When Shakespeare was authoring plays, his play along with those by any other playwright, had to be approved by the master of revels—the Queen’s censor. The cost of doing so was born by the production company. Writing a play that flirted with morally or politically subversiveness was a dangerous game that could lead to torture and imprisonment.

At a time of unrest, when the Earl of Essex was challenging the Queen’s [Elizabeth's] authority and armed bands terrorized the streets of London, the Chamberlain’s Men [Shakespeare's company] were forbidden to perform Richard II, a play already licensed and performed, because it contains a scene in which a king is compelled to renounce his crown; in 1601, the queen’s counsellors believed that this might encourage her enemies and spark off a revolution. The theatre was taken very seriously by the authorities and was allowed to deal with political issues only if they did not refer too obviously to current affairs or seditious ideas, but were set, safely, in an earlier century or, better still, in ancient Rome or foreign countries. [John Russell Brown, Shakespeare and His Theatre (New York: Lothrop, Lee and Shepard, 1982, Page 31]

The comparison is not between “piracy” and moral and political subversion (though comparisons can be made) but the near absolute power exercised by the Master of the Revels. The bill presently being pushed by powerful industry and corporate interests is a similar, extra-judicial power grab. As the saying goes: Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.  Passing this bill would give industry and corporate interests the same powers (over me and you) that the Master of the Revels (and government censors throughout history) have enjoyed and exercised. Art and learning thrives through the sharing of ideas and, yes, even the theft of ideas; but a balance must be struck. There are far better ways to control piracy.

A key provision of the bill would give copyright owners the power to stop online advertisers and credit card processors from doing business with a website, merely by filing a unilateral notice that the site is “dedicated to the theft of U.S. property” — even if no court has actually found any infringement.

The immunity provisions in the bill create an overwhelming incentive for advertisers and payment processors to comply with such a request immediately upon receipt. Courts have always treated such cutoffs of revenue from speech as a suppression of that speech, and the silencing of expression in the absence of judicial review is a classic prior restraint forbidden by the First Amendment. [Laurence Tribe, Constitutional Scholar]

The freedom of expression found on the internet is unique in human history; and because of that freedom, powerful interests, both private and public, are threatened. The bill gives the U.S. government the ability to block sites using methods similar to those enjoyed by the Chinese Communist Party, and for this reason the bill is opposed by human rights organizations and a variety of legal scholars.

For now, the Internet belongs to you and me. Help keep it that way.

• For more information on why these are bad laws: Free Speech, Problems, Security.

❧

Reviewed and added the following books to Erotic Poetry, Love & Passion • A review of Poets & Anthologies:

• Love Haiku: Japanese Poems of Yearning, Passion, and Remembrance
• Four Centuries of Great Love Poems
• A Book of Love Poetry
• William Shakespeare on The Art of Love: The Illustrated Edition of the Most Beautiful Love Passages in Shakespeare’s Plays and Poetry

You will find them appended to the larger review linked above.

Analyzing this poem is a request.

I’ve never been an ardent fan of Byron, even though my great grandfather, one generation removed from the Irish and Scotts, was apparently so moved by poetry and Byron in particular, that he named his son (my grandfather) Byron; and my grandfather, in his turn, named his son (my father) Gordon.

One of the reasons I don’t read more Byron is that I think of him as more of a novelist who happened to be expeditiously good at rhyme and meter, rather than as a poet. That’s absurd, of course, but you will rarely find in Byron the stunning imagery that makes you pause and linger. His imagery is, almost entirely, perfunctory and rudimentary. He uses stock phrases and poeticisms (whatever it takes to keep the narrative moving). You might as well read Jane Eyre if you’re looking for evocative imagery.

What Byron possessed was an unerring sense of phrasing, rhythm and rhyme. He was capable of using phrase and rhyme with a skewering and deadly precision. One never gets the sense that he was at a loss words. He almost never resorts to anything like metrical filler. His lines are (if there was ever a time to use the adjectives) rugged and masculine. There’s no prettiness to his poetry, but the lean, no nonsense, muscularity makes his poetry memorable and powerful. Byron is an object lesson in the sheer power of meter and rhyme, as distinct from the lineated prose of free verse or just plain prose. Great and memorable poetry doesn’t always need the unsurpassed imagery of a Wallace Stevens, Keats or Shakespeare.

