Erotic Poetry, Love & Passion • A review of Poets & Anthologies

The Art of Erotic Poetry

I love erotic and love poetry and have several collections; some are good, some are not.

This is a big post, overdue, and the books are given in no particular order (I made a pile on the floor).

I thought readers might enjoy a post giving an overview of what’s available—something which I’ve already done for Erotic Haiku. First, the question: What makes a good erotic poem? Here’s what I wrote in my opening to paragraph to Erotic Haiku:

Just as the haiku is the art of indirection, so too erotica. Whereas the explicit is an imaginative endpoint, the best haiku are a suggestive starting point for the imagination.  Suggestiveness is all – allusion, inference, and association.  And when haiku fail because they were made too explicit, eroticism fails for the same reason: eroticism becomes pornographic.

To me, the best erotic poetry is an imaginative starting point, not an endpoint. The best erotic poems are like the best metaphors; which is to say, to paraphrase the great poet EA Robinson, erotic poetry “tells the more the more it is not told”. When poems become too explicit, they lose something.

After each review I’ve added a rating – 1 to 6 ♥’s, 6 being the best.

Sex ~ Sex
Art ~ Illustrations and Artwork
Romance ~ Passion & Love Poetry
Look & Feel ~ Typography, Layout, Readability
Poetry ~ Its Quality
Index ~ Content, First Line, Title, Author

• Note: If you are a poet or publisher who would like me to add your erotic book of poetry to this list (as some publishers have requested), please send a review copy. I’m too poor to buy. Seriously (having spent it all on erotic poetry). I’ll update this post with your book the day I receive it. If you think a book should be on this list, and isn’t, let me know. If you disagree with anything I’ve written, comment. More books will be added over time and I’ll notify those who follow the blog that I’ve done so with a post.

Enjoy!

Love Poetry Out Loud

This is the book for the poetry enthusiast. Each poem is accompanied by a brief introductory side note and each is annotated — literary allusions are explained. The book isn’t just meant to titillate, but to elucidate.

You will find familiar poems. The emphasis, I think, is more on the literary quality of the poems than their salaciousness. So, you will find “Fire and Ice” by Robert Frost along with “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” by T.S. Eliot – “passionate” poems. If you visit Amazon, you can “look inside” and visit the table of contents.

This is the book for the literary minded. If you’re going to be caught red-handed with a book of love poems, this book won’t embarrass you.

• The Book Good paper. Illustrations, such as they are, are limited to decorative doodles in red – hearts, flowers, etc. Very tasteful. Readers will find an index of first lines, titles and authors.
• Comparisons This compares with Homage to Eros (reviewed below). Both collections take a more high brow approach to passion and literature. Where Love Poetry Out Loud sticks with contemporary poets Americans might be more familiar with and recognize, Homage to Eros is more anglophile in its collection. Also, Love Poetry Out Loud comes off as a high budget production whereas Homage to Eros is not. No colorful doodles in Homage to Eros.
• In Translation The Bible, if that counts.
• You and your Lover This isn’t the book – not unless you enjoy discussions as to whether a passion for literature is the same as a passion for sex. The focus of the book isn’t eroticism, per se. No one, for instance, would think of “Fire and Ice” as being erotic: passionate, perhaps, but not erotic. More erotic poems are mixed in, like Sleeping With You, by John Updike, but if you’re out with your date? No. The title itself “passionate poems to stir the heart” is vague enough to suggest the literary focus of the book. The cover says it all – two lovers coddling their books rather than each other.
• Embarrassment Only if you meant to come off as steamy and dangerous.

Sex ♥♥
Art ♥♥
Romance ♥♥♥
Look & Feel ♥♥♥♥♥
Poetry ♥♥♥♥♥
Index ♥♥♥♥♥♥

Sensual Love Poems

Kathleen Blease, the curator of this anthology, organizes the poems into chapters: Awakenings of Love, A Love Like Mine, Reflections of Love. The font for these chapters would make a Harlequin publisher blush – all curlycues and floral excess.

I like that the poems are loosely arranged, chronologically.

You won’t find as many familiar poems in this collection and (if the cover and font doesn’t already betray the emphasis) the poems aren’t so much erotic as archly romantic. They are, as the title plainly says, sensual. That isn’t to say they aren’t good. In fact, this is a very good collection of poems on the theme of love and affection. Blease has a good nose for the good poem and, as far as I’m concerned, every one of the poems deserves to be in the book. How about this by Izumi Shikibu:

In this world
love has no color—
yet how deeply
my body
is stained by yours.

I recommend the book for the freshness of its selection. They range from Indo-European, Japanese, Chinese, and European, to American, from BC to AD. Good stuff. That said, Blease seems to favor the poetry of an older era and translated poems are limited to antiquity. You won’t find much of anything from the 20th or 21rst century.

• The Book There are no illustrations. The paper is acidic and will quickly brown: cheaply published. Small type. Good indexes though.
• Comparisons This could be considered a slimmed down version of A Book of Love Poetry. Both books are more generous in their selections from a variety of cultures.
• In Translation Antiquities and Japan (see above).
• You and your Lover These are the poems to memorize for public seduction: to be recited to the beautiful woman seated next to your rival. They won’t embarrass. They’ll impress. They may entice your date,  lover, wife or husband into a more private reading. Once there though, you’ll want different book, one with a more erotic focus.
• Embarrassment For the man: Scissors and a paper bag will make a delightful book cover.

Sex ♥♥♥
Art ♥
Romance ♥♥♥♥♥♥
Look & Feel ♥♥
Poetry ♥♥♥♥♥♥
Index ♥♥♥♥♥♥

Treasury of Favorite Love Poems

This is a nicely organized little book, little in size but not in content. Poems are organized by subject matter and theme: Joy and Celebration, Eros and Longing, Wooing, Seduction, Worship and Devotion, Discord, Communion, Torment, Absence and Separation, Hope, Bitterness, Disavowal, Sorrow and Lamentation, Tenderness, Transience, Remembrance. Thankfully, though the book clocks in at over 400 pages, they give us one, nicely fitting, poem per page – and that’s makes this collection approachable.

I listed the chapters in order. (The editors provide explanations.) For example, they define Seduction as “poems that illustrate the two faces of seduction: well-crafted arguments for lovemaking and (apparently) defenseless surrender to the power of love.”  Strangely, you will notice that the chapters skip over the nub of the whole matter — Sex. Ahem. I double-checked to make sure they weren’t applying a polite euphemism. That is, were they using ‘communion‘ as a euphemism for sex? No, by communion they mean marriage, or its likeness. Worth noting: From communion the editors bypass sex and skip straight to Torment. What are we to think?

Setting aside that one glaring omission, the selected poems are beautiful. They range widely but modern poems (read free verse) are few (as with the book Sensual Love Poems). The poems are mostly traditional – rhymed and in meter. One or two translated poems. On the upside, the selection of poetry is eclectic and you may find some of the poems less familiar. The editor makes an effort to bypass the usual chestnuts.

• The Book Small, about four inches by six. Good paper. Good type. Only an index of authors. No index of first lines or titles. No art.
• Comparisons This book compares to Faber Book of Love Poems (reviewed below). While Treasury‘s collection of poems doesn’t compare to Faber’s, most readers will appreciate Treasury’s much more approachable, one poem per page, layout.
• In Translation One or two from the antiquities.
• You and your Lover As your relationship moves from Longing, to Wooing, to Seduction, Communion, and then to Torment, you will easily find a good poem for every occasion except sex. Presumably, the editors must think you will be too busy when that chapter comes around.
• Embarrassment She’s waiting for you to read but all you can remember is the poem’s first line. How do you find it?

Sex ♥♥
Art ♥
Romance ♥♥♥♥♥♥
Look & Feel ♥♥♥♥
Poetry ♥♥♥♥♥♥
Index ♥♥

Seduction in the 1rst Degree
A Collection of Erotic Poetry

This is not an anthology but a collection of erotic poems by one poet, Lisa Marie Canfield. The book is unusual in that respect. I can’t think of any other modern poet who has dedicated an entire book to erotic poetry. Cool.

There are moments when Canfield’s free verse, even by free verse standards, seems to lose all distinction with prose. Any reader who comes to these poems looking for the romance of rhyme, meter or sustained poetry will be disappointed. The imagery is mundane and  straight forward, the stock and trade of erotic writing.

If only I could touch you once more.
Feel the thrill and excitement beneath my nervous touch,
To taste your sweet lips made of honey,
To breathe your spicy cologne that mingles with hot, heavy sweat.

So begins the poem If Only. The writing has a certain amateurish feel to it (despite her list of publications), poetic rather than poetry, full of a beginner’s enthusiasm – clichés like “nervous touch” and “sweet lips” or ‘hot, heavy sweat” typify the collection as a whole. She tends toward the wordy and pseudo-literary.  She titles one of her poems, unabashedly: Losing Myself Unto You.

