The Trapeze of Your Flesh by Charles Rammelkamp

There are many histories of America, but none of them is as much fun as Charles Rammelkamp’s The Trapeze of Your Flesh, an account of burlesque, specifically stripping, from the 19th century to the present, as told in the voices of the strippers themselves. We hear from, among others, Fanne Fox, “The Tidal Basin Bombshell,” Sally Keith, “Queen of the Tassels,” Patti Waggin, “The Educated Torso,” Sheila Ryan, aka “Sheila the Peeler,” and my personal favorite, Lili St. Cyr, “The Anatomic Bomb.” The speakers offer unforgettable glimpses of tumultuous lives, as when Candy Barr blandly remarks, “I married, had a kid at nineteen, shot my husband a couple of years later,” or when Tura Luna says, “I had to quit acting after an ex-boyfriend shot me in the stomach,” or when June Power says, “They called me the model responsible for the first erection of so many lads in the 1960s. I call that power.” The great Chesty Morgan generously observes that “My boobs belonged to the world, even if they were attached to my body,” but maybe the best line comes from Mabel Santley, late in the 1800s: “Men have done foolish things for sex at least since Helen of Troy.” I haven’t enjoyed a book of poems this much in a long time.

—George Bilgere, author of Central Air

The Trapeze of Your Flesh is a tour de force in which maestro Rammelkamp poetically emulates his subject matter and with the grace of Josephine Baker, strips away societal taboos and prejudices to reveal these women’s towering intellects and the powerful forces for change they were, and continue to be. These largely unsung heroines are getting their just due here. There’s Gypsy Rose Lee dressing down H.L. Mencken “for that ridiculous term, ‘ecdysiast.’” “What a blowhard! The word means ‘molting,’ for Heaven’s sake!” There’s also Mistinguett who “volunteered to spy for France, [and] finally persuaded King Alfonso of Spain to intervene in 1916.” These women are true revolutionaries. Charles Rammelkamp’s linguistic agility and sly wit celebrates and gives them voice perfectly: June Power says,
“They called me the model
responsible for the first erection
of so many lads in the 1960s.
I call that power.”

I do too! —Elizabeth MacDuffie, Editor, Meat for Tea

PLEASE DO NOT OPEN Charles Rammelkamp’s latest collection of history-themed poetry, The Trapeze of Your Flesh, if
a. Your things-to-do list is still glaring at you with nothing checked off;
b. You never heard of Blaze Starr;
c. You put off your field trip to The Block until too late;
d. See (a) again. CLOSE THE BOOK. Do the laundry.
As one who often ran into Ms. Starr while buying my wee ballet shoes from the same downtown B-more shop supplying the Star’s pasties, not to mention accompanying the young, new President of a prestigious Ohio college on a field trip to The Block when he and his wife visited Baltimore, not to mention hating my stupid pectoral muscles after watching Shazell Shazaar twirl tassels, I will tell you that Rammelkamp’s poems spoken by or about various real, O very real, strippers from back in The Day may be your most delicious—and genuinely enlightening---reading experience in years. It’s a chortle-out-loud serious, seriously good book.

—Clarinda Harriss, author of MORTMAIN; The Night Parrot; the bone tree; forms of verse: British and American; The White Rail; Dirty Blue Voice and others.

The Trapeze of Your Flesh is a poetic romp ala Doctorow through the history of Burlesque. The headliners are all here—Blaze Starr, Tempest Storm, Gypsy Rose Lee, et al., with plenty of factoids about their lives (before and after), their real names, and their tricks of the trade. Rammelkamp went the extra mile with his research and it really shows in his presentation of their side of the story and the absolutely fabulous bon mots.

—Richard Peabody, Editor, Gargoyle Magazine

Charles Rammelkamp’s exposition of the “flesh trapeze” that swings through American entertainment and culture, via the voices of some of its most prominent acrobats, is vital to an understanding of our culture.

—Roman Gladstone, author of A Crisis of Faith

Charles Rammelkamp is Prose Editor for BrickHouse Books in Baltimore, where he lives with his wife, Abby. Rammelkamp’s previous BlazeVOX collection, Transcendence, dealt with psychedelic drugs and yoga, an historical examination of the CIA’s covert “mind control” programs, Timothy Leary, etc. Rammelkamp is the author of several collections of “historical” or “biographical” poetry sequences, written in dramatic monologue form, including Fusen Bakudan (Time Being Books), about World War Two Japanese balloon bombs and leper colony missionaries in Vietnam; Mata Hari: Eye of the Day (Apprentice House), about the life and career of the World War I femme fatale spy; American Zeitgeist (Apprentice House), which deals with the populist politician and Scopes Trial buffoon, William Jennings Bryan; Catastroika (Apprentice House), another collection of dramatic monologues in the voices of Maria Rasputin, the mad monk’s daughter, who escaped Russia after the Revolution and became a lion tamer for Ringling Brothers, and a fictional Jewish character, Sasha Federmesser, who likewise escapes and immigrates to Baltimore. A chapbook of poems about female sailors in the British Royal Navy during the 17th and 18th centuries, Jack Tar’s Lady Parts (Main Street Rag Press), is also written in this style. His collection on Harry Houdini, A Magician Among the Spirits, winner of the Blue Light Press Poetry Prize, is another. Other poetry collections include Ugler Lee, The Field of Happiness and See What I Mean? (Kelsay Books) and Mortal Coil, a chapbook published by Clare Songbirds. Another chapbook of poems, Me and Sal Paradise, was published by FutureCycle Press.

Book Information:

· Paperback: 174 pages
· Binding: Perfect-Bound
· Publisher: BlazeVOX [books]
· ISBN: 978-1-60964-465-9