Cunt-Ups

by Dodie Bellamy. Tender Buttons, P.O. Box 13 Cooper Station, NY, NY, 10276. 2001. 65 pages.

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Cunt-ups, as Dodie Bellamy notes, derive from the more male William Burroughs’s cut-up technique. Any comparison stops there. Bellamy’s texts are sensuous love poems raised from pornography. The most frequent words in her book are cunt and cock and the cunt-ups are extremely erotic yet passionate and lovely. Initially, attracted by the word Cunt-ups, one seeks the naughty and forbidden titillation of pornography. However, within these poems cock and cunt become the Os and Xs of love letters. Bellamy’s enhancement of her initial cunt-up opens the erotic fantasy life and dreamlike passion that each lover hides within flowers and candy. Initially the poet introduces her text with a quote form Adrienne Rich’s Twenty-one Love Poems. There are twenty-one Cunt-ups. The tradition is clear. Combining the roots of desire, the platonic, wishful thinking, with the words of pop Eros and daydream, Bellamy does, what I thought impossible. She reinvents the love poem.

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