Dark Eros: Black Erotic Writing

The co-editor of Erotique Noire (1992) gathers more than 70 pieces (poetry, fiction and a handful of essays) by urban African American writers in a celebration of the erotic imagination, from its most abstract to its bawdiest. A compelling piece of nonfiction, ""Do Right Women: Black Women, Eroticism, and Classic Blues,"" by Kalammu ya Salaam, which describes the role of women in shaping the erotic spirit of this century's black culture, provides a better introduction, clearer and more forcefully argued, than Martin's, which founders in its attempt to delineate ""erotic ontology."" In general, the poetic and fictional pieces that he has assembled suffer from self-consciousness or unoriginality, and Martin might have pared away the doggerel without losing much diversity of experience (""I arched in PLEASURE and I whimpered in PAIN/ ...passion we did not feign""), but there are occasional gems, like Linda White's chilly but introspective ""Encountering Ecstasy,"" about unconsummated passion on the bus. Homoeroticism shows up here and there, most notably in Kiini Ibura Salaam's ""Malkai's Last Seduction,"" and there is a traditional hetero peepshow in Playthell Benjamin's ""All the Things You Are"" (an excerpt from his wonderfully high-spirited Tall Tales from the Life and Times of Sugarcane Hancock: the Phallocentric Memoirs of a Sweet Colored Man). Steamy moments notwithstanding, what stands out in this collection is the emphasis on a search for the ""authentic"" erotic spirit in a world that fails to welcome or encourage it. (Aug.)