Rose Solari Describes Her Favorite Erotic Literary Scene in WIRoB Article
"In Possession, the repressions of time and circumstance explode with a dazzling erotic force."
E.A Aymar's latest article in the Washington Independent Review of Books asks popular authors to review their favorite erotic scenes in novels. As Aymar puts it, "I want something more than 'romantic.'" Fortunately, ASP's own Rose Solari was around to answer the call. her selection: a scene in A.S. Byatt's Possession. Below is an excerpt, but you can read the entire article on the WIRoB site here
“We’re in England in the 1860s. Cristabel LaMotte is a poet of modest reputation and hermit-like tendencies, living with a female companion who is secretly her lover. Randolph Ash is a renowned poet stuck in a sexless marriage with a loving but frigid wife. What begins as a chance meeting develops into an increasingly passionate epistolary relationship. By the time they consummate their love — on a stolen seaside trip — their hunger for each other is at its peak boiling point, fierce and frightening for them and for the reader. A.S. Byatt might not be the first writer to come to mind for hot sex scenes, but in Possession, the repressions of time and circumstance explode with a dazzling erotic force.”
– Rose Solari, author of A Secret Woman
Featured Audio: “Letter from Sligo Creek” a poem by Rose Solari
Like the cover photo, the poems in Difficult Weather are timeless and—unlike the poems in many first books—extraordinarily mature. Although the narrative voice is generally that of a young woman in her late twenties and early thirties whose subject matter sometimes ranges back to early childhood, these are poems of adulthood: the discovery and endlessly painful rediscovery of human frailty, sexual and emotional betrayal, bad love in all its familial and romantic varieties, memory, and elegy…
Listen to Grace Cavalieri Interview fmr. Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky
Grace Cavalieri is known widely for her stirring and empathic poetry, collected in her Legacy work Other Voices, Other Lives, but did you know that she is also an impressive interviewer? On her NPR show, The Poet and The Poem, she interviews significant poets from the US and around the world, with an aim of interpreting their lives through their poetry. In her tenure on the program, she has interviewed 9 US Poets Laureate (you can find a list with these archived interviews HERE), including the incomparable Robert Pinsky.
Featured Poetry: “Toytown” by Grace Cavalieri
The name Other Voices, Other Lives, is not purely poetical, in fact, for Grace Cavalieri it is a mission statement. In her Legacy Book of the same name there are several sections in 3rd person omnipotent which aim to breathe the same air as famous women who have suffered adversity. Tragic figure Anna Nicole Smith, feminist writer Mary Wollstonecraft, Cora from William Carlos William’s Kora in Hell. All in all they are an admix of Grace Cavalieri’s poetic life, all brought together in one beautiful volume; so, perhaps, we might figure that Anna Nicole Smith converses with Mary Wollstonecraft for the very first time in the pages of Other Voices, Other Lives.
Today, from the Anna section we have the heart-rending “Toytown”