All in all, the book has more the feeling of a diary; and each poem the unblushing, earnest and unselfconscious gushing of a teenager (strangely from a woman who is married with two children). Many readers would find it profane and vulgar. (Don’t let the cover fool you.) But it’s in that respect that you might enjoy the book. If you  want to experience marriage, love and the sheer unbridled enthusiasm of sex through the unvarnished and unrestrained joy of a woman, then this is the book. Don’t read it for the poetry. Read it for the joy of sex.

Lunge into me, my love,
Deep and transcending, with the strength
Of a thousand men, fulfilled and virile with youth
And unleashing and unbundling energy,
Penetrate all that I am…

• The Book About 8 by 5. Good paper. Easy to read.
• Comparisons This book could be compared to Velvet Heat (see below) in terms of its explicitness. As I wrote below, think of Seduction in the 1rst Degree as explicit erotica for and by the married and Velvet Heat as erotica for the free and loose.
• You and your Lover If your guy says he doesn’t like poetry, read him these. See what happens.
• Embarrassment If he shows up with the book Love Poetry Out Loud…

Sex ♥♥♥♥♥♥
Art ♥
Romance ♥♥
Look & Feel ♥♥♥
Poetry ♥♥
Index ♥

The Best American Erotic Poems
From 1800 to the Present

The title spells it out.

If you are regularly disappointed by books with titles like Love Poetry or Poetry for Lovers, having discovered that, at least in the opinion of publishers (and those who title books), love and sex are two different genres, then this is the book you want.

There is a lot of sex in these poems and they’re good.

David Lehman, the curator of this collection, has a good nose for the erotic, the suggestive and sex turned into poetry.

You will find blank verse, meter, rhyme, prose poetry and imaginative free verse. You will also find a sense of humor, something sometimes missing from the more romantically inclined collections. Conversely, though, don’t expect the deeper, spiritually searching erotic poetry of the older romantics or even some current collections. This is the chapter missing from the Treasury of Favorite Love Poems.

Here’s a sampling from a poem by Paul Jones called To His Penis:

…Your strange sight makes all women
charming and comely and warm;
round grinder, hound on the hunt,
you light fire to young tight cunts;
roof-beam boosting maiden’s laps,
your prod, you’ve tilled twenty rows,
groin growth raised like a grand nose,
crude inconstant crotch crawler,
lanky and lewd loving lure,
gnarled yet graceful, a goose neck.
Hard nail, you left my home wrecked…

One of the best collections of erotic poetry out there.

• The Book No illustrations or art. Good paper. Good type. No index of first lines. Short and interesting biographies of all the poets are included in the back of the book.
• Comparisons This book compares to Passionate Hearts (see below). Those readers who might deem Best American Erotic Poems a touch profane and vulgar, might do well to consider Passionate Hearts. Where Erotic Poems can be humorous, irreverent and gauche, Passionate Hearts has chapters like Tender Awakenings and Deeper Intimacies and a message. My advice? Buy both books. They compliment each other.
• In Translation Just American Poets.
• You and your Lover This is a great book to sneak under your lover’s pillow.
• Embarrassment Try the kindle edition. The cover design is like a so-unsubtle billboard.

Sex ♥♥♥♥♥♥
Art ♥
Romance ♥♥
Look & Feel ♥♥♥♥
Poetry ♥♥♥♥♥♥
Index ♥♥♥♥♥

Homage to Eros
100 Great Poems of Love and Lust

Once one begins reviewing these, decoding titles gets easier.

“Love and lust” is not the same as erotic. If you see Erotic in the title, it means sex, if you don’t, then things get literary. And this book has a decidedly literary bent. The focus is on great poetry — passion transformed into literature rather than titillation. So, for example, the poems are arranged chronologically starting with that old chestnut, Song Of Solomon, proceeding through Shakespeare, “Bright Star” by Keats, and ending with, among others, Seamus Heaney.

Interestingly, the curator, Dannie Abse, has a decidedly classical and anglophile bent. There is only one American poet, Peter Meinke, and all the rest are from the British Isles, Ireland, Whales, New Zealand, Australia. That’s not a bad thing. The more modern poetry is good but not altogether memorable – tending toward the buttoned up. They reflect Abse’s preference for a more decorous eroticism. You won’t find the same rambunctious free-for-all as in The Best American Erotic Poems.

Abse includes one of his own poems in the book. Setting aside the archly antique phrasing and language, the poem is a charming 19th century poem written in the 20th century. From the last stanza:

Listen flowers, birds, winds, worlds,
tell all today that I married
more than a white girl in the barley –
for today I took to my human bed
flowers  and bird and wind and world,
and all the living and all the dead.

The real interest in the book, for some, will be the latter half. That’s when you will start reading poems by poets you’re unlikely to have read before.

• The Book No illustrations or art. Mildly acidic paper. No indexes. Short biographies of the poets are included at the head of each poem.
• Comparisons This compares with Love Poetry Out Loud (reviewed above). Both collections take a more high brow approach to passion and literature. Where Love Poetry Out Loud sticks with contemporary poets who Americans might be more familiar with and recognize, Homage to Eros is more anglophile in its collection. Also, Love Poetry Out Loud definitely comes off as a high budget production whereas Homage to Eros is not. No colorful doodles in Homage to Eros.
• In Translation Some early poems from antiquity.
• You and your Lover This isn’t the book, more of a companion to Love Poetry Out Loud.
• Embarrassment None. The book to be seen with. With a cover by Gustav Klimt, you can’t lose. But trade it for another once you’ve taken her home.

Sex ♥
Art ♥
Romance ♥♥♥♥
Look & Feel ♥♥♥
Poetry ♥♥♥♥
Index ♥

The Faber Book of Love Poems

This is one of those anthologies that publishers toss off on a slow day just to have some skin in the game. At least that’s the impression. Unlike the Treasury of Favorite Love Poems, which is mercifully limited to one poem per page, the Faber anthology prints them one right after the other with no apparent regard to poem length, stanza or page layout.

The collection focuses on poetry prior to the 20th century,  reaching back to the 12th — lots of thee’s and thou’s. They are arranged in chapters: Love Expected; Love Begun; The Plagues of Loving; Love Continued; Absence, Doubts, Division; Love Renounced; and Love in Death. Many of the old chestnuts are here. Interestingly, the editor Geoffrey Grigson has a taste for older English poetry so you will find a nice selection of poems prior to Shakespeare — a poet like Sir Thomas Wyatt is well represented. Grigson also mixes in some songs from Elizabethan plays by John Ford and Robert Greene. He also includes a handful of untranslated French poems.

The overall impression is somewhat academic and high brow. The problem with books like these (and layout is everything when stuffed with so many poems) is that they can have that ‘everything but the kitchen sink‘ feel to them (and this does). (I personally think the erotic books with a theme are better.) Whereas the Treasury of Favorite Love Poems has comparatively bite-size chapters, Faber’s can be almost 70 pages in length. The poems march indiscriminately one after the other in small type. There is undoubtedly much beautiful and great poetry in the book, but there are better places to find it, and easier.

• The Book No illustrations. No art. Bad paper.
• Comparisons This book compares to Treasury of Favorite Love Poems, but even more directly to A Book of Love Poetry (see below). While the selection of poems is much more varied and interesting to the knowledgeable reader, the less erudite will appreciate the approachable layout and presentation of Treasury.
• In Translation A handful of French, Spanish and Italian poems.
• You and your Lover This is more of a reference manual.
• Embarrassment Don’t want her to know you need bifocals? -  then pick a different book.

Sex ♥♥
Art ♥
Romance ♥♥♥♥♥
Look & Feel ♥
Poetry ♥♥♥♥♥
Index ♥♥♥♥♥♥

Passionate Hearts
The Poetry of Sexual Love

As if the title weren’t enough, the publishers drive home the point with a juicy quote on the front cover: “Passionate Hearts should be on the bedside of every couple. ~ Harville Hendrix, Ph.D., author of Getting the Love You Want.” (Although it looks like they’ve removed the quote on the latest edition.)

How do they do? A damned good job. This book is the polar opposite of a book like Faber’s Book of Love Poems. You won’t find any thee’s and thou’s. This isn’t academe. The poems are all by contemporary poets and, as expected from a  selection not focused on the classics, uneven in quality — but none of them make you wonder why they were included. You might recognize a handful of names: E.E. Cummings, Raymond Carver, Galway Kinnell. Fortunately (in my opinion) there are over a hundred poets whose names will be new to you.

The editor, Wendy Maltz, explains why she focuses on contemporary poems.

[The classic western love poems] perpetuated the cultural norms of their day, especially the belief that a woman’s personal sexual experience was irrelevant; her pleasure would come in being a submissive vehicle for satisfying a man’s sexual desires… In classic poetry, true consent, based on a right to refuse sex at any time, seemed nonexistent.

So, Maltz’s focus is on erotic poetry that honors the importance of “mutuality in intimacy”. The poems are grouped into five chapters: tender awakenings; passionate pleasures; varied dances; deeper intimacies; and graceful transformations. She explains the idea of each chapter in the introduction. The basic idea is that they focus on the relationship between two partners. The chapters aren’t so much a progression, as five different ways couples are transformed and bonded by sex. In short, this is a book with an agenda (not a bad thing) unlike The Best American Erotic Poems (above) or The Erotic Spirit (see below) which are more like true anthologies.

