[A. E. Stallings]

Is bawdiness merely graphic sexuality in a poem, or rather something else--a rollicking attitude toward it, a certain amount of coarse humour? The dictionary definition isn't very helpful here.

What about bawdy poems by women? Are there such things? I feel there must be...

Should there be some Chaucer on the thread?

[ChrisW]

Here's some Martial translated by "Anonymous":

"On a Slanderer"

Before your mouth was fringed with hair,
All pricks might find a haven there,
Till hangmen loathed a boy so common,
And deadcart men preferred a woman.
When gamahuche no longer paid,
Yur tongue was still your stock in trade,
No more to suck, but to discharge
Its venom on mankind at large;
On characters base slurs to fix,
As once it had polluted pricks.
Oh filthy tongue, you'd better far
Be what you were than what you are.


"To Polycharmus"

When you lie with a woman, at least so girls say,
You shit the same moment you come.
But what do you do, Polycharmus, I pray,
When a lover's stiff prick stops your bum?


"To Papilus"

What! want to be buggered, and cry when it's done!
Here clear contradictions seem blended!
Do you grieve that the sodding was ever begun,
Or lament that the pleasure is ended?