obscenity is an art:defending profanity in poetry.

 

 

Since its conception art has battled society over what the artists saw as freedom of expression and what concerned leaders labeled as obscenity. Painters, playwrights, filmmakers, authors, and poets. All have suffered from a sensitive few that mount their soapboxes and claim to be society’s protectors.

                These few have no sense of subtext; their creativity is oppressed by a narrow-mindedness designed to cull impurity before it might offend. They immediately declared photographer Bill Henson’s 2008 exhibit featuring photographs of naked children as pornographic. In 1957, these purity watchers slapped Allen Ginsberg with an obscenity trial for his poem “Howl”.

                Freedom of speech (obscenity) – adopted as freedom of (obscene) expression by most artists – is the Fat Man in an artist’s arsenal, the target of censorship’s anti-proliferation campaigns.  Henderson’s photographs depict vulnerability, children in the throes of life’s transitions. The nakedness is a nakedness of character. Ginsberg used strong sexual language, but was acquitted by the judge.

                Understand: Obscenity itself is an art.

                I will delve into obscenity in poetry because I have more experience with this art.

                Curse words are part of every language in every era, evolving with every generation. In the 1900s it was crude to say “jeepers”. As early as our grandparent’s generation “dark meat” was used instead of the indecent word “thigh” to refer to parts of a chicken. In 1972, George Carlin defined the new profane generation in his satirical routine “Seven Dirty Words”. In it, Carlin stated that, actually, none of the words belong on the list.

                “Those are the heavy seven,” said Carlin, “Those are the ones that will infect your soul, curve your spine, and keep the country from winning the war.”

                Critics of profanity in poetry claim that the word choice shows a lack of creativity and point the offending poets in the direction of a thesaurus. This is a weak cure-all. It is solution that shows the offended’s near sightedness.

                Curse words exist beyond the toe-stubbing expletive. They carry baggage other words can not claim to. Where does “gosh darn” register on a reader’s Richter scale reaction verses “shit”? The “stuff” hit the fan has little on the “shit” hit the fan.

                Euphemisms are creative circumventions around obscenity, but they do not evoke the immediate, crass, empty images that follow the real deal.

                In 2005 Shorewood High pulled a poem from their literary magazine entitled “My First Fuck”. The 17-year-old poet said the poem conveyed the disenchantment that girls feel when they are pressured into sex:

My First Fuck

 

sure he claims he loves me 
and holds me oh so tight 
he makes me believe this is special 
that he can hold on all night 
he claims he isn’t pressuring me 
but his hand is down my pants 
temptation rises and I give in 
he turns over 
checks the time 
gets up and drives me home 
no kiss goodnight 
no I love you 
and no telephone call 

 

-Zoya Raskina

 

                The deliberate title alone is a statement. If this poem were entitled “My First Time” or “The First Time I Made Love” neither replacement conveys the hollow disillusioned sex that “My First Fuck” does. The title is the poem; the rest of it, elaboration. Such is the power behind “fuck”.

                Ginsberg’s “Howl” was also attacked for its representation of sex. The poem describes sex obscenely and explicitly: “I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed…with dreams, with drugs, with waking nightmares, al-/cohol and cock and endless balls”. Howl’s descriptions were not casual. The sexually explicit lines which led to his trial criticized America’s rigid unnatural approach to sex.

                Mark Twain vouched for profanity’s place in language, “Under certain circumstances, profanity provides a relief denied even to prayer.”

                Obviously

, there are social situations where profanity should not be used. The poet must be aware of her audience. However, society should not condemn poets for simply using the language that packs its punch.

                Allow me to point those soapbox persecutors in the direction of the truly profane. Genocide has murdered more than two million people in Uganda since 1962; Mexico is the deadliest place in the Americas for journalists as a result of the country’s drug war; since 1993 hundreds of women are missing or have been murdered in Ciudad Juàrez resulting in more than 300 unsolved murders.; in 1994 over half a million Tutsis were murdered by Hutu militia in 100 days.

                We’re sick fucks, but don’t condemn me for saying it.

                Put your soapbox to good use.

 

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Written for my journalism class poetry beat.

The title includes Carlin’s "Seven Dirty Words".