When we two parted
In silence and tears,
Half broken-hearted
To sever for years,
Pale grew thy cheek and cold,
Colder thy kiss;
Truly that hour foretold
Sorrow to this.

The dew of the morning
Sunk chill on my brow–
It felt like the warning
Of what I feel now.
Thy vows are all broken,
And light is thy fame:
I hear thy name spoken,
And share in its shame.

They name thee before me,
A knell to mine ear;
A shudder comes o’er me–
Why wert thou so dear?
They know not I knew thee,
Who knew thee too well: –
Long, long shall I rue thee,
Too deeply to tell.

In secret we met–
In silence I grieve,
That thy heart could forget,
Thy spirit deceive.
If I should meet thee
After long years,
How should I greet thee?
With silence and tears.

The Scansion: No really, it gets interesting.

The “scansion” that follows departs from my usual method. Rather than use the standard accent marks, I’ve simply bolded the accented syllables. I thought this better represented what Byron was doing. The poem, as a whole, is accentual, meaning that Byron’s primary concern is with the number of accented syllables per line. The number of unaccented syllables varies from stanza to stanza. Interestingly though, if we go stanza by stanza, then one could call Byron’s verse “accentual syllabic”. (Iambic Pentameter is accentual syllabic meter because boththe number of accents and syllables is regular.) With the exception of the last stanza, Bryon maintains a regular number of accented and unaccented syllables.

The way I divided the feet isn’t cast in stone. There are different ways to do it. When I read the poem, I hear anapests, so that’s the way I scanned it. In this sense, the second foot of the first line |we two parted would be an anapestic foot with a feminine ending. The first foot with the word When would be a headless Iambic Foot, meaning that the first unaccented syllable is missing. So, but for two lines, the underlying accentual/syllabic meter of the poem is an Iambic foot followed by an anapestic foot, as follows:

• The spiral is a high level metrical symbol. I would have to shoot you if I revealed its meaning.

Some of the anapestic feet are followed by an extra unstressed syllable, so I’m calling those feet anapestic feminine endings – something that doesn’t appear in Iambic Pentameter until Robert Frost (anapestic feminine foot in green):

One could | do worse | than be |a swing|er of birches

None of this is information you really need to know, but some of us enjoy these little niceties. There is one line in which knowing the meter helps us know how Byron probably imagined the poem. Knowing that each stanza is internally consistent and that the first stanza maintains two stressed syllables per line and an anapest, we won’t be tempted to read the third line as follows:

Half brok|en-hearted

Or:

Half brok|en-hearted

Most modern readers would probably be tempted to read the line in either of these two fashions and move on. The first reading changes the line into an iambic one, with an iambic feminine ending. We can eliminate this reading because it breaks the metrical pattern in the rest of the stanza. The second reading introduces three stressed syllables. We can eliminate that because it breaks the accentual pattern of the stanza. If we honor the pattern set by the rest of the poem, we put the emphasis on half.

Half |broken hearted

This is a very curious emphasis and, if it were to be acted, suggests a wee bit of a sneer. In other words, they weren’t broken-hearted. They were only, half broken-hearted.  As I like to say, a masterfully written metrical poem has two stories to tell – two tales: one in its words; the other in its meter. In this case, the meter is telling us this isn’t just another poem about heart break. There’s a touch of sarcasm, if not contempt and cynicism, that turns the meaning of the rest of the poem flatly on its head. I’ve seen readings of this poem on Youtube that play it straight, as a kind of self-pitying poem by the rejected lover, but when Byron was self-pitying, it was usually heavily seasoned with self-righteousness. The meter hints at something else. Once we learn some of the history behind the poem, we might find the opposite of what we expected.

So… what’s going on?