More than a few of the poems can’t avoid the stock hyperbole of passion- suns, moons, earth, goddesses, etc…   Nothing wrong in that. Even in poetry, it’s not what you’ve got, it’s how you use it. They all offer something. Here’s how anne k. smith begins her erotic poem:

Giving Thanks

You would not believe it; I sat
at the table with my family,
with my father saying grace, then
solemnly passing the bowls of
corn, of beans, the heavy
platter of turkey and dressing.
I filled my plate and lifted
my fork to my mouth,
but no matter what I put in,
it wasn’t what I tasted,
not the creamed potatoes,
not the smooth brown crust
of bread. It was you my mouth
remembered, the familiar musk
of your sex, its smooth heat,
its quick fullness…

• The Book No illustrations. No art. Good Paper. One poem per page.  Nicely laid out but no indexes!
• Comparisons The book to compare this to is The Best American Erotic Poems (see above). Whereas Best American is an anthology of American erotic poems, and leans toward more full-blooded erotic earthiness (some might use the word profane), Passionate Hearts is for those with a less profane, more connected and spiritual bent – not a true anthology. See the review The Best American Erotic Poems for more in the way of comparison.
• In Translation None.
• You and your Lover Definitely. If you’re looking for inspiration in the writing of your own erotic poem, this is the book to consult.
• Embarrassment Yeah, don’t leave this one on the coffee table when the family visits.

Sex ♥♥♥♥♥
Art ♥
Romance ♥♥♥♥♥
Look & Feel ♥♥♥♥
Poetry ♥♥♥♥♥
Index ♥

Love Poems from the Japanese

I like almost every book Shambhala Library puts out.

But for a few outliers from the 17th though 19th centuries, the majority of these poems date from between the 9th and 12th centuries, when the Tanka (the form in which these poems are written) was dominant (long before the Japanese haiku came into its own). When it comes to literature the Japanese aren’t known for  chattiness. Whereas haiku (normally) are presented as three line poems, Tanka can seem almost excessive at five lines – and yet. And yet if there was ever a culture who made less, more, it was the Japanese.

What’s especially interesting about Tanka is that the Japanese considered them a feminine form. At the form’s height the dominant practitioners were women. That means that unlike any other culture, women were as represented, if not more so, than men.

These poems won’t be for everyone. Obviously, you’re not going to buy them unless you’re already interested in Japanese literature. As such, they are subtle, exquisite and poetic. There is obviously much that is lost in translation (mainly cultural and literary allusions) but the poems retain an emotional grounding that we all share. The older poems are obviously more suggestive and coy, but the patient reader will appreciate the passion of some and the intense eroticism of others.

I wish I were close
To you as the wet skirt of
A salt girl to her body.
I think of you always.

— Yamabe no Akahito [8th Century]

I cannot forget
The perfumed dusk inside the
Tent of my black hair
As we woke to make love
After a long night of love.

— Marichiko [20th Century]

• The Book A few black & white illustrations – not erotic. Good Paper. One poem per page and easy to read. Biographies of the poets in back but no indexes.
• Comparisons This book compares with Everyman’s Chinese Erotic Poems. The collection is much smaller and the poems are obviously not as varied. You will also find that the Japanese poems are much less erotically overt than the earthiest of the Chinese poems.
• You and your Lover Not unless an almost zen-like subtlety is your idea of foreplay.
• Embarrassment None. After you’ve hidden Passionate Hearts, this book will fool them into thinking you’ve finally become the mature, refined and multicultural sophisticate they always wanted you to be.

Sex ♥♥
Art ♥♥
Romance ♥♥♥♥♥♥
Look & Feel ♥♥♥♥
Poetry ♥♥♥♥♥♥
Index ♥

Velvet Heat
Erotic Poetry for the Carnal Mind

One word: Carnal.

Other than that, if the cover doesn’t spell it out, then I don’t know what to say. Looking for felicities of rhyme, rhythm and meter? No. Looking for subtlety, spiritual interconnectedness, poetic suggestiveness? No. This book is what you get when the forward is written by Michele Zipp, the Editor-In-Chief of Playgirl Magazine. So consider yourself warned and informed. (And what’s with “Velvet”?) Moving on.

If you set aside any sort of artistic or poetic standards, then the poems (you might want to put monolithic air-quotes around “poems“) are refreshing in their explicit, free-verse XXX’edness. If you’re done with erotic poetry collections beating around the bush (pun intended), then this is the book for you. This is the sine qua non of filth (until The Golden Treasury of Men’s Room Limericks is finally released). Many of them are poorly written and just plain bad. Some almost transcend their badness — that so-bad-they’re-good badness that only accidental genius is capable of. On the other hand, to be fair, there are some keepers. Bottom line: if you don’t know what the word prude means and poetic standards are negotiable, go for it.

How do you make a screaming Orgasm?
Shanna Germain

If only it was my lover asking and not these pasty-faced
bar boys with their fake IDs, and their desire
to see me blush. I tell them about raspberry liquor,
pineapple juice, the clink of ice against the glass.
But I can tell it is not what they’re looking for,
their eyes following the shift of legs, the curve of hip.

If only it was my lover asking, then I would say:
Start with an ounce of slow soft strokes.
Combine two pats of butt with a whisper
of tonue against teeth.
Add a touch of hand to the back of the neck,
a lick of earlobe, a pinch of nipple.
Stir until you reach the desired consistency.
······················································Serve hot….

• The Book No illustrations. Decent Paper. One poem per page but what’s with the font? – one step above dot matrix. Biographies of the poets in back but no indexes.
• Comparisons This book could be compared to Seduction in the 1rst Degree for its explicitness. Think of Seduction in the 1rst Degree as explicit erotica for and by the married and Velvet Heat as erotica for the free and loose.
• In Translation Are you kidding?
• You and your Lover If your lover is as dirty minded as you are, this is your book.
• Embarrassment EPIC.

Sex ♥♥♥♥♥♥
Art ♥
Romance ♥♥
Look & Feel ♥
Poetry ♥
Index ♥

Erotic Poems

This is another one of those publisher issued collections.

I’m always skeptical since they lack the conviction of an editor or poet with an agenda. But Everyman has been issuing pocket sized collections of poetry by all the famous poets and a variety of anthologies and they are all, in my opinion, good. They are well laid out and readable, but this is an exception.

Where every other publisher treats the word erotic as a euphemism for poems about sex (makes sense, right?), Everyman seems to have missed the memo. Peter Washington, in the foreword, spells it out:

This anthology is a companion to the Everyman collection of Love Poems, distinguished from that volume by its preoccupation with the life of the body. That said, anyone looking for pornography here will be disappointed: on this occasion I have taken erotic to mean primarily sensuous and passionate. There are frank and even bawdy poems included, by Rochester among others; many of the items are witty and funny; others are tragic; but the emphasis is on Eros as the god of physical love, not the mere patron of genital conjunctions.

He makes the word pornography sound so dirty. But, there you have it. He has essentially written his own review. If the foreword sounds condescending and pompous, your reading comprehension is in good shape. Washington will not sully his anthology for the” mere patron of genital conjunctions” – id est, all you dirty-minded readers. To me, this begs the question, why title the anthology Erotic Poems? If Everyman wants skin in the game, then do it, otherwise don’t mislead readers by calling the anthology erotic. And what is a “preoccupation with the life of the body” anyway? What, like Catholic wafers?

Anyway, this is a classically minded, white male anthology. Beautiful poems, yes, but not the right title.

• The Book No illustrations. Good Paper. One poem per page. Index of first lines only.
• Comparisons This book could be compared to Sensual Love Poems, but Sensual Love Poems is better and more full blooded.
• In Translation Antiquities.
• You and your Lover No.
• Embarrassment Only if you read the foreword.

Sex ♥
Art ♥
Romance ♥♥♥
Look & Feel ♥♥♥♥
Poetry ♥♥♥♥♥
Index ♥♥

Loves Poems from the Greek Anthology
translated by Jacques Le Clercq

Now this is in a class of its own.

This is caviar for the general; a book for the collector; and a labor of love.  The erotic illustrations, typified by the cover are beautiful and found throughout the book.

The paper is heavy. The pages feel hand printed. If you close your eyes you can feel the lettering. Here is the forward:

The Greek Anthology consists of over four thousand brief epigrams written from before the Persian Wars down to the end of the Middle Ages: in other words form the Homeric to the close of the Byzantine age.

These poems thus voice the thoughts and sentiments of four distinct and vastly different civilizations; Greece in the golden age  of its classicism; Greexe in its Alexandrian era; Greece transplanted to Rome, pagan or Christian; and finally Greece persisting through the dark ages to the dawn of the Renaissance.

The book obviously doesn’t include all four thousand epigrams, just a selection. I find the poems to be beautiful in imagery, translation and expression. Here’s just a taste:

37 • Her Moist Kiss
Anon

At evenfall a maiden
kissed me with humid lips;
nectar, her kisses, and her mouth
redolent of nectar.

