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?<jm.v is the dessert, it
is a velvety and textured one. well worth the
wait. Here, lyrical language, rhythm and story
mesh, plunging the reader into a world of
heightened sensation. The richness, beauty and
depth of sexuality are suggested here in
language that shimmers and rings. Corinne
describes how
Desire, with her almost boy's body, claimed her with
hips and loving hands, knelt between her legs,
breathing in all her secret places, touching her in the
tw iligh t, in the half-light, late into the mornings,
quietly in comers, on half-deserted streets.
Her prose engages all the senses:
The Woman in Love walked toward the river feeling
the evening full along the close-walled streets. She
smelled the red bean and rice smells, the gumbo and
crab, crawdaddy and shrimp Jasmine bloomed.
Somewhere a tenor sax slipped along the hot, damp,
slow-m oving air. . . .
In sharp contrast to the book’s previous
sections, Corinne here achieves meaning
through simplicity and understatement. The
passage closes with this spare, enigmatic
description:
In Barcelona they lived in a small, cool, white room;
wandered among the flower vendors until, aroused
beyond propriety, they returned to their room and
drank each other's bodies, breathed each other's
smells. . . When their work drew them back to
Am erica they returned, alone, together.
It is an apt ending for a book that proves,
whether it wants to or not. that sexuality is
larger than language— it is, finally, a bit
strange, a bit elusive, a bit beyond our best
powers to describe
•
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Just Out • 23 • January 1988