Win Two Tickets to Arcadia
May 28, 2011 | by Peter Conroy
The Paris Review is giving away two tickets to Arcadia—Tom Stoppard’s paean to poetry and bodies in heat—now on Broadway at the Barrymore Theatre. To win, make like Ezra Chater in The Couch of Eros and wax poetic on the immortal question, “Does Carnal Embrace Addle the Brain?” Keep your lines to a couplet, but in true Stoppardian fashion, let your imagination run wild: anything from the impending Kardashian nuptials to Kate Wood’s philosophy to the (alleged) crimes of DSK is fair game. Share yours in comments below. The winning entry will be announced on Wednesday, June 1.
Max Leach | May 31, 2011 at 5:33 pm
So the virgin comes to the door wearing bed slippers.
Clutched between her thighs is a sample-sized bottle of vodka.
In it’s distorted reflection her vulva is the size of a planet
We know she is lonely and that he body will die soon
which is why she complains of her new breasts which announce
themselves like cups full of white neon saying “I’m coming,
I’m coming” but really she whispers, “help me, I am dying.”
She is the end of the century.
Erich | May 31, 2011 at 5:34 pm
Oh carnal pleasure, what odes to thee I’ll sing/But post-coitus no poet can count syllables or rhyme or that sort of stuff.
Michael C | May 31, 2011 at 6:01 pm
When splitting your field, and finding your root
I radically focus; my thoughts are acute.
Susan Turner Pohlmann | May 31, 2011 at 7:06 pm
Tho plump and plain, when in Lust’s throes a maid;
Hath charms that govern mighty-muscled men to flex, then fade…
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BB | May 31, 2011 at 7:10 pm
It’s sad but true: to boff, to boink, to scrog
Can leave a person badly in a fog
And rhyming to excess. So friends, abstain,
Unless you are prepared for a quatrain.
Wythe | May 31, 2011 at 7:20 pm
Contrariwise to the usual prudery, I say that the way to true Health is through being well sexed, / But to Health, Truth’s opposed, day to night, so the prudish approach may yet leave one less contrarily hexed…
EA | May 31, 2011 at 7:35 pm
Lips bitten, brows slipp’ry with sweet perspiration/She’d forgotten the rules of multiplication.
KFB | May 31, 2011 at 8:07 pm
We moan, cry out, we weep; no words will come to rescue us / here, alone, entwined; no need for words promiscuous.
KFB | May 31, 2011 at 8:16 pm
When simple touch does so much for us / why dare, with words, to interruptus?
Susan Turner Pohlmann | May 31, 2011 at 9:13 pm
Tho plump and plain, when in Lust’s throes a maid
Hath charms that govern mighty-muscled men to flex, then fade…
Nobody Beats the Biz | May 31, 2011 at 10:31 pm
“The expense of spirit in a waste of shame,”/
he muttered as he rogered his dark dame.
MN | May 31, 2011 at 10:54 pm
In his eyes my thoughts seem reduced in clout
Since that fateful night he fucked my brains out
MN | May 31, 2011 at 11:08 pm
(Iambic pentameter these are not…)
When for lust alone in his bed you’ve lain
His words become like the dripping of rain
ECB | May 31, 2011 at 11:15 pm
A good Roman Catholic, always, Dante
composed his best verses in flagrante
Brian Sneeden | May 31, 2011 at 11:55 pm
How many women did you paint there? Quick strokes
softened to the milk of flesh, the whores
of Montmartre teaching you how the body
can remember a body like water.
TCKM | June 1, 2011 at 12:31 am
It’s true that coition can make you shamefaced/Just ask my ex-lover Ms. Carnell Embreis.
Steve Dew | June 1, 2011 at 12:50 am
The carnal embrace does addle the brain like this:/Dark-bearded dancing boys who ape to steal a kiss.
RPM | June 1, 2011 at 1:02 am
How angelic were the nights when all a man knew was his cock.
Engorged, it erupted from his languorous loins, first a twig then a tree then a rock.
Eve jounced and jiggled, tossed and trembled till her cries drew the doves in a flock.
Amid such bliss, why want to know more? To know more in heaven was a crime.
But Eve craved the forbidden and Adam complied, downing apple and snake and its slime.
Naked now, their knowing ached; sex was shameful and shy—but sublime.
