Micropleasure by Janann Dawkins

Micropleasure

Poems

by Janann Dawkins

Leadfoot Press, Detroit, Michigan , no price

Paperback, ISBN 10: 0-9817106-1-1, ISBN 13: 978-0-9817106-1-7


Review by Zvi A. Sesling



Every book of poems I’ve read has some poems that are worth reading and some that are not. So it is with Janann Dawkins’ book Micropleasures. An associate editor for poetry at Third Wednesday magazine, Dawkins pursues erotic poetry with fervor and explicitness that can be both exciting and unnerving at the same time as in these lines from “Daydreams.”



I lift a false memory of your cheek

onto a stranger’s face, the stubble

a dull burn, so unlike you, a million

dimples of friction.



There is also an explicit two line poem “Give me your lifeforce,/It will warm me. You can guess the title.



If Dawkins can do one thing, it is to let you know what she is doing and what she feels. Her poems are laced with her obsessions and her obsessions often cross the border of the explicit. Each of her poems is an expression of her micropleasures be they enjoyed with someone else or by herself. Try “Autoerotic” for example for a young girl’s fantasy.



As Third Wednesday Magazine editor Laurence W. Thomas states in his introduction, “The poems step outside their frames, leaving readers to tread among carefully chosen words and interweaving phrases to conclusions suggested by not belabored.”



And, I might add, the suggested conclusions do not leave one wondering what she was up to. If you like the direct, in-your-face approach to sex, try reading this brief, but active chapbook.


Zvi Sesling/Ibbetson Update/ June 2008/Somerville, Mass.