David Lehman’s anthology “The Best American Erotic Poems” is actually two anthologies. The first is a sampler of faultless poems about sex by dead Americans like Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, Robert Frost, Gertrude Stein and Wallace Stevens. There are some nice, smart, surprising choices: William Carlos Williams’s “Young Sycamore” rather than his better-known “Queen Anne’s Lace,” and Frost’s savage poem “The Subverted Flower.” A few dead Americans famous for doing things other than writing great erotic poems, like Francis Scott Key and Emma Lazarus, make an appearance; their poems are neither great nor really very erotic. As with many anthologies, you can’t believe the exclusions: nothing by Marianne Moore? No H. D.? What about Edwin Arlington Robinson’s “Eros Turannos”? Now that’s a great, even a really great, poem, and, as its title suggests, it’s also pretty erotic.

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James Victore

THE BEST AMERICAN EROTIC POEMS

From 1800 to the Present.

Edited by David Lehman.

300 pp. Scribner Poetry. $30.

Does America truly possess, as Lehman claims, a “vital ... tradition of erotic poetry”? Not on the evidence of this lopsided book, which devotes three-quarters of its pages to verse written in the last 50 years, an era when, as Lehman puts it, “hormones reign and sex sells.” Contemporary poets have written excellent erotic poems, and some of them are included here: “I See a Man,” by Carl Phillips; “The Couple,” by Mark Strand; “The Encounter,” by Louise Glück. But you would learn more about eros, and more about poetry, if you read any single volume by any one of these poets, or by James Schuyler or Paul Muldoon; single poems in anthologies (Lehman allows only one poem per author, with the baffling exceptions being Emily Dickinson and Olena Kalytiak Davis) cannot possibly convey a great writer’s force. Can it be that William Wadsworth’s or Paul Violi’s best erotic poems are better than Frank O’Hara’s second or 10th or 50th best? I’d like to see someone make that case.

It’s good to encourage people who otherwise wouldn’t read older poems to take a little Hart Crane with their Mark Doty, but it’s odd to leverage a few old names merely to inflate the value of the new ones. And it’s hard to know what Lehman means by “best” even in reference to the last 50 years. How can a single, minor, posthumously published poem by Elizabeth Bishop, “It Is Marvellous ...,” stand in for her entire career? (What about “The Shampoo” or “Crusoe in England”?) Why is there no poem by John Ashbery, that most intimate and cunning poet of desire, or by Frank Bidart, who wrote a whole book called “Desire,” or by Henri Cole or Lucie Brock-Broido, poets whose work is saturated by thwarted eros? These choices feel deliberate, and Lehman ought to justify them, especially when precious space is devoted to John Updike’s “Fellatio,” perhaps the worst poem ever written on any subject, which begins (reader, I kid you not): “It is beautiful to think / that each of these clean secretaries / at night, to please her lover, takes / a fountain into her mouth.”

Ours is an era of plentiful but repetitive erotic writing, an age of “copper-lidded eyes” and “green eyes flecked with yellow,” of a “backbreaking orchid” and an “orchid boat,” of hyperlegible Freudian metaphor (silos and fountains, copper pipe and cowboy hats) and its counterpart, the forensic, literal overcorrection (aureoles, Formica countertops and AA batteries). The body parts alone oppress you: lips, testicles, shoulders, eyes, over and over again until you would rather inhabit some spirit realm where bodies are outlawed. Theme-based anthologies have the unintended effect of making poets seem trapped by their subjects: there is no more variation among poets in this book than there would be in a book called, for example, “The Best American Patriotic Poems.” Individual poets shouldn’t be blamed, though poems like Updike’s or like Dean Young’s “Platypus” (“I want to watch your face contort / like bacon as it fries”) are bad by cosmic design, not individual choice. Lusty poems by straight men are, in our era, usually prone to failure — though a cat lover might appreciate the literary power, lost on me, of Dana Gioia’s “Alley Cat Love Song,” which begins “Come into the garden, Fred, / For the neighborhood tabby is gone.” But the real problem is anthologies. The many young poets represented here, most of them (Lehman makes a point of this in his introduction) young women, seem much less original than they would if encountered on their own terms. In a magazine, I might like a post-crab-boil sex poem about (ouch!) the sting to one’s “sweet meat” from bay seasoning on a lover’s fingers. Here it feels no different from the dozens of other poems that make raunchy metaphors out of unlikely foods, weird animals and western topography.

If you find yourself in a book with an orchid on the cover, its petal languid and its pistil looking ready for action, it is really best to have written an anti-erotic poem like A. R. Ammons’s bleak two-line “Their Sex Life” (“One failure on / Top of another”) or Jill Alexander Essbaum’s funny “On Reading Poorly Transcribed Erotica” (“She stood before him wearing only pantries / and he groped for her Volvo under the gauze”). Or do as W. H. Auden had the foresight to do: write something really filthy. His poem “The Platonic Blow” is the dirtiest verse written since Rochester — I can’t even talk about it here. Let’s just say it makes mincemeat of Updike’s dainty secretarial fellatio. Anthologies like this one are best viewed as contests (best metaphorical labia! best profane blazon!), and dear old Auden wins this one by a knockout blow.