Eve was moody, Adam rude, and a fateful new twist proved a shock:
Cock and brain vied for blood, for God had decreed, Man could only use one at a time.
Malcolm XXX | June 1, 2011 at 3:37 am
Late night library, two scholars between the stacks; /
Intellectual stimulatation feeds the beast with two backs.
Maria | June 1, 2011 at 7:02 am
I keep thinking of your tits
everything else is wood
Cathleen O | June 1, 2011 at 8:20 am
The captain steered towards fleshly rumpus
And ran afoul his moral compass.
Angus Trumble | June 1, 2011 at 9:39 am
Ask not whether carnal knowledge maddens: / Lunacy conveys you there, then saddens.
Elizabeth | June 1, 2011 at 11:04 am
In times of love, I often find/I seem to have misplaced my mind.
Paul Pelkonen | June 1, 2011 at 11:05 am
The schtupping is glorious fun.
Naked through the halls we doth run.
We jump ‘twixt the sheets,
Our bodies in heat,
‘Tis sad when it’s over and done.
Gail White | June 1, 2011 at 11:09 am
Carnal embrace is healthy. Brains are addled
Only when wit and reason have skedaddled.
basil ransome-davies | June 1, 2011 at 11:44 am
The ‘stupid Cupid’ fallacy
Only prompts disdain in me.
cb | June 1, 2011 at 12:13 pm
Does Carnal Embrace Addle the Brain?
It does; in the end, it only brings pain.
Bob Schechter | June 1, 2011 at 12:43 pm
Does Carnal Embrace Addle the Brain?
I just got laid. It’s hard to explain.
Roger Slater | June 1, 2011 at 1:02 pm
When Albert Einstein’s bed was shared
he answered “Eeee!” with “MC squared.”
W A | June 1, 2011 at 1:19 pm
A disconcerted oblongata:
Arnold cries “Ich bin der Vater.”
Kay Nine | June 1, 2011 at 1:26 pm
He made up the apple to hide his depravity.
Testicles dangled. “My God!” he said. “Gravity!”
John Beaton | June 1, 2011 at 1:27 pm
As head-banging walls fills inmates with pain
so bonking your bed-mate befuddles the brain.
John Beaton | June 1, 2011 at 1:31 pm
(Correction)
As head-banging walls drives inmates insane
so bonking your bed-mate befuddles the brain.
RJS | June 1, 2011 at 1:35 pm
I must confess my mind is addled
Mostly when my hips are straddled.
Rajah | June 1, 2011 at 1:37 pm
Amorous cuddlement
Leads to befuddlement.
Rajah | June 1, 2011 at 1:39 pm
(or…)
The more someone cuddles me,
The more it befuddles me.
Roger Slater | June 1, 2011 at 2:23 pm
If sex makes you stupid, I know in my heart
All of my life I’ve been much too smart.
Kay Nine | June 1, 2011 at 2:38 pm
Carnal embrace will addle the brain . . .
if you indulge or if you abstain.
Roger Slater | June 1, 2011 at 3:21 pm
“A stroke of genius?” Einstein joked.
“No one’s a genius when they’re stroked.”
Max Clarke | June 1, 2011 at 3:46 pm
The Brain–’tis true—is wider than the Skies–
But can’t compete–with what’s between–your Thighs
Kay Nine | June 1, 2011 at 4:27 pm
Limbs entwined
Supplant the mind.
Martin Elster | June 1, 2011 at 4:43 pm
As Heisenberg cuddled, his brain became fuzzy,
and quantum foam streamed on the bust of the hussy.
Steven | June 1, 2011 at 5:13 pm
The sound of your voice
Is my drug of choice.
Steven | June 1, 2011 at 5:17 pm
We conversed in body language
With brilliance and wit:
Never has flesh been
So clever, so articulate.
Martin Elster | June 1, 2011 at 7:56 pm
While you’re embracing me, my brains, a fog.
Should I embrace you back or walk the dog?
Martin Elster | June 1, 2011 at 7:57 pm
Correction of previous couplet:
While you’re embracing me, my brain’s a fog.
Should I embrace you back or walk the dog?
DA | June 1, 2011 at 9:05 pm
What, light, through nether window breaks? / What hour now, what rough beast this panting makes?
tolga | June 18, 2011 at 11:13 am
i said nothing , nothing with my mind .t old may on for inclusion and on , ? noone .