I seem to be somewhat out of touch
with the feelings of the women's lib movement
because I understand that this poem has not
pleased all women--
my wife doesn't mind it at all.
Here is a poem which has pleased some women's lib people,
because it rather makes fun of Playboy magazine
which has made a business of portraying women
as sex objects.
This poem called "Playboy" is a description
of one possible reader of that magazine.
"High on his stockroom ladder like a dunce
the stock boy sits, and studies like a sage, the subject
matter of one glossy page.
As lost in curves as Archimedes once.
Sometimes, without a glance, he feeds himself.
The left hand, like a mother bird in flight
brings him a sandwich for a sidelong bite,
and then returns it to a dusty shelf.
What so engrosses him?
The wild decor of this pink-papered alcove
into which a naked girl has stumbled, with its rich welter
of pelts and pillows on the floor.
Amidst which kneeling in a supple
pose, she lifts a goblet in her farther hand
as if about to toast a flower stand
above which hovers an exploding rose fired
from a long-necked crystal vase that
rests upon a tasseled and vermilion cloth, one
taste of which would shrivel up a moth?
[LAUGHTER]
Or is he pondering her perfect breasts?
Nothing escapes him of her body's grace
or of her floodlit skin, so sleek and warm and yet,
so strangely like a uniform.
But what now grips his fancy is her face,
and how the cunning picture holds her
still at just that smiling instant when
her soul, grown sweetly faint, and swept beyond control,
consents to his inexorable will."