Michael Turner's The Pornographer's Poem (Doubleday $32.95) is about a filmmaker who, at 16, captures his neighbours having sex on Super-8. Between exploration and exploitation, the unnamed narrator comments on what he finds painful and confusing. In the films he comes to make, he portrays those who are disadvantaged in their day-to-day lives in positions of dominance, sexually belittling those who have once held them down. Nettie, an idealistic poet and the one person with whom the narrator genuinely connects, sees in pornography the opportunity to do something artistic, liberating and socially relevant. Despite his radical intentions, the narrator falls into a world of greed, delusion and hypocrisy, the same world he had once rebelled against. Pornographer's Poem is interspersed with dialogue between the narrator and an unknown voice of authority. Turner's previous titles include American Whiskey Bar and Hard Core Logo. 0-385-25845-3

[BCBW AUTUMN 1999]