Lo, now I stagger,
drunken with her kiss
from which I quaffed
draught upon draught of love.

72 • Ripe Love
Paulus Silentarius

Thy wrinkles, O Philinna
are more beautiful
than the sap that courses
through the veins of youth.

Better I love to hold
the love apples of they bosom,
cupped, drooping in my hands,
than the high taut
breasts of a young virgin.

More pleasurable thine autumn
······than another’s spring,
thy winter hotter than another’s
······summer.

106 • To One Abused
Rufinus

So he cast thee out
onto the street
naked as a leaf,
as though himself had never known
love in another’s arms,
as though, a follower of Pythagoras,
he scoffed at women.
Therefore these tears, child,
that mar thy glance,
and thou, child,
shivering at the threshold
of this brute’s house.

Stay thy tears, child, and dry thy cheeks:
we shall undertake to find thee a lover
whose eyes are discreet
and whose hand wields no whip.

Sex ♥♥♥♥♥
Art ♥♥♥♥♥♥
Romance ♥♥♥♥♥♥
Look & Feel ♥♥♥♥♥♥
Poetry ♥♥♥♥♥♥
Index ♥

Chinese Erotic Poems

This is another Everyman anthology.

As with Love Poems from the Japanese, this isn’t a collection you’re going to buy unless you’re already predisposed to (or curious about) Chinese poetry. Books like these are for poetry lovers with an interest in worldly erotica. As such, the anthology represents, as far as I know, the only anthology of Chinese erotic poems and is well worth the price.

Here’s an extract from the foreword:

One of the Confucian Analects reads, “The Master said, I have never met a man who loves ethics more than he does sex.” However, the Confucian and Daoist traditions shared the idea that sexuality united lovers with the cosmos, and so classical Chinese attitude toward sexuality has generally been positive. Chinese erotic work fits within a broader sacred and intellectual tradition, and is seen as being spiritually and medically therapeutic.

That gives, perhaps, some small idea of what you can expect.

Poetry Collected by Feng Menglong (1574-1646)
Untitled

I open the door and see snowflakes flying night and day.
Three layers of embroidered quilt cannot keep me warm.
What I need is my man’s hot belly.

Lantern

Having an affair is like a lantern;
don’t punch holes or rumors will blow it out.
The woman tells the man,
“You come in secret without a light
but you ignite me inside
and make all my body burn red.”

So, if you’re of a mind to read Chinese poetry and appreciate the coy subtleties of poetry (primarily) prior to the 20th century, you won’t be disappointed by a lack of eroticism. The poems can be keenly erotic without being vulgar or profane. The poems are arranged chronologically and the final poem is a unembarrassed prose poem by a poet, Cyril Wong, born in 1977.

• The Book No illustrations. Good Paper. One or more poems per page, but laid out with care. No indexes.
• Comparisons This book could be compared to Love Poems from the Japanese. Unlike the Japanese, women poets were more often considered an embarrassment to their family and relations (since women were equally apt to write poetry of love and eroticism). There are many stories of their poetry being destroyed to avoid any perceived scandal. You will find fewer women among classical Chinese poets. However, women frequently wrote as anonymous and many of their poems survive under that appellation. Also, you are much more apt to find women poets in the ancient Chinese anthology, The Book of Songs (c. 600 BCE). In the ancient era, as in other cultures around the world, women seemed as able to freely express themselves as men. I’ve written a couple of posts on this subject which you can read here.
  
• You and your Lover Does your lover like Chinese poetry?
• Embarrassment None. Well, OK, just a little. The erotic content is offset by the caché of multiculturalism.

Sex ♥♥♥
Art ♥
Romance ♥♥♥♥♥
Look & Feel ♥♥♥♥
Poetry ♥♥♥♥♥♥
Index ♥

Shakespeare on Love

There’s not a lot to say in terms of the poetry. It’ s Shakespeare.

The real question concerns the selection and the quality of the book, neither of which are all that great. The book feels low budget – something to push out the door and make a little money on. The paper is acidic and browsn quickly. The binding is stiff and will crack. The selections are thrown onto the page without regard to layout, line, verse or stanza. The type is small and the predictable selections are arranged, chronologically, according to play. (One wishes the book were organized according to themes.) There is only an index of first lines in the back but nothing else. The whole thing feels perfunctory.

Interestingly, there aren’t that many books to choose from when it comes to erotic or romantic extracts from Shakespeare’s plays. Part of the problem, perhaps, is that the theme of love runs through all of his plays. Where does a selection begin and end? – how large? – how small? The Oxford Anthology of Shakespeare has over a hundred pages dedicated to Love (along with other themes). The presentation is excellent, one poem per page and, if the poem is longer, the layout is nevertheless well considered and easy to read. The thematic content of the selections are given in the content, meaning that if you’re looking for a passage on a particular theme, you will have much more luck finding it.  The selection, however, is only a third of Shakespeare on Love.

That said, neither book includes what I find to be the most erotic passage in all of Shakespeare (from the first Act of The Two Noble Kinsmen), so I’ll include it here. The queen has just come to importune Theseus, but Theseus is newly married is preoccupied – namely, with the thought of making love to his new wife. The queen knows full well that when his wife “her twinning cherries” lets fall upon his “tasteful lips”, there will be no other thought but that.

QUEEN

We come unseasonably: But when could grief
Cull forth, as unpanged judgement can, fit’st time
For best solicitation.

THESEUS

·····················Why, good Ladies,
This is a service, whereto I am going,
Greater then any was; it more imports me
Then all the actions that I have foregone,
Or futurely can cope.

QUEEN

·····················The more proclaiming
Our suit shall be neglected: when her Armes
Able to lock Jove from a Synod, shall
By warranting moonlight corslet thee, oh, when
Her twinning cherries shall their sweetness fall
Upon thy tasteful lips, what wilt thou thinke
Of rotten Kings or blubbered Queenes, what care
For what thou feel’st not? What thou feel’st being able
To make Mars spurn his Drum. O, if thou couch
But one night with her, every hour in’t will
Take hostage of thee for a hundred, and
Thou shalt remember nothing more than what
That banquet bids thee too.

Since most everyone is familiar with Shakespeare, you will undoubtedly have your own opinions as to the erotic quality of his poetry, so I’ll limit myself to rating the essentials.

Art ♥
Look & Feel ♥
Index ♥

Filthy Shakespeare
Shakespeare’s Most Outrageous Sexual Puns

Now this is a book to talk about.

It doesn’t call itself an anthology, but it almost is. You will find 23 selections of Shakepeare’s filthy erotic humor. If you remember my review of Everyman’s Erotic Poems (above), this is the book that would make Peter Washington’s mouth irretrievably pinched. In fact, the book is controversial, but only among scholars unfamiliar with the extensive repertoire of sexual puns available to the Elizabethans – unmatched, as far as I know – by any other language or culture. The poets of Velvet Heat have nothing on Shakespeare.

The reason the book limits itself to 23 selections is that, for each selection, Pauline Kiernan, the editor, provides: a brief introduction; the passage by Shakespeare; a translation into modern (and dirty) English; then a gloss of all the words in the passage and their hidden erotic connotations. This book is fun to read and the layout of each page is Cadillac with red and black font. Good stuff.

This is as close as you will get to an Erotic selection of poetry by Shakespeare.

• The Book No illustrations. Good Paper. Beautifully laid out and organized.
• Comparisons This is in a class of its own.
  
• You and your Lover If you and yours likes Shakespeare, there’s potential.
• Embarrassment It’s Shakespeare, but it’s filthy, but it’s Shakespeare, but it’s filth, but it’s Shakespeare…

Sex ♥♥♥♥♥♥
Art ♥
Look & Feel ♥♥♥♥♥♥
Poetry ♥♥♥♥♥♥
Index ♥♥♥♥♥♥

The Erotic Spirit
An Anthology of Poems of Sensuality, Love, and Longing

This is easily one of the most enjoyable anthologies on the market.

The book compares favorably, as a companion, to The Best American Erotic Poems (since, like that book, it’s focus is as an anthology). But it also makes a good companion to to Passionate Hearts. The Erotic Spirit is distinguished is in its liberal selection from a variety of cultures and times: British, Chinese, Persian Japanese, Roman, Ancient Greek, Muslim, Spanish,  Central American, male and female poets, etc… If you want a little eroticism from every era and culture, then you can’t do better than this book.

Are the poems more or less erotic? They all have to do with sex, love, beauty and eroticism but only a handful are explicit in their celebration of sex. Given the far ranging reach of this collection, you will find a more spiritual appreciation of sex, love and eroticism. This is the best kind of book to read before you go to sleep at night. Whatever poem you read will leave you with a warm glow – both in body and mind; hence the title The Erotic Spirit.

The poems are one to a page, easy to read and well presented. The back matter includes brief biographies on all the poets but, and there’s almost always a but, you won’t find any index, not one; so good luck finding that poem you liked. On the upside, the poems are arranged chronologically (which I’ve always enjoyed) and the content page lists them all by title. As a sample, here is a poem by Su Tung-P’o, easily my favorite Chinese poet, both as a poet and human being:

Remembering My Wife

Ten years ago you died.
And my life ceased.
Even when I don’t think of you,
I grieve. And with your grave
a thousand miles away,
there is no place for me
to give my grief a voice.
You wouldn’t know me
if you saw me now,
me with snowy hair
and a dusty face.