I’ve got two sources for the story behind this poem. They don’t agree. Sort of. The first thing to know is that the word scandalous is never far from Byron’s name. In Famous Poems and the Little Known Stories Behind Them, Ralph L Woods gets right down to business. He writes:

Admittedly Byron was arrogantly seflish and impulsively generous, aware of his rank and quick to abuse its priviledges. He bore the marks of his dissolute, unstable and spenthrift ancestry, and of a mother who alternated between tantrums and penitential calms. Given the restless age in which he lived, it is not suprising that the brilliant, undisciplined and strikingly handsome poet  with a clubfoot had numerous amours, some of the backstairs kind. [Famous Poems and the Little Known Stories Behind Them p. 21]

By backstairs, Woods is presumably referring to Byron’s alleged affair with his sister. According to Woods, the poem is about Lady Frances Annesley, the wife of James Wedderburn Webster. When Byron first met the newly wedded couple, he remarked that Lady Frances “is very pretty” but that she was already treating her husband with “conjugal contempt” and predicted she would betray him within three years. Woods goes on to write that Byron visited the couple two years later and wrote, initially at least, that he “behaved very well”. Later, though, when writing Lady Melbourne, he confessed that “I have made love [flirted amorously], and it is returned”. The expression “making love” didn’t mean sexual intercourse until early in the 20th century. Before then, it essentially meant flirtation and courtship. Byron also wrote that “he spared her.” “Poor thing–she is either the most artful of artless of her age I ever encountered.” Woods writes that Byron lost interest but that when, several years later, he heard of her affair with the Duke of Wellington, he recalled his former emotions in the, as Woods puts it, “tender yet cynical” poem When We Two Parted.

In another book, though, Byron and the Websters: The Letters and Entangled Lives of the Poet, Sir James Webster and Lady Frances Webster, John Stewart tells a fuller and slightly different story. He begins by quoting a letter Byron wrote on June 10, 1823:

As to yr. chevalier W Wne *** to be sure I learnt from himself all about his [?] surprise — but there is some little doubt of his accuracy. — At least it is very strange that he could never prove so public a voyage of discovery. — She– poor thing — has made a sad affair of it altogether. — I had the meloncholy task of prophesying as much many many years ago in some lines — of which the three or four stanzas only were printed — and of course without names — or allusions — and with a false date — I send you on the concluding stanza — which never was printed with the others. –

Then – fare thee well — Fanny –
Now doubly undone –
To prove false unto many –
As faithless to One –
Thou art past all recalling
Even would I recall –
For the woman once falling
Forever must fall. –

There’s morality and sintiment [sic] — for you in a [?] — but I was very tender hearted in those days. — If you want to know where the lines to which this stanza belongs –are — they are in I know not what volume — but somewhere (for I have no copy) but they begin with

When we two parted
In silence and tears
&c.&c.&c.

So here is a treasure for you in honour of our relationship — rhymes unpublished — and a secret into the bargain — which you wont keep –.

[Byron and the Websters p. 173]

As you can see, the final stanza, never included with the anthologized poem (and probably for the best) keeps the meter and rhyme of the others. With this scathing final stanza, the cynical emphasis on half-broken hearted begins to make more sense, while the line With silence and tears sounds more sarcastic and a little less tragic. There’s undoubtedly some tenderness in the lines, but also contempt. Stewart closes his brief two pages on Byron’s poem with a letter from Miss Frances Williams Wynn in her Diaries of a Lady of Quality (1864):

In England we are apt to exclaim with Byron, in his suppressed lines

Then, fare thee well, Fanny, thus doubly undone,
Thou frail to the many, and false to one.
Thou art past all recalling, e’en would I recall,
For the woman once fallen for ever must fall.

These lines about which frequent enquiry has been made, were given me by Scrope Davies. They originally formed the conclusion of a copy of verses addressed by Lord Byron to Lady Frances W W to whom he was devotedly attached until she threw him over for the Duke of Wellington, then in the full blaze of his Peninsular glory. ‘Byron,’ said Davies, ‘Came one morning to my lodgings in St James Street, in a towering passion, and standing by the fire, broke out, ‘D— all women, and d— that woman in particular.’ He tore from his watch-ribbon a seal she had given him, and dashed it into the grate. As soon as I left the room, I picked it up, and here it is.’ He showed it to me, and allowed me to take an impression of it, which I have still. It was a large seal, representing a ship in full sail, a star in the distance, with the motto, “Si je la perds, je suis perdu.” Two or three days afterwards his Lordship presented himself again with a copy of verses addressed to his fickle fair one, from which Davies with some difficulty induced him to omit the four concluding lines. [Byron and the Websters p. 174]