(03-20) 04:00 PDT Washington --

Supreme Court justices on Wednesday questioned whether a state should be able to prohibit employers from using state money to influence employees' views on unions in their workplace.

The Chamber of Commerce and the Bush administration argue that California is trying to silence employers from weighing in on union organization efforts. They say that position isn't permitted by federal labor law, which allows employers to be involved as long as they don't threaten reprisals.

The outcome of the case could affect attempts by other states to restrict use of state money for union-related activities.

California contends that its 2000 law, the first of its kind nationally, simply seeks to ensure that the state doesn't subsidize an employer's pro- or anti-union activities, allowing California to maintain a neutral position in labor disputes.

California's law has been followed by similar attempts in other states, including New York, which passed a more limited version. Union activists and pro-union lawmakers elsewhere have been waiting to see the outcome of the California case before deciding how to proceed.

Justice Antonin Scalia ridiculed the notion that California's law is neutral.

"I think the reason you're not paying for this activity is because you don't like this activity," Scalia declared.

"That's not true," interjected attorney Michael Gottesman, a Washington lawyer arguing on behalf of California Attorney General Jerry Brown.

"I call that regulating," Scalia said.

Gottesman disagreed. "The taxpayer's money should not be spent supporting one side and not the other in these disputes," he said. Employees don't have access to state money for unionization activities, California argues in its briefs, so employers shouldn't either.

Chief Justice John Roberts also seemed to question the notion that California's law is neutral when he noted that "precious few" employers take the side of unions.

California got support from Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer who both questioned why California shouldn't be able to determine how its money is spent.

California is saying, in effect, "Go ahead, speak, speak, just not on our nickel," said Breyer. California's law does not prohibit employers from influencing union activities, just from using state funds to do so, so that employers would have to segregate their accounts - one of several complications created by the law that justices noted have yet to be worked out.

Ginsburg remarked several times that Congress has passed laws limiting federal use of money for union activities, so why shouldn't California do the same.

Just because Congress can do something doesn't mean states can, responded Willis Goldsmith, representing the Chamber of Commerce of the United States.

"The state has no business making labor policy," Goldsmith said. "This statute is anything but neutral."

The author of the 2000 California law, Democratic State Sen. Gil Cedillo, issued a press release earlier this week noting that the law, which was supported by California labor unions, "began as a means to prevent unscrupulous contractors from using state money to block unionization by California janitors."

The Chamber challenged the law in 2002 and won in federal court. A three-judge panel of the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco agreed, but the full Ninth Circuit overturned the Chamber's position in 2006, determining that California's law is not pre-empted by federal statute.

This article appeared on page C - 3 of the San Francisco Chronicle

New 'superclinics' will damage patient care, warn GPs

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GPs are concerned 'polyclinics' will make it difficult for patients to see the same GP

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Eight out of 10 GPs believe the Government's new 'polyclinics' will damage patient care, according to a new poll.

Family doctors claim the super-clinics are being pushed by politicians - even if they are not needed. But there are fears among doctors and patients that the clinics - which will provide a range of services under one roof - fail to give value for money or continuity of care.

A poll of 300 GPs for Pulse newspaper found 85 per cent believed they will damage patient care. Fewer than one in 10 (8 per cent) said their local area had any need for a polyclinic and 90 per cent would not want to work in them. One in three said they would refuse to work in a local polyclinic.

GPs told the newspaper they believed the clinics will be staffed by large numbers of shift workers, which could damage continuity of care and the doctor-patient relationship.

Dr Amanda Cary, a GP in Radlett, Hertfordshire, said of the plan: "This is a direct order from No 10. It is not evidence-based. It's expensive and political interference at its worse."

The clinics are part of a wide-ranging review of the NHS in England by health minister Lord Darzi, although adverts asking public and private health providers to tender to run them are now appearing in trade magazines.

The British Medical Association (BMA) last week wrote to Lord Darzi raising doubts about the 'big-bang' approach of the review, saying it appeared to be operating with a 'predetermined' agenda.

BMA chairman Dr Hamish Meldrum said polyclinics were being pushed as additional services - whether local patients felt they needed them or not.

He said: "We're worried that at best it's a waste of resources and at worst, it could destabilise existing services."

John May, deputy chairman of the BMA's patient liaison group, said polyclinics could work in large urban areas, like London.

"But for those living outside London, there could be problems about how to get to the polyclinic" he said.

Mr May said he had been told of primary care trusts saying they had no choice in backing a polyclinic even where a large health centre was already providing similar services.

Richard Hoey, deputy editor of Pulse, said: "The Government is ploughing ahead with a fundamental reorganisation of general practice, without properly consulting doctors or patients, and without a scrap of evidence that the changes will be beneficial.

"There's a wealth of evidence that patients value continuity of care and the relationship they have with their own doctor.

"But if your local practice is a polyclinic of 20, 30 or even 50 GPs, how can you ever expect to see the same one twice?"

Health minister Ben Bradshaw denied they were being foisted on local areas.

He said "We are not imposing polyclinics on anyone. We announced the new GP-led health centres would offer core GP services and, where it makes sense, a range of other services.

"The mix will be determined locally by PCTs in partnership with local clinicians and patients. This is about the local NHS making changes that suit people's needs: clinically led, locally driven and putting the public first."