I dreamed myself home
last night, and saw you
through a window
combing out your hair,
When you saw me,
we were speechless
till we burst into silent tears.
Year after year,
I recall that moonlit night
we spent alone together
among hills of stunted pine.

• The Book No illustrations. Good Paper. One poem per page. No index.
• Comparisons This book, in a way, is the counterpart to The Best American Erotic Poems in the sense that it’s poems are drawn from wide ranging cultures. It might also be companioned with Passionate Hearts in the sense that it’s poems are drawn from wide ranging times, as opposed to Passionate Hearts, focused on 20th century and contemporary poets.
• In Translation Antiquities, classic and contemporary.
• You and your Lover The perfect gift: not too profane, not too sacred. Just right.
• Embarrassment The title says your above mere titillation. Sex and love is spiritual. You can’t lose.

Sex ♥♥♥♥
Art ♥
Romance ♥♥♥♥♥♥
Look & Feel ♥♥♥♥
Poetry ♥♥♥♥♥♥
Index ♥

No Bliss Like This
Five Centuries of Love Poems by Women

I sometimes think that women are better at erotica than men.

So I remember being excited to find this book but also mildly disappointed. The compiler, Jill Hollis, writes at the outset that she “restricted [her] selection to poems written originally in the English language”. This makes for some tough picking. English women’s poetry during the 19th century is, for the most part, archly formal, precious and amateurish. (The miracle that is the genius of Emily Dickinson can’t be overstated.) Elizabeth Barret Browning stands out and so does Christina Rossetti, though Rossetti ended her days as a puckered prude fussily writing Christian allegories.

Hollis does her best, but her tastes run toward the literary. Prior to the 19th century, so long as women weren’t confined to writing pious screeds, the poetry gets more interesting and less precious.

To My Heavenly Charmer
Martha Sansom (1690-1736)

My poor expecting Heart beats for thy Breast,
In ever’y Pulse, and will not let me rest;
A thousand dear Desires are waking there,
Whose Softness will not a Description bear,
Oh! let me pour them to thy lovely Eyes,
And catch their tender Meanings as they rise.
My ev’ry Feature with my Passion glows
In ev’ry Thought and Look it overlows.
Too noble and too strong for all Disguise,
It rushes from my Love-discov’ring Eyes.
Nor Rules not Reason can my Love restrain;
Its godlike Tide runs high in ev’ry Vein,
To the whole World my Tenderness be known,
What is the World to her, who lives for thee alone.

The sonnet reminds me of Anne Bradstreet’s poetry (though Bradstreet was the better poet). The trick is to see beyond the verse. Hollis seems to suggest as much. She writes that “some of the delight I had… derived from recognizing startlingly similar feelings or opinions about love being expressed by women writing hundreds of years apart…” That said, she states that she “did not want to use a strictly thematic  arrangement” but produced “a sequence or mixture in which the poems can… be read entirely independently of one another, but with informal clusters or pairs of poems where their mood or subject matter seemed complimentary.” Unfortunately, with so little guidance, the poems will feel utterly arbitrary to the casual reader.

There are also contemporary free verse poems but even these, somehow, feel formal. Hollis’s literary bent means you won’t find much poetry that celebrates “bodily love” – the kind Dante Gabriel Rossetti was writing and that so vexed his pious sister, Christina Rossetti. Most of the women, in this book at least, seem to keep sex at arm’s length (if not love and romance too.) Part of that is playful though. Up until the 20th century women were writing in a genre dominated and defined by men. You will read a fair amount of poems that are impish and delight in bursting the pretensions of the men and their genre. Taken in that sense, this can be fun to read. I’m torn. I wish the collection were more defined. I’m still not sure what bliss the title is referring to.

• The Book No illustrations. Decent Paper. One poem per page but who picked the lifeless font? – think Arial. The layout of the poems, all pushed to the top of the page with blockish titles, feels amateurish. Without any kind of thematic structure, the collection has that everything-but-the-kitchen-sink feel to it.
• Comparisons I tried searching for Erotic Poetry by women. Curiously, all the other books I came up with were lesbian themed. Sic Itur. Draw your own conclusions.
• In Translation None.
• You and your Lover Probably not.
• Embarrassment None. If you’re a guy, serious bonus points for reading poetry by women.

Sex ♥
Art ♥
Romance ♥♥♥♥
Look & Feel ♥♥
Poetry ♥♥♥
Index ♥♥♥♥

Wild Ways
Zen Poems of Ikkyu

Another book from Shambhala — a tiny little book, about 4 1/2 inches by 3 1/2, but one of my very favorites.

I can’t think of a single poet, from any culture or era, who so joyfully and unabashedly celebrated sex. (No, that’s a lie. There’s Ovid. I’ll talk about him later.) Ikkyu is a breathe of fresh air. He was Japanese. He was a revered and famous Zen master in his own day. He was an eccentric and he seems to have taken a child-like joy, at least when writing, in life and living.

Exhausted with gay pleasures, I embrace my wife.
The narrow path of aestheticism is not for me;
My mind runs in the opposite directions.
It is easy to be glib about Zen—I’ll just keep my mouth shut
And rely on love play all the day long.

The poems are intermittently broken up by Ikkyu’s drawings, including one little vignette that includes skeletons having sex. Other than that, the illustrations aren’t erotic. In the first two thirds the illustrations seem like the standard Japanese fair (to my untrained eye) while in the latter third, things get interesting – skeletons cavort. Also, not all of Ikkyu’s poems are erotic or sexual, though they still, in my opinion, speak with a refreshing clarity that is hardly typical of “Zen Poetry”.

Every day, priests minutely examine the Dharma
And endlessly chant complicated sutras.
Before doing that, though, they should learn
How to read the love letters sent by the wind
······and rain, the snow and moon.

But it’s his happy-go-lucky zest for sex that makes him truly irresistible.

By river or sea, in the mountains,
A man of the Way shuns fame and fortune,
Night after night, we two lovebirds snuggle on
······the meditation platform,
Lost in dalliance, intimate talk, and orgasmic
······bliss.

• The Book Black and white illustrations. Good Paper. One poem per page, easy to read and enjoy. Nice font.
• Comparisons This book compares with Crow with No Mouth (reviewed immediately below). Where Shambhala’s selection of Ikkyu’s poems are of the slightly more refined and poetic kind, Crow with No Mouth offers up Ikkyu in all his scandalous glory.
• In Translation Punctuation and line breaks added for the English speaking reader.
• You and your Lover Is your guy or girl into Yoga, Zen, Meditation? Need I say more?
• Embarrassment When your relatives pick up the book and begin reading, that’s when you fain complete innocence.

Sex ♥♥♥♥
Art ♥♥♥
Romance ♥♥♥♥
Look & Feel ♥♥♥♥
Poetry ♥♥♥♥♥
Index ♥

Crow with No Mouth
Ikkyu Fifteenth Century Zen Master

This is another collection (see above) of Ikkyu’s poetry.

Where Shambhala chooses to translate Ikkyu’s more philosophical and poetic poems (and more poetically), Stephen Berg, the translator of Crow with No Mouth, gives you unvarnished Ikkyu. Ikkyu scandalized the Zen community in his own day (while also being revered); and if you wondered why, having read Shambhala’s edition, then this book will clear up any confusion.

all koans just lead you on
but not the delicious pussy of the young girls I go down on

or:

I remember one quiet afternoon she fished out my cock
bent over played with it in her mouth for at least an hour

or:

once while she was cooking I kneeled put my head between
······her warm dark legs
up her skirt kissed and licked and sucked her until she came

By no means all of Ikkyu’s poems are about sex. In fact, most of them are not.

nobody told the flowers to come up nobody
will ask them to leave when spring’s gone

or:

poetry’s ridiculous write it feel proud
strut look in the mirror believe you know

One thing to note about Berg’s translations: they omit punctuation and that, likely, reflects the originals. Berg’s translations can feel raw, literal and unfinished; and that probably makes them much more faithful than Shambhala’s. Some readers, however, might wish he had tried to capture the poetic spirit of the originals rather than as literal, word for word, statements. (The art of translation is not only in the meaning of the words.)

only one koan matters
you

• The Book No illustrations. Good Paper. Four  poems per page, easy to read but the font is graceless.
• Comparisons This book compares with Wild Ways (reviewed immediately above). Whereas Shambhala’s selection of Ikkyu’s poems are of the slightly more refined and poetic kind, Crow with No Mouth offers a more raw and literal rendition.
• In Translation The lack of punctuation can be confusing at first.
• You and your Lover Don’t just read them, experience them.
• Embarrassment The perfect book to read on the bus—nobody will have a clue.

(Ranking the quality of the poetry also means ranking the quality of the translation.)

Sex ♥♥♥♥♥♥
Art ♥
Romance ♥♥♥♥♥
Look & Feel ♥♥
Poetry ♥♥♥♥♥
Index ♥

Songs of the Sixth Dalai Lama

This can be a hard to find book.