So, armed with this information, we can conclude that Byron didn’t write this poem in a fit of self-pitying dejection, but self-pitying rage; about a married woman who dared to dump him, not for her husband, but for another cad and aristocrat who was not Byron! Now that takes a very special kind of delusional self-righteousness. That and the fact that Miss Wynn, a quote-unquote “Lady of Quality”, was busily gossiping about the whole affair tells you just about everything you need to know about the era. If I were to sum up the tone of the poem, it would be the hypocritical rage of righteous self-pity. When Byron writes about “tears”, don’t be fooled. It’s one thing for Byron to gad about, but if a woman falls, she falls forever.

Well, maybe I’ve ruined the poem for some, but somehow I think the squalid truth makes it so much better, keener and cutting. When you see youtube videos characterizing the poem as one of “loss and longing”, you know they’ve missed the point. They haven’t read the poem all that carefully. This is the poem lovers write and read to one another when they should have known better but bear a grudge anyway.

Thy vows are all broken,
And light is thy fame:
I hear thy name spoken,
And share in its shame.

For the philandering Byron to write that her “vows are all broken” is the pot calling the kettle black. And what is he crying about?  — Her? — Or is it all about him — that he must “share in its shame”?

They know not I knew thee,
Who knew thee too well: –
Long, long shall I rue thee,
Too deeply to tell.

Does he rue because he longs for her? — because of his loss? — or does he rue that he met her in the first place, and now shares in her shame?

In secret we met–
In silence I grieve,
That thy heart could forget,
Thy spirit deceive.
If I should meet thee
After long years,
How should I greet thee?
With silence and tears.

These last lines, and a line like Thy spirit deceive, are written in anger, not sorrow. The cutting rhymes and driving anapestic meter add to the poem’s succinctness, momentum and memorability in a way that free verse just can’t match, and in way that Byron mastered. (The line Long, long shall I rue thee is a master stroke of metrical gamesmanship. If not for the meter, we might be tempted to read the line Long, long shall I rue thee , but we know that Byron’s means us to only read two strong accents in the  line. Strongly emphasizing the second long, if done right, gives the line a little touch of disdain.) Fortunately, Byron was convinced to leave off the final stanza (the final twist of the knife) and so, to a certain degree, it remains just possible to read the poem as a heartrending expression of loss, longing and sorrow.

Here’s a good video that subtly hints at the petty anger behind the lines:

• Note: For some reason, there appears to be a WordPress bug that insists on linking to Erlkonig. If you don’t see the right video, click here.

When things turn out badly, after having your affair with another man’s wife or another wife’s man, this is your go to  poem. If you manage to avoid that scandal, then enjoy the poem however you will.

from Up in Vermont on the Last Day of 2011

Troy asked me to review his blog, Thyme and Time Again, and, by extension, his poetry. The first thing to say about Troy’s blog is that it’s well-presented. Nothing can be more off-putting than a slipshod blog (doesn’t encourage readers to take a blogger seriously). His brief little autobiography tells us that he has a Ph.D. in the Humanities from UT-Dallas, an M.A. in English from the Univ. of S. MS, and a B.S. in Recombinant Gene Technology. He writes: “I specialize in spontaneous order and self-organization theory (from the brain to cities), network theory, Austrian economics, aesthetics, and cultural studies. I also write plays and poems.” Wow.

