Parker Tyler's 1945 epic poem, The Granite Butterfly, was hailed by William Carlos Williams as "the best long poem in English since The Waste Land." This beautiful facsimile edition includes the important reviews (by Williams, Marius Bewley & others) and correspondence concerning the poem (with, for example, Bewley, Williams, Ezra Pound & Kenneth Burke), as well as a charming introduction by Charles Boultenhouse, Tyler's partner, exploring the poem's central theme: his lifelong fetish for the matinee idol Carlyle Blackwell and its grafting on to the poet's Oedipus complex.

One of the finest literary works of the twentieth-century, lovingly reprinted in this edition. An epic about cinema and sexuality and what it is to be human. The accompanying essays are priceless.

The chapters deal with a specific aspect of sex in movies, and the author has dug deep to pull out some great and obscure movies. The book is richly endowed with many black and white pictures of memorable scenes and stars. Material is presented from the first on film kiss up to the free-for-all sex romps of the 70's. Very entertaining and the pictorial content alone is worth it.

It's good to see this fascinating book still in print after all these years. I believe the original 1974 edition went up to 8 or 9 printings. Where Parker Tyler found his material is anyone's guess. Jammed-full of photographs from obscure and well-known films, both Hollywood produced and from foreign countries, this book is casually laid-out which makes it great for thumbing through. Everytime I open the pages I find new and interesting facts I didn't know. Each picture carries a short caption identifying the film and the book is divided into chapters of sexual preference or deviation, like "Bedroom and Bath", "The Bosom and the Bottom" and "The Gay Sexes." (Hollywood didn't miss a thing!) The chapters describe every era of filmmaking and the fight with censors, eventually bringing us to 70's and Black Exploitation Films. Highly Recommended!