ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the Carmina Priapea (CP), a collection of ancient epigrams that pose the touch of poetry in even more dramatic terms. The CP is an anonymous collection of early Imperial Latin epigrams that centre on the comically menacing figure of the god Priapus. The Priapic garden scene might be summarized as one of reciprocal transgressive contact. The trespassing thief stretches out a hand to pluck another's fruit; the guardian god thrusts his retaliatory erection into the thief's body. Touch is the privileged sense throughout the CP, foregrounded to an absurd and often disturbing degree. This sensual fixation begins with Priapus himself, a relentlessly – indeed, preposterously – haptic deity. The CP's meditations on the haptic paradox of poetic reading are intensified by its insistent invocation of ancient epigram's dual status as both a book-based and a site-based form. Poetry's problematization of the subject/object divide is on vivid display in the CP's garden scene.
