Neurotic Erotica

James Deahl is co-publisher of Mekler & Deahl Publications and the
author of Under the Watchful Eye.

In the prefatory material that opens this volume, both the author and
psychologist Robyn Mott attempt to establish the poems that follow as
works of erotic art rather than mere pornography. According to Dr. Mott,
pornography dehumanizes and destroys the integrity of human experience.
Erotic art, on the other hand, can activate new life in the imagination.

Unfortunately, Anderson’s poems fail to activate new life; nor do
they have much to do with the imagination. Sexual interactions in
Neurotic Erotica are mechanical, unimaginative, and lifeless. Almost
entirely missing is the idea that sex is fun (the author’s attempts at
humor seldom rise above the level of the bad pun). Unlike Canadians Ian
Young, Lala Heine Koehn, and Robert Hilles, who have produced genuinely
erotic poems, Anderson manages to make sexually explicit material
boring.