms aloft without his Caduceus, the snake coiled around his wrist, eyes locked on the far distance.

beautifulgallery

· · ·

Sex in literature today

Posted on:

Reviewer Katie French of Underground Book Reviews sent me a smart list of questions for a blog interview that will run in the new year.

 
One of her questions was what I thought about sex in literature. Here’s part of my answer.

************
Well, that’s complicated. I like sex in literature. I like sex in general, you know, with my husband (or myself). Sex is good.
 
In fiction, I prefer intelligent sex, that is, well-written and truthful to the human experience. Kinky, sure, bring it; silly and implausible, no. 

If you are asking my take on Fifty Shades of Grey, I admit that I think it’s a stupid piece of crap that does nothing to help women’s sexuality be understood or embraced. The protagonist is a male fantasy: an inane virgin who climaxes effortlessly, no matter what he does to her. Why have women accepted this ridiculous character as some version of themselves? I do not understand, nor do I approve.
 
I’m not saying that sex has to be politically correct. The best sex I’ve ever had was extremely politically incorrect. It’s an unfortunate part of the human experience that sex that transgresses can be so darn good.

I also think that, for most women, to fall off the cliff into bliss requires surrender. Surrender is difficult, especially in the current climate, in which women are supposed to be star neurosurgeons as well as perfect mothers raising perfect kids and, at the same time, loving wives with the bodies of 23 year olds, because of all the time spent at the gym. That’s a pretty butch expectation of women. It sucks. So here we are supposed to be superwomen, yet one of the deep truths about our sexuality is that it requires surrender.
 
I’m not talking about climbing on top, throwing a leg over, and riding real hard. I’m talking about something else: an internal state of surrender. The payoff is huge, but the stakes are high, and this is difficult. 
 
For one, our culture often confuses surrender with submission, and the two couldn’t be further apart. For two, a man has to be strong enough to be a top, and gentle enough for a woman to trust him to be a top; that seems to be a big request to make of men. 
 
For three, our culture still has issues with female orgasm. It’s partly the residue of Victorian puritanism. It’s partly about control, because men seem to find the female orgasm mysterious and uncontrollable. They fear it; they fear not bringing it about; they fear what it says about their own manhood. And, my god, what if another man gave the woman they own an orgasm???
 
I think Wilhelm Reich was on to something: a healthy organism has a healthy orgasm. Is it any wonder he was imprisoned, when he was saying something so revolutionary as that women too should have orgasms? How could the male establishment let him run around freely spreading ideas like that?
 
But the plain truth is that women like to have orgasms. So Fifty Shades, which is very much, despite its stupidity, pro female orgasm, struck a chord with women. The gorgeous sexy kinky wounded billionaire spanks the heroine into orgasm: yay! It’s not her fault she had an orgasm, he spanked her into it. Or tweaked her nipple, or whatever. She can have her orgasm and enjoy it too.
 
Isn’t that something every woman wants?
************

Re-reading my response, I think I have an answer to my final question. 

What women want is to own their own sexuality, and to be able to surrender freely, as they choose.

That’s one of the problems I have with Fifty Shades. It appears, superficially, to empower women by allowing them to imagine non-vanilla sex. But what it actually does is deprive them of the power to surrender themselves into orgasm from inside themselves.
 6695493-fine-art-nude-portrait-of-a-young-woman
Lip Service by M.J. Rose
· · · ·

Lip Service by M.J. Rose

Posted on:

Lip Service by M.J. Rose
Recently I was in Portland, Oregon for a wedding. I went alone because my husband had work stuff and anyway, someone had to stay with our little one.

Early in the afternoon, with several hours to spare before the much-anticipated headline event, I wandered down to the university area to check out the farmer’s market.

The sun shone, warm and yellow, through a high sibilant canopy of rich emerald leaves. The air was playful on my skin. I meandered through stalls of glistening red raspberries, juicy bursting blueberries, and gleaming purple blackberries ready to squish open on my tongue. There were heads of pale green fennel so fragrant and sweet, and rows of perfect round tomatoes, and long ripe squash… I was soon a little soft in my knees.

I found myself breathing faster and deeper. I felt both vaguer and keyed up, all at once.

A fantasy like a ball of yarn unraveled in my mind. I say ‘mind’ not ‘head’ because my whole body was involved, in the most emollient way.

I was walking indoors with a man I know, someone I hadn’t thought of in this most interesting context. We were inside and we were alone and he leaned down and wove his fingers through my hair. Then he pulled me close to his body, which was warm and taut.  When he kissed me, his mouth tasted salty but also sweet.

There was more, which led me back to my hotel room and some private moments. After a luxuriant nap, I texted my husband: “Really REALLY wish u were here.”

This lush diversion led me into some pleasant reveries: a memory of lying on a couch in the sun in Cape Cod, with the smell of bayberry thicket and sea on the wind, and the wonderful release I’d enjoyed then; a night early in our relationship that I’d spent telling my then-boyfriend-now-husband funny stories that were not G-rated, and which evolved into the kind of sweaty, rollicking good time I usually only read about; a sense of wonder at the pleasure and power inherent in sensual fantasy.

Reading MJ Rose’s delicious and often poignant and always intelligent “Lip Service” has brought all this back to me.

1087050