The  libraries of poetry are filled with books by educated and well-heeled Ministers, Physicians, Diplomats, Aristocrats, etc…  They had a love of literature, poetry and some spare time. John Donne is the most famous. There are also poets like John Collop and Edward Taylor. Edward Taylor was a minister but it’s John Collop who would be Troy’s spiritual and professional antecedent. Collop was a physician who didn’t suffer fools gladly, including other physicians. The editor writes that Collop “rejected as ignorant folly the most popular remedies of his time — phlebotomy, purges, fontanels — and the accompanying theories of defluxions and bodily humors. His poems attack quacks in all varieties: the astrological quack who assigns each herb to a house in the Zodiac and reads its properties in the stars…”

Hillberry, the editor of The Poems of John Collop, writes that Collop was no John Donne (a poet who Collop admired and imitated in some ways) but his poems are nevertheless rugged, avoid sentimentality and are intelligently alive with observation and wit. Camplin writes in this tradition – the gentleman poet. If he doesn’t already, Camplin should have some Collop on his shelf.

Camplin is doggedly prolific, writing one poem a day, and they range from free verse to traditional. No creative artist, can keep that pace and produce lasting work unless they possess surpassing ability.  Since today is today, and that would be December 29th, let’s take a look at his current poem:

Morning Tea

I know when roses fill her breath,
This morning she’s been drinking tea.
I wonder then what were her thoughts -
Of house, of work, or even me.
As honey drips slow off her spoon -
An amber made, not trapping bees -
Under the shade of old live oaks,
Her chair well-set on roots of trees,
She dips her spoon into the cup
To stir the light brown liquid sweet
And closes eyes to hear the air,
Relaxing back in plastic seat.
I see a smile spread through her eyes
As any fear within her dies.

Morning Tea is safely representative of the kind of poetry you will find — accomplished but showing the hallmarks of quick writing. The imagery is fairly straight forward and moves line by line. One doesn’t find the carefully planned imagery or conceits of more considered poetry. All but one of the lines are end-stopped. This is commonly the mark of haste – get the lines out and get them to rhyme. However, in fairness to Troy, I actually find this poem to be atypical. Many, if not most, of his other poems show greater freedom with enjambment and end-stopping. Another mark of speed, perhaps, is a willingness to invert grammar for the sake of rhyme:

To stir the light brown liquid sweet

One’s not sure whether we’re to treat liquid as the noun, or sweet as the noun. Troy has chosen not to punctuate the line so we’re left to our own devices (and this may be deliberate). I think most readers would read liquid as the noun and sweet as the adjective.  There’s some grammatical awkwardness earlier in the poem as well:

I know when roses fill her breath,
This morning she’s been drinking tea.

Normally, we would probably say: She’s been drinking tea this morning. We would also, probably, more normally order our thoughts as follows:

She’s been drinking tea this morning,
I know it when the scent of roses is on her breath.

Something like that, but Troy has a rhyme scheme to keep. His lines aren’t exactly ungrammatical (though they flirt with poor grammar through their lack of punctuation), but there’s frequently something a little off kilter about them. They don’t feel organic. Rather, it frequently feels as though the form wrote the lines rather than the lines writing the form. A poet who isn’t writing a poem a day might be less willing to let such lines slip by. He might not close the line with the inverted grammar of:

As any fear within her dies.

Rather than:

As any fear dies within her.

Another mark of haste is Troy’s willingness to discard articles for the sake of meter (rather than re-write the line so that standard English is preserved). Poets up to the 19th century had the luxury of synaloepha when they needed to keep their lines iambic. These days, about the only shortcut left to poets is the omission of articles, but it’s not really an effective shortcut. It almost always risks making the lines sound amateurish.

And closes eyes to hear the air,
Relaxing back in plastic seat.

Should read:

And closes (her) eyes to hear the air,
Relaxing back in (the) plastic seat.

Haste can also be revealed by logical oversights. In the lines just quoted, Troy observes that the woman, as she sips her morning tea, has just closed her eyes. And yet, two lines later, he tells us that he sees “a smile spread through her eyes”. I’m not sure how this is possible since her eyes are, presumably, still closed. It’s possible that he’s speaking rhetorically and figuratively, using eyes as a catchall for closed eyes, eye brows, facial expressions, etc.; but in either case the lines don’t feel thoroughly thought out. All these little flaws, to a greater or less extent, can be found in all his poems.

