A winner from discontent Corinne's imagery of ocean, earthquake, explosion lifts the reader from those specifics, bridging intimate and outer worlds. — BY ANNDEE HOCHMAN dreams, and an allegorical relationship beteen a character called Woman in Love and her lover. Dreams of the Woman Who Loved Sex: Desire. A Collection, by Tee Corinne (Banned Books, Corinne explains in the introduction that her 1987, $7.95). urge to depict women’s sexuality grew out of discontent with existing material. The erotica rying to review a book of erotica is like she read while growing up — from Lady Chat- reading a lavish and detailed restaurant terly's Lover to Delta of Venus — included menu straight through from martinis to mousse — both too much and too little. A menu, after nothing with a lesbian focus, and the lesbian erotica she discovered later existed only “ in fragments and flashes.” Art was Corinne's first medium to fill the need for positive images of women loving women. A coloring book of her drawings, all, isn’t meant to be devoured at one sitting, yet Labiaflowers, was published by Naiad Press in to do so leaves one a little hungry for the 1981. One well-known Corinne photograph of real thing. two women making love, which became a That whetting of the appetite is one plain Sinister Wisdom cover and later a poster, purpose of erotica, and Tee Corinne does so demonstrates her vision and insight. In the successfully in Dreams of the Woman Who solarized photograph, the faces of the two Loved Sex. Corinne writes in the introduction women are not visible, but the shadow-forms of that she created the stories she wanted to read: their bodies, rimmed in light, suggest a world of “ sexy stories that encouraged me to feel good passion. It is an explicit photograph, remark­ about myself.” The sexuality depicted in able for what it leaves out as well as for what it Dreams is richly explicit, frank, thorough, depicts. unafraid. Is it a turn-on? Certainly. But the book The first section of Dreams could benefit achieves more in occasional passages that try to from the same artful technique. Much of the do less. thrill of erotic writing is its come-on, the deli­ Dreams is actually a three-course meal: a cious suspense between detailed “ good parts.” narrative first section that chronicles three-and- This section, titled “ Passion is a Forest Fire a-half years of a highly sexual relationship; a Between IJs’.’ is a long, sustained “ good part,” series of 31 short poems, called “ Cream” ; and and its abundance finally weighs it down a final portion bearing the book’s own title, a A strength of Corinne’s prose, perhaps stream-of-consciousness blend of fantasy. derived from years of art and photography, is its T ability to see and describe with clarity and detail. At one point, the narrator examines her lover and notes that “ her labia are shell pink, wild rose pink, small and delicate, fluted at the edges. . . . I marvel at the minute ruffles, passion’s lace.” While present tense and first- person narration give the prose a here-and-now urgency, Corinne’s imagery — of ocean, earth­ quake, explosion — lifts the reader from those specifics, bridging intimate and outer worlds. And the narrative's form, broken into chapters by month, aptly parallels seasonal changes in sexual feelings and the relationship’s progress. This technique doesn’t feel forced; rather it captures well the state of pitched, peaceful awareness sexuality can bring — the feeling that all of nature is thrumming in rhythm to one’s own. The prose carries an unmistakable sense of daring — an awareness that Corinne is bursting decades of silence by speaking so plainly of lesbian sexuality. But such literal language, in generous doses, sometimes assaults instead of exciting, making long passages seem like a thesaurus of terms to describe female genitals. The strongest parts of “ Passion” remain lines such as “ . . . she seeks me with her tongue, presses me, damp to damp’ ’ — words that, like Corinne’s photograph, suggest rather than specify. If words are inadequate to convey the heat and power of sexuality, Corinne attempts to vault the limits of language by experimenting with form in the second and third sections of Dreams. “ Cream.” subtitled “A Suite of 31 Erotic Poems,” doesn’t quite make the transcendent leap. As specific as the book's first section, “ Cream" lacks the spare elegance, the subtle attention to rhythm, that makes poetry some­ thing more than short lines arranged on a page. Like the book’s first part, these poems express the most when they say the least. "Springtime returns daily / when you touch me / there and there" engages the reader’s fantasy more than the other almost clinical phrases that leave nothing to the imagination. If the final portion of Dr?