Conversio Virium

CV Meeting: The BDSM-iad – Self-Discovery Through Mindful BDSM

Ray Warman headlines tomorrow night for one of CV’s few forays into the world of art.

“The BDSM-iad of John Van Tuyl,” an autobiographically-based poem (“John Van Tuyl” being my bygone scene-name) in four cantos comprising some 700 lines that are tightly constrained, but that also burst with exuberance celebrating both the journeys on which BDSM can take us and its power to connect us intimately with one another and to transform our lives (as well as, of course, its power to provide plenty of down-home “boner-bringing diversion”). The constraint — quirky, even manic, but surprisingly workable — is that each line contains just four poetic “feet,” each with one or more words (or compound or contracted words) beginning exclusively with that foot’s designated letter (B, D, S or M, in that order). Thus, “stereotypical masters boast drill-sergeant manners,” because “boys denied spankings mature badly”! Or (from the concluding canto, which shifts to a broader, if not elegiac, perspective): “dim-visioned society marginalizes BDSM.”

LOCATION: 316 Hamilton Hall, CU campus