The Dalai Lama, to Tibetan Buddhists,  is roughly equivalent to the pope. They are both the spiritual leaders of their respective religions, but what a difference. The book begins with a biography of the sixth Dalia Lama, and nothing I write in so short a space will do justice to the intrigues of his brief life. In short, he refused to take his monk’s vows.

Tsangyang Gyatso loved wine, women, song and the life of a layman. Unfortunately, not only was he the titular leader of Tebetan Buddhists (whether he desired that role or not), he was also a political figure (hence the Chinese government’s continued paranoia). Gyatso’s refusal to assume his duties as a monk created extreme political instability that led to war among rival factions and, eventually, the Sixth Dalai Lama’s murder. Reading Gyatso’s life will flatly put to rest the naive view, common in the West, that the institution of Tibetan Buddhism was wholly benign.

Gyatso was a plain and austere man who rejected pomp and circumstance. He was approachable and  well-loved by the people of Tibet. In the end, the leaders of the political factions who murdered Gyatso were themselves killed. Many legends surround Gyatso. One of them is that the Fifth Dalai Lama, before his death, instructed that his reincarnation, the Sixth Dalai Lama, “should be allowed full freedom to behave as he desired, without any objections or obstruction”. The Fifth Dalai Lama’s prescription was not followed and the result, some say, changed the course of Tibet’s history and led, among other things, to the Chinese invasion.

I think it was Cervantes who once wrote that reading a work in translation was like looking at the backside of a Persian carpet. This applies to the songs of the Sixth Dalai Lama. The author notes that “Tsangyang was the first Dalai Lama to write lyrical verses and popularize lyric poetry in Tibet. ¶ Written in simple, clear and expressive language, the verses were restrained in tone and economic and accurate in their use of epithets and similes. Almost shorn of literary devices, the verses nonetheless excel in their rare description of the basic human emotions… Though these verses have been widely referred to as erotic love songs, and since their creation have been sung in every part of Tibet at festivals and other social occasions, not all the songs are inspired by love or eroticism.” Whatever their beauties in the original language, we must imagine them when reading them in English. Don’t read these expecting to be Wow’d. Read Gyatso’s life and try, in some small way, to imagine that far away time and place and the magic of his songs in their own language.

Even the stars in the sky
Can be measured by astrology.
Her body can be caressed,
But not so fathomed
Her deep inner longing.

• The Book The book prints the songs in their original language and script on the left, translations on the right.

intimate kisses
The Poetry of Sexual Pleasure

When it comes to erotic poetry, this is another collection that gets it right.

The book is split into five parts: anticipation & desire; self-awareness & discovery; admiration & appreciation; union and ecstacy; afterglow & remembrance. This may sound similar to passionate hearts (see above), but each chapter of intimate kisses is a nice progression through attraction, consummation and, as the title says, afterglow. Of all the anthologies currently available, intimate kisses is the easiest in which to find a poem that matches the mood.

This is a book of poems about sex from beginning to end. It’s not chronological. It’s not about ancillary issues. The poems are about sex. The chapters are about sex. But here’s the difference from a collection like Velvet Heat, Wendy Maltz, the editor, has an eye for figurative language and imagery. She doesn’t go for the poems that are explicit. She likes the poems that are poetry – where the poets have traded the explicit, mostly, for the suggestive and the inventive.

…jamming with you as the sky turns red
then dark to black and then the moon—
be great to get you in a feather bed

your cultured lips could wake the dead
the wetted reed beneath your tongue
fifties jazz running through my head

the familiar tune worn, smoothed and ragged
the sweet high wail that turns to moan
be great to fuck you in a feather bed
fifties jazz running through my head        ~ charles rossiter

Anybody who has followed my blog knows that I detest villanelles, but this one is cool. Matlz even find this little gem from Elizabeth Barret Browning’s blank verse novel: Aurora Leigh:

…I flung closer to his breast,
As sword that, after battle, flings to sheath;
And, in that hurtle of united souls,
The mystic motions which in common moods
Are shut beyond our sense, broke in on us,
And, as we sate, we felt the old earth spin,
And all the starry turbulence of worlds
Swing round us in their audient circles…

With a handful of exceptions though, the poems are mostly contemporary, which makes the more universal Erotic Spirit a good companion. There are a handful of transations, a Roman poem and Octavio Paz among them. (As a side note, one thing I’ve noticed in perusing all these books, is just how many erotic poems Sharon Olds has written – and they’re all good. At least one or two of her poems appear in every contemporary collection. She writes: …we could have him there, the steep forbidden/buttocks, backs of the knees, the cock/in our mouth, ah the cock in our mouth… from Best American Erotic Poems )

• The Book No illustrations. Good Paper. One  poem per page.Easy to read. Nicely laid out. No indexes.
• Comparisons This book compares companionably with Erotic Spirit, Best American Erotic Poems, and Passionate Hearts. Buy these four books and you’ve got it covered.
• In Translation A handful.
• You and your Lover This the book that goes to bed with both of you.
• Embarrassment Leave this on the coffee table and you get what you deserve.

Sex ♥♥♥♥♥♥
Art ♥
Romance ♥♥♥♥♥♥
Look & Feel ♥♥♥♥
Poetry ♥♥♥♥♥♥
Index ♥

Art & Love

This is a beautiful book.

The emphasis is just what it says, Art and Love Poetry. Erotic poems are mixed in but the emphasis is not on sex, but love, being in love, and passion.

There are, on average, one to two poems per page and they are beautifully arranged with accompanying paintings, over a 160 pages worth. The chapter headings are: My-ness; Oath of Friendship; Go, Lovely Rose; Let me Count the Ways; The Mess of Love; Yesterday He Still Looked in My Eyes; The Marriage of True Minds; and Give All to Love.

It’s an eclectic collection of paintings and poetry from different eras and cultures, including contemporary. I can’t think of a single reason not to recommend it except, perhaps, if you’re looking for an anthology with even a smidgeon of sexual emphasis. The focus is on love, not eroticism (if that is understood as sex).

OLD SONG

Take off your clothes, love,
And come to me.

Soon will the sun be breaking
Over yon sea.

And all of our hairs be white, love,
For aught we do

And all our nights be one, love,
For all we know.

~ Robert Creeley

You can sit with this book, dip in and out, flip back and forth, and be warm as a wood stove without the wood stove.

SOMEWHERE I HAVE NEVER TRAVELLED

somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond
any experience, your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near

your slightest look easily will unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skillfully, mysteriously) her first rose…   ~ e.e. Cummings

• The Book Beautiful color illustrations. Good Paper. One or two  poems per page.Easy to read. Beautifully laid out. Fully indexed – Artists & Poets.
• Comparisons This book compares favorably and companionably withThe Lover’s Companion (see below), but is much more extensive in its selection.
• In Translation Probably the most extensive and varied (Russian, Antiquity, Chinese, Japanese, Central American, Spanish, French, etc…) of any of the books so far reviewed.
• You and your Lover This book can go anywhere you and your lover go.
• Embarrassment Are you kidding? This is the book you want everybody to see – class, culture, intelligence, art and poetry… It’s all there.

Sex ♥
Art ♥♥♥♥♥♥
Romance ♥♥♥♥♥♥
Look & Feel ♥♥♥♥♥♥
Poetry ♥♥♥♥♥♥
Index ♥♥♥♥♥♥

The Lover’s Companion
Art and Poetry of Desire

This book is the missing chapter in Art & Love.

You will find erotic art alongside erotic poetry – almost 160 pages worth. Generally, the erotic art is featured on one page while the accompanying poem is on the facing page. The book is divided into chapters: Awareness; My Body; Your Body; Our Bodies; Nobody’s Perfect; Why Fight It?; One-Night Stands; You’re not With Me; and Enduring Love.

Each work of art and poem is accompanied by commentary and, in case the commentator ( Dr. Ruth Westheimer) doesn’t tip you off, this anthology has a purpose. The back cover explains the general idea:

With a keen eye and her trademark titillating humor, Dr. Ruth K. Westheimer explores how art and verse can enhance desire in this lush literary aphrodisiac. The selections, compiled by editor Charles Sullivan, couple great works of art and poetry throughout the ages and from around the world.

Don’t expect scholarship from the good Dr. That’s not what she’s about. The art and paintings give her a springboard to dispense whatever advice relates to the chapter at hand. Either you like Westheimer or you don’t, but it’s hard for me to see what’s not to like. You can skip every single one of her asides and still enjoy the poetry and art.

Calling the poems erotic  comes with a qualification: The poems tend toward the classical and literary rather than explicit, though there’s a little of that too.  The art also shows some restraint, but the collection nevertheless includes a beauty from Japan (yeah… you know the kind I mean) and the explicit Couple by Picasso. In general, if there is explicitness, the art is more so than the poetry, but there’s a little of everything having to do with love, sex and relationship. The focus isn’t sex, per se, but everything having to do with sex.

Feeling States

The penis is an appendage
Which listens.
No mind of its own
It moves when beckoned,
The spirit goes as far out
As it goes in.
Do not blame the penis
For the man.

