Search Box Bed - Darryl Whetter (Palimpsest Press)

Today's book of poetry:
Search Box Bed.  Darryl Whetter.  Palimpsest Press.  Windsor, Ontario.  2017.

Today's book of poetry had to get my much smarter better half to translate the dedication that begins Darryl Whetter's most excellent poetry adventure.  We both thought it was splendid so I thought it should be shared.

à Gisèle. 

restes toujour, ma belle, 

dans mes bras et ma bouch, 

mon lit et ma vie

      

K's translation, late at night, while busy reading the second volume of three

of a Theodore Roosevelt biography:

a Gisele. 

always stay, my beautiful,

 in my arms and my mouth,

- my bed and my life

And so begins Search Box Bed, Today's book of poetry will warn you, "This is not your Grandmother's poetry."

Nipple Clips On Amazon

the world's largest bazaar

hawks baby wipes alongside

bullets and butt plugs to target

you tip to tail. e-anonymity spares

the gum-chewers in customer service

tirades from the pant-suited

confronting their first strap-on,

all that prosthetic love

and necessity. no fallen soldiers

work security with their flashlights

to keep the boys from the fleshlights

and mid-aisle lube fights.

One-ClickTM Midas knows how keenly

we await drone delivery

of our non-drone desires

...

Darryl Whetter, in the context of these lascivious laments and poetic porn pastiche, could be the secret name of a super-literate 70's porn star or director. Search Box Bed starts off with an explicit warning shot, rim-shot: "This is not your father's Playboy."

Whetter is investigating the true unspoken sexual playground of contemporary society and the electronic Oz behind the curtains.  Whetter is looking at on-line porn and how, why, where and what we are watching.  Whetter's Search Box Bed is hardwired to your mainframe and there are no more secrets for anyone.

Folksonomy

       If metadata is information about information, then meta-metadata

         is information about the information of information.

                          -U.S. PATENT

to classify is to know

chart and place

not just the scurrying

creatures of swamp, savannah and museum

but gauzy information, the churn

of abstract need

tag: a verb swatted

from the playground to the hurtling

subway cars of graffiti

label the grim

or smiling crowed then unleash

the comment feeds

touch (there you go)

and smear the video glow

...

Search Box Bed also wants to talk about the information generated and gathered in the "cloud" as our pulses race over the next moment of prurient passion, pause until this phase becomes passe too.  These poems are biting the reader in private places.  Whetter is constantly upping the ante on shock and awe by saying the thing we know but rarely expect to hear said.

That's the cleverest thing to do, to realize, often the most shocking thing is the thing that is most true.  Darryl Whetter's Search Box Bed gives us some truths, orgasmic barrels of it.

Yoga

sexercise, not tantric marathons but daily

unconsummated orgies in expensive clothes.

now that lingerie is cheap the ostentatious curves

are yogic, every studio a rapper's choreographed dream:

upper middle class asses

up, faces down, bent reversing and candescent

in a heaving room

where else can men learn to last without whiskey.

each ujjayi breath a shaggy swimmer

kick-turning off one end or another . stitch an engorged

nostril into each thigh, dip the velvet

lungs into legs that will never feel longer

open and stretch the body entire, twist

with a gentler high curve ball

or Cossack's swung cutlass, thrust and unfurl

what you have and what you want

in the flush

...

Our morning read was certainly an energetic occasion.  Milo, our head tech, and Kathryn, our Jr. Editor, took over the reading this morning like they were minions from Dr. Alfred C. Kinsey's original research team, like they were the original Yin and Yang sock-slut puppets.

The pill, rape, anal sex, condoms, bondage, shaved pubis, class struggle, sex toys, patriarchal sexual mores, sex tools, computer mice that appear to be sperm in mid-swim, golden showers, porn kings and the perversity's of Pompeii, it is all in Darryl Whetter's appetizing, charming and carnally candid exploration of where we are in this electronic internet driven sexual revolution.

Whetter isn't offering explanations as much as examinations.  While not exactly a voyeur, Whetter sure has his eye on us.  He knows what we do alone and together, with the lights on and after we've made our peace with the dark and turn to embrace.

Spank Me

free from the tyranny

of hole one, two or three.

give me that starburst kiss

and map a wincing

ring road round the whole haunch.

garland my rump, this thickest meat.

each delicious whack

tugs me back from volume and insertion

to flower-press into the crimson

second skin of curved hurt.

rumbling Baghdad, blitzed London, the amber flare

and night shudder of our combat sky

glove my hair tight in your fist

to parse the pliant in compliance.

ribbon and cat-pull the entire

arm of dark speed, rubbing fling elbow,

wrist, then sparking finger

through the amped nodes.

lash velocity red and blossom

this necessary

play

...

Milo and Kathryn went home early today and took our copy of Darryl Whetter's Search Box Bed with them.  Something about comparing notes, doing research.

Certainly something poetic.

Whetter's purpose is perhaps to deconstruct the undeconstructable, our desire and the delectable fury of electronic freedom.  Or maybe Today's book of poetry got it all wrong.  That wouldn't be a first either.  Regardless, we, and everyone in our office, seriously enjoyed Darryl Whetter's Search Box Bed.

Read it with someone you can trust enough to read poetry with.

Darryl Whetter

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Darryl Whetter is a novelist, short-story writer, poet, critic and professor. His debut collection of stories, A Sharp Tooth in the Fur, was a Globe and Mail Top 100 Book. His debut book of poems, Origins, received a starred review from Quill & Quire. His novels include the bicycle odyssey The Push & the Pull and the multi-generational pot-smuggling epic Keeping Things Whole. A former CBC Radio books panellist, he reviews for The Globe and Mail, The Toronto Star, The National Post, etc. He has taught creative writing and literature at four different Canadian universities. Currently, he is a visiting professor in Singapore, where he is the inaugural director of the first creative writing master’s program in Southeast Asia.

palimpsestpress.com

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