So gross a member doubtless merited so extensive a list: ‘One of them would call it her pillicock, her fiddle-diddle, her staff of love, her tickle-gizzard, her gentle-titler. Another, her sugar-plum, her kingo, her old rowley. her touch-trap, her flap dowdle. Another again, her brand of coral, her placket-racket, her Cyprian sceptre, her tit-bit, her bob-lady. And some of the other women would give these names, my Roger, my cockatoo, my nimble-wimble, bush-beater, claw-buttock, evesdropper, pick-lock, pioneer, bully-ruffin, smell-smock, trouble-gusset, my lusty live sausage, my crimson chitterlin, rump-splitter, shove-devil, down right to it, stiff and stout, in and to, at her again, my coney-borrow-ferret. wily-beguiley, my pretty rogue.’
Here is a passage once tumbl'd from Rabelais; here is the useful Gutenberg e-text of Book 2, and here is a list (of books).
And I should link to Stephen Burt in memory of Adrienne Rich, and also to Stephen Burt on Rich in the LRB last month (the latter might be gated; is notable mostly for quoting paysage moralise of Rich's, beginning "Here is a map of our country"). The New Yorker has linked to some charming old poems of hers, which I distinctly prefer to the drab programmatic ranting that is so much of her oeuvre. I will also link, perhaps cruelly, to an old letter of hers in the NYRB that to my mind perfectly captures some of her flaws; and also, to make up for that, to "Snapshots of a daughter-in-law," which is her best poem that I'm aware of.
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