• The Book Beautiful color illustrations. Good Paper. Poem and art are on facing pages.Easy to read. Beautifully laid out. Index of Artists and Poets, by name, only.
• Comparisons This book compares favorably and companionably with Art & Love (see above), but is much more limited in scope.
• In Translation A variety.
• You and your Lover This book can go anywhere you and your lover go.
• Embarrassment The Art? The Poetry? Or Dr. Ruth Westheimer?

Sex ♥♥♥♥
Art ♥♥♥♥♥♥
Romance ♥♥♥♥♥
Look & Feel ♥♥♥♥♥♥
Poetry ♥♥♥♥♥
Index ♥♥

Ovid in Love

In my review of Ikkyu, I initially wrote that he was the most uninhibited poet of any culture or era that I knew. Then I corrected myself. The Roman poet Ovid (who seems to have been Shakespeare’s favorite poet by the way) was exiled from Rome, in part, because of his salacious poetry.

Many readers only know Ovid through the Metamorphosis, but he also wrote the Amores, The Art of Love, and On Facial Treatment for Ladies (it’s not what you think). The Amores are filled with lust, sex, explicitness, self-deprecating humor, rape, cheating, etc… This is the Rome you’ve all heard about; the culture painted on the walls of Pompeii. The particular book I’ve chosen to review is of a modern translation by Guy Lee, but Ovid also seems to have been a favorite poet of the Elizabethan era’s other great genius, Christopher Marlowe. Marlowe translated more than a few of Ovid’s Amores and they are masterpieces of Iambic Pentameter (if not of translation). More on that in a moment.

Lee’s translation of the Amores is complete (Marlowe’s isn’t). Lee’s translation is also accompanied by some of the most erotic and sexiest illustrations of any of the books reviewed. Just look at the cover.

The only issue I have is a perennial one with me. I don’t like free verse translations of traditional poetry. If one is going to translate a work, then do it right. Translate the form as well as the meaning. Nobody prior to the 20th century wrote true free verse. Lee’s verse, to me, just feels too prosy and lazy, lacking that extra zing that meter can give. Ovid wrote his own verse in Elegaic Couplets using quantitative meter. But my own preferences are definitely not shared by everyone, so here are just a couple of options. You can decide for yourself which you prefer.

• First from the opening lines of the Amores:

Ovid in Love Farewell to Epic ~ Guy Lee Translating

My epic was under construction — wars and armed violence
in the grand manner, with metre matching theme.

I had written the second hexameter when Cupid grinned
and calmly removed one of its feet.

‘You young savage’ I protested ‘poetry’s none of your business.

Ovid: The Erotic Poems Book I ~ Peter Green Translating

Arms, warfare, violence — I was winding up to produce a
·····Regular epic, with verse-form to match –
Hexameters, naturally. But Cupid (they say) with a snicker
·····Lopped off one foot from each alternate line.
‘Nasty young brat,’ I told him, ‘who made you Inspector of Metres?

Ovid: The Love Poems Book One A.D. Melville Translating

I’d meant in solemn metre to rehearse
A tale of arms and war and violence,
Matching the weighty matter with my verse,
All ines alike in length — no difference;
···But Cupid laughed (they say)
···And filched one foot away.

Cruel boy, who made you judge of poetry? (…)

Christopher Marlowe: The Complete Poems

With Muse prepared I meant to sing of arms,
Choosing a subject fit for fierce alarms.
Both verses were alike till Love (men say)
Began to smile and took one foot away.
Rash boy, who gave thee power to change the line?

• Another comparison from one of Ovid’s best known Elegies:

Ovid in Love Impotent ~ Guy Lee Translating

No, I must face facts:
she was lovely — she was glamorous — I was mad about her.

But there I lay, with this girl in my arms, and nothing happened.
The position was absurd.

I wanted it badly enough, and so did she –
but could I rise to the occasion?

Ivory-smooth her arms embraced me–
whiter than snow in sunshine.

Thigh to thigh she kissed me–
deep kisses, alive with desire –

whispered temptation, called me lord and master,
ran through the erotic rosary.

But my body was paralyzed
as though I had drunk hemlock…

Ovid: The Erotic Poems Book 3, Seventh Elegy ~ Peter Green Translating

I can’t fault the girl on looks, or style, or sophistication –
·····And I’d tried for her often enough. But
There we lay, in bed, embracing, and all to no purpose:
·····I was limp, disgusting, dead.
Heaven knows I wanted it badly, and so did my partner,
·····But still I failed to measure up.
She tried every trick — wound her arms (whiter than snow  or
·····Ivory) around me, pressed
Her thighs up snug under mine, plied me with sexy kisses,
·····Tongue exploring like mad,
Whispered endearments, called me her master, tried me
·····With nice four-letter words — they often help.
No good. My member hung slack, as though frozen by hemlock…

Ovid: The Love Poems Book 3, Seventh Elegy ~ A.D. Melville Translating

[Interestingly, Melville modifies Marlowe's translations, but elsewhere Melville is the most "classical" of the translators and, after Marlowe, the one I like.]

Yes, she was beautiful and well turned out,
The girl that I’d so often dreamed about,
Yet I lay with her limp as if I loved not,
A shameful burden on the bed that moved not.
Though both of us were sure of our intent,
Yet could I not cast anchor where I meant.
She round my neck her ivory arms did throw,
Her arms far whiter than the Scythian snow,
And eagerly she kissed me with her tongue,
And under mine her wanton thigh she flung.
Yes, and she soothed me up, and called me sire,
And used all speech that might provoke and stir.
Yet like as if cold hemlock I had drunk,
It humbled me, hung down the head, and sunk.

Christopher Marlowe: The Complete Poems

Either she was foul, or her attire was bad,
Or she was not the wench I wished t’have had,
Idle I lay with her, as if I loved not,
And like a burden grieved the bed that moved not.
Though both of us performed our true intent,
Yet could I not cast anchor where I meant.
She on my neck her ivory arms did throw,
Her arms far whiter than the Scythian snow,
And eagerly she kissed me with her tongue,
And under mine her wanton thigh she flung.
Yea, and soothed me up, and called me ‘Sir’,
And used all speech that might provoke and stir.
Yet like as if cold hemlock I had drunk,
It mockèd me, hung down the head, and sunk.

Poetica Erotica

OK, this book is in a class of its own.

It’s old. It’s out of print (printed in 1931). But if you’re the collector of erotic poetry, and you’re worried that there’s an erotic poem you don’t know about (prior to 1931) then this is your book. This is the alpha and omega of erotic poetry. This really is everything but the kitchen sink; and, yes, yours truly owns it.

My edition is beautiful. The pages have the torn edges that give books that quality, hand-built heft. You can feel the printing with your eyes closed. This tome, nay, this Bible of erotic mischief, is all of 770 pages – songs, ditties, sonnets, elegies, heroic couplets, blank verse… there’s no end. No illustrations. No indexes. But this book is what it is.

Are all the poems masterpieces? No. Some of them are doggerel, but they’re good doggerel.

A Puritan (1661)

A Puritan of late,
And eke a holy Sister,
A Catechizing sate,
And fain he would have kist her
···For his Mate.

But she a Babe of grace,
A Child of reformation
Thought kissing a disgrace,
A Limb of profanation
···In that place.

He swore by yea or nay
He would have no denial,
The spirit would it so,
She should endure a trial
···Ere she go.

Why swear you so, quoth she?
Indeed, my holy Brother,
You might have forsworn be
Had it been to another
···Not to me.

He laid her on the ground,
His Spirits fell a ferking,
Her Zeal was in a sound,
He edified her Merkin
···Upside down.

And when their leave they took,
And parted were asunder
My muse did then awake,
And I turn’d Ballad-monger
···For their sake.

Have you ever satisfied her Merkin upside down? If you’re an erotic poetry enthusiast, then your only embarrassment is in not owning this book.

Zen Sex
The Way of Making Love

This might seem an unusual inclusion since it’s not an anthology.

But it does nicely intermix, through extracts and otherwise, much erotic poetry (including the Sixth Dalai Lama and Ikkyu), and some of the most erotic and explicit illustrations of any of the books reviewed – the beautiful Japanese illustrations of intercourse.

One chapter is entitled the way of entering, and offers an introductory poem by Ikkyu:

whispering all night even at sixty
I’m hard in her again and again

Think of the book as a sort of Zen manual on sex using Ikkyu as its touchstone. To me, it’s the most enjoyable blending of poetry, sex, philosophy and art that I know.

Sex ♥♥♥♥♥♥
Art ♥♥♥♥♥♥
Romance ♥♥♥♥♥♥
Look & Feel ♥♥♥♥♥♥
Poetry ♥♥♥♥♥♥
Index N/A

• And that’s the whole pile of books, but more are sure to come.

• The following four books were added January 1, 2012

❧

Love Haiku: Japanese Poems of Yearning, Passion, and Remembrance

Back when I wrote my post on Erotic Haiku, I probably could have included this little book. The book is about 5½ by 6½ inches. However, whereas the other books are out and out erotic, the emphasis of Love Haiku is more suggestive and, as the subtitle says, concerned with “Yearning, Passion, and Remembrance”. You will find some erotic haiku, but they are not representative of the whole.

