Sex, art, poetry and more sex

An old creative writing teacher in college once said that one of the best ways to exercise the writing muscles was try to compose love poems, love verses being almost generic to the medium. But there were several pitfalls involved, because the beginner must try to steer clear of the cliché, the trite and outright sentimental in dealing with the most primal of emotions.

Enter now Eros Pinoy, an anthology of contemporary erotic poetry and art published by Anvil late last year. Edited by veteran lotharios Alfred Yuson, Pandy Aviado and Ben Cabrera, the book is a landmark of sorts in the Philippine literary and art scene, though in the early ’80s the Philippine Literary Arts Council, of which Yuson is a founding member, came out with a special issue of its poetry journal Caracoa devoted entirely to eros.

Some familiar names resurface in Eros Pinoy, identified as hardy survivors of the sex wars, such as Peque Gallaga and Agnes Arellano, as well as holdovers from PLAC still chasing the naked muse after all these years –Ricardo de Ungria, Eric Gamalinda, Luisa Igloria nee Aguilar-Cariño.

The obvious edge the recent publication has over the Caracoa issue, which was the runaway bestseller of all the issues if audits are correct, is that it incorporates art as much as poetry in the celebration of the sex act, with only Arellano as the common denominator in both projects, her husband Michael Adams being a patron of PLAC in the old days.

Eros Pinoy is a coffee-table book going at P850 per copy, a pretty penny in this age of crisis and austerity. And as in any coffee-table book, the graphics are what one notices first.

Danny Dalena dusts off his "Alibangbang" collection to lend an a-go-go ambiance to the proceedings: dancers from the joint beneath the Farmers Market overpass in Cubao come alive again long after the original club burned down.

Bencab and Aviado, no mean pair of artists, rummage through tattered sketchbooks to come up with pen and ink and line drawings of the erotic. For the two of them, the simpler the better, or shall we say less is more.

The other artists represented give us an idea of the massive scale of the material in more ways than one, so that we have sculptors Ed Castrillo and National Artist Napoleon Abueva with works that play on the dynamics and historic acrobatics (or acrobatic histrionics) of sex, including Abueva’s depiction of the National Hero Jose Rizal in bed with Josephine Bracken.

The Paris-based Juvenal Sanso has several drawings of old couples engaged in varied sex positions, possibly meant to titillate or celebrate the geriatric set; indeed for some people life begins at 70.

R.M. de Leon and Federico Sievert essay in their respective drawings a blurred missionary position and a "69" that is like a tantric riddle, the lovers’ heads literally getting buried in the other’s organ.

National Artist J. Elizalde Navarro’s line drawings are likewise provocative in its kama sutra leanings, with a sketch of what looks like a dog licking a women’s pudenda thrown in for good measure, or am I just seeing things?

A photograph by Wig Tysmans showing a naked woman playing with a big dog is suggestive of doggy style, if not bestiality, while Red Mansueto’s rendering of a masturbating school girl further straddles the thin line between art and pornography, or perhaps frustrated Penthouse magazine fantasies.

The poems themselves are a rich and dizzying lot, with De Ungria leading the way in his patent vocalizing in verses which are best appreciated if performed before a live audience, the poetic equivalent of a toro, with Marley’s Wailers as background music.

The old-timers get into the act with National Artists Francisco Arcellana and Edith Tiempo contributing a poem each, obviously understated but no less sensual than the other entries, while Hilario Francia digs up Tagalog sayings on the art of love, which he translated into English.

The gays, too, are represented in the works of Danton Remoto and J. Neil Garcia, as well as a resurgent lesbian or two, for sex or love or the art thereof should know no bounds or restrictions, because that after all is the purpose for such a formidable collection as Eros Pinoy.

Among the younger poets, Lilledeshan Bose is notable for her straight ahead explanations on why the persona in her poem and the lover should not have it out, which paradoxically makes the reader egg them all the more to get on with it.

A pity that Marra Lanot’s poem suffers from a typographical glitch that unceremoniously abbreviates the poem, forcing the editors and publisher to insert the completed version, which appears like a misplaced bookmark: is this erotica as performance art?

Eros Pinoy, a quite provocative volume of art and poetry, is likely to stir up just a mild debate on the uses and limitations of erotica, but only because we live in an age when nothing seems to shock anymore, and not due to mere cynicism.