The lion’s share of these haiku come from the early 20th century.

Before Basho’s profound transformation of haiku, they ranged from mostly playful games of wit to, in some ways, the Japanese version of the dirty limerick. Afterward, eroticism subject matter seems to have been considered unworthy of the form. Among male poets, sex seems to have remained gist for crass humor. One does, for instance, find some sexually suggestive haiku by Basho, but they’re more like punning jokes – as though he were embarrassed to be writing them. The editors include three of his haiku, and not the crass ones. I’m not sure any of the three could really be considered erotic or even passionate, but what’s a haiku anthology without Basho? The better erotic haiku poets were the women, who had the advantage of an accepted tradition in the frequently erotic and passionately suggestive Tanka. Perhaps women felt freer to express an erotic sensibility in haiku? At any rate, Chiyo-ni, Basho’s near contemporary, born 9 years after Basho’s death, is in my opinion the better erotic poet.

the body arches
at its rainbow peak –
“petite morte”

Jushin (Shigenoru) Takayanagi

moonflowers–
when a woman’s skin
is revealed

Chiyo-Ni

The Chinese and Japanese poetic sensibility is far removed from those of the west until, perhaps, recent times. Readers of this book will probably already have an interest in Japanese literature. If you enjoy haiku, then you will probably find this to be a beautiful selection.

• The Book Glossy paper. One poem per page. Nicely presented. Brief biographies of the poets and an index of authors. Intermittent full page illustrations, not erotic, dividing the chapters: Yearning, Passion, Remembrance.
• Comparisons This book makes a nice companion to Love Poems from the Japanese. Where Love Poems is focused on Tanka, Love Haiku offers a taste of Japan’s erotic sensibility in Haiku.
• You and your Lover If you’re lucky enough to have a lover who shares your taste for haiku, then this is the book to share.
• Embarrassment Only if your date shows up with Velvet Heat.

Sex ♥♥♥
Art ♥♥♥♥
Romance ♥♥♥♥♥♥
Look & Feel ♥♥♥♥♥♥
Poetry ♥♥♥♥♥♥
Index ♥♥♥♥♥

Four Centuries of Great Love Poems

This book was published by Borders.

So, being that Borders is extinct, consider it out of print. It’s already listed as a collector’s item at Amazon, but you can buy 37 of them for a penny. And you know what? For a book that was published, probably, just to have some skin in the game, it’s good. This one is a sleeper. For a penny, you can’t go wrong.

Think of it, at 203 pages, as a much miniaturized version Poetica Erotica (see above). The book, curated by Debra Starr, offers a rich selection love poems from the 16th through the 19th centuries. You won’t find 20th century poems, but there are already excellent anthologies for that: The Best American Erotic Poems and Passionate Hearts.

As a general anthology of love poems, as opposed to erotic poems, this little anthology can’t be beat. The most direct comparison is probably with The Faber Book of Love Poems and the Treasury of Favorite Love Poems. All three of these books are general anthologies of love poetry. Unlike Faber’s Book of Love Poems, Four Centuries offers one poem per page. The chapters are bite size and the poems are well presented and easily read. The chapters are: Come Live With Me and Be My Love; Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer’s Day?; No Platonic Love; My Love is Like to Ice, and I to Fire; Farewell Love; Remember When I Am Gone Away; My True Love hath My Heart; The Definition of Love. Since these are all pre-20th century poems, you won’t find anything very explicit. The closest you will come to truly erotic poetry is in the chapter No Platonic Love.

The book makes a good companion to Treasury of Favorite Love Poems in that Four Centuries hews to the more familiar poems you’ve probably heard here and there while Treasury’s collection is more eclectic. Four Centuries is also fully indexed while Treasury is lacking.

• The Book Good paper. No Illustrations. Index of Authors, First Lines and very brief, two line biographies of the poets
• Comparisons Compares to The Faber Book of Love Poems and the Treasury of Favorite Love Poems. The book to buy if you just want a collection of the “famous” poems.
• In Translation None.
• You and your Lover This is a great book if you’re looking for poems to memorize. It’s filled with all the famous chestnuts. Begin with Ben Jonson’s Drink to Me Only with Thine Eyes.
• Embarrassment Too classy to be embarrassing.
  

Sex ♥♥
Art ♥
Romance ♥♥♥♥♥
Look & Feel ♥♥♥♥♥
Poetry ♥♥♥♥♥♥
Index ♥♥♥♥♥♥

A Book of Love Poetry

This is another general anthology that comes in at 372 pages. It compares directly to the Faber Book of Love Poems and is marginally easier to handle for being slightly larger (in terms of physical dimensions); but not much. Like Faber, the poems are packed in without regard to placement or poem length.

Whereas The Faber Book of Love Poems focuses on British poetry all the way up to the 19th century, A Book of Love Poetry is far more wide ranging. The editor, Stallworthy, dips into the early 20th century, but also dips into the poems of antiquity and poets like Neruda, Li Po, Cavafy (and whoever else he thinks writes a good love poem). This makes the collection, at least to me, feel a little less high brow and canonical/academic than Faber’s collection.

The flaw, as with Faber’s, is that the casual reader can feel like everything but the kitchen sink has been thrown at them. This isn’t the book to buy if you’re looking for an easily referenced book of old chestnuts whose names you can’t quite remember. Four Centuries of Great Love Poems, immediately above, is much better for that.

Get this book if you just want a fairly wide ranging sampling of love poems from different cultures and poets, great and not so great (but interesting), including Queen Elizabeth the 1rst. There are so many poems that it’s hard to classify them as particularly romantic. They are all, directly and tangentially, related to the subject of love. Chapters are: Intimations, Declerations, Persuasions, Celebrations, Aberrations, Separations, Desolations, Reverberations. Of all these chapters, Aberrations is probably the most fun.

• The Book Acidic paper. Stiff. No Illustrations. Excellent Indexes of Authors, Poems, First Lines and Translators.
• Comparisons Compares to The Faber Book of Love Poems, Four Centuries of Great Love Poems and the Treasury of Favorite Love Poems. The book to buy if you just want a wide ranging anthology of love poems from a variety of cultures and poets.
• In Translation A variety of foreign language poems translated and intermixed.
• You and your Lover This isn’t the book, not unless you’ve got a pause button while you leaf through the 372 pages of poetry.
• Embarrassment Yeah. The cover. If friends and relatives have been wondering why you’ve been so distracted, this cover will clear up any confusion.

Sex ♥♥
Art ♥
Romance ♥♥♥
Look & Feel ♥♥
Poetry ♥♥♥♥♥♥
Index ♥♥♥♥♥♥

William Shakespeare on The Art of Love
The Illustrated Edition of the most beautiful Love Passages in Shakespeare’s Plays and Poetry

Everything about this book is “over the top“. The image at right doesn’t do justice to the book in real life. The gold mandala in the middle is glittering gold foil. The red hardcover is cloth and shines with a metallic red sheen. My wife loves it. She wants it out on Valentine’s day.

The pages are glossy on heavy paper and the book itself is big and heavy. The publishers definitely pulled out all the stops.

Unfortunately for the connoisseurs of Shakespeare, of which I am one, the contents of the book don’t live up to the hype of the glossy cloth cover and shining gold mandala. The editor, Michael Best, seems to think that if it’s a sonnet, then it’s a love poem. The first 126 pages are simply yet another reprinting of Shakespeare’s Sonnets. After that, we move on to Venus and Adonis. Up to this point, you might as well have bought yourself the collected poems of Shakespeare, of which there are many and well-annotated. That’s Part One.

Part Two offers extended passages from 13 of his plays. The print is large and easy to read, but I’d hardly call the selection varied. It feels perfunctory. Best, for instance, reprints the entirety of the famous seduction scene from Richard III (wherein Richard seduces Anne, whose husband and father-in-law he has murdered). I presume that Best is calling that scene an example of Shakespeare’s “Art of Love”.

The book compares to Shakespeare on Love (see above), but has far less to offer. Whereas Shakespeare on Love has a far more varied selection but in a cheap little book, The Art of Love is all presentation but thin on substance. If one could just combine the two.

I’m not sure who this book targets. I imagine its someone who has a passing familiarity with Shakespeare, who has maybe one or two other poetry books and just wants a little Shakespeare on their bookshelf. Anybody with a more thorough interest in Shakespeare will be disappointed. My marks below, as to Art and Look & Feel, are completely subjective.

• The Book Glossy paper. Shiny red cover. Explanatory end notes and index of first lines. Illustrations throughout.  A mix of historical reproductions and hallmark-worthy flowers, fields, moons and sunsets.
• Comparisons Compares to Shakespeare on Love.
• You and your Lover Take your date to the play. Skip this book unless you want something for the guests while you’re preparing tea and crumpets.
• Embarrassment It’s just so over the top.

Art ♥♥♥
Look & Feel ♥♥♥
Index ♥♥♥♥♥♥