But it wouldn’t be fair to leave it at that. Just as with Edward Taylor and John Collop, Camplin’s better poems show a poet’s grasp of metaphor and imagery. Consider the following:

An Inordinate Fondness

In all my travels I have noticed God
Is fond of filling fields with yellow flowers.
There’s blue and red and pink and white – how odd
It’s golden yellow glowing after showers

Sow fields with water blown in flowing sheets
To dew the sod anew. No matter where
I look, I note that God both greets and meets
The eye with golden threads He’s sewn with care

Into the blooming fields. Indeed, in fields
He fills with lupines, blue in sun and shade
Of pines, some yellow shines. The yellow yields
A sharp define to all the mellow grades

Of blue and green that wave as warm winds blow.
It seems He couldn’t help Himself – He felt
He had to throw in just a note, to show
That sorrow’s blues and greens would always melt.

And even when I tried to plant a plot
Of only purple flowers, God slipped in
A golden dandelion that would not
Let me get lost within the purple din.

So now I look upon the yellow glow
Of God’s gold fingerprints upon the earth,
And know I owe him all I own – I grow
And glow with yellow petals from my birth.

Now, compared to the broken glass of a poet like John Ashbery, this is going to feel simplistic, mawkish and sentimental but, for all that, the poem is well put together. And, to be honest, it’s no more mawkish or sentimental than the free verse of Maya Angelou. I’d rather read Camplin than Angelou.  Complin works harder. There’s nothing safer or easier than free verse – like putting up the frame of a house and calling it done. Meter and rhyme is the finish work. Even if his efforts aren’t always successful, I know far more about his stature as a poet than Angelou. I know that if Camplin took just a little extra time he could, potentially, write some spectacular stuff:

····················Indeed, in fields
He fills with lupines, blue in sun and shade
Of pines, some yellow shines. The yellow yields
A sharp define to all the mellow grades

Of blue and green that wave as warm winds blow.

The sense of rhythm and structure in these lines is strong. I’d like to see him think twice about the alliteration and internal rhyme of words like lupines, shines and define – mainly because they feel contrived. I’d like to see him loosen the meter. If I were to re-think the lines, here’s how I would do it:

····················Indeed, in fields
Filled with the lupine and the blueish shade
Of fir, there’s a yellow of the kind that yields
Nothing to any of the mellow grades

Of blue or green blending where the warm winds blow.

To my sensibilities, this gives the lines a more vernacular, less halting feel. The meter, while still strong, feels less forced into the mold.

All in all, I find Troy to be one of the stronger traditional poets on the Internet. The inquisitive reader will find poem after poem by this prolific scientist/poet, all in need of comments. I encourage any reader with a taste for traditional poetry to visit his site and comment. Interaction is the artist’s life blood. If you like his poems, say so. If you think they can be improved, share your thoughts. Camplin writes in the same tradition as a Taylor, Collop, or a Thomas Traherne, who, as they made their living in other ways, wrote poetry for the sheer joy of it. Traherne would have immediately appreciated Camplin’s more devout poems, and shared Camplin’s child-like  contemplation of God. The accessibility of so many voices on the internet is as promising as the self-published poetry of an earlier ra. Take a look and see if you like it.

And why not end the post with a poem by John Collop, the poet who Troy most reminds me of.

On the Atrologicall quack.

As th’Colledge of the stars he did commence,
And Statesman-like will speak the houses sense,
Each house for mans use stranger herbs hath got,
To them they essence property, seed allot.
But is’t not strange; when they so numerous be,
How all do with a fewer stars agree?
Each pil and potion too hath diff’rent sign:
Nature ith’ stomach sure now can’t refine.
Or ist since Heav’n stands still, and earth turns round,
We here are giddy, there no truth is found?
The Heav’ns a book is, where men wonders read,
The stars are letters, most a Christs Cross need.

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.

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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?

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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…

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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…

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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.

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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 ♥
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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 ♥♥♥♥
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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.)

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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 ♥♥♥♥♥♥
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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 ♥
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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 ♥♥♥♥
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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 ♥♥♥♥♥♥

A thieving Chikadee’s little cant:

From the Cornell Lab of Ornithology

Sonnet 64

No more, my dear, no more these counsels try,
··O give my passions leave to run their race:
··Let Fortune lay on me her worst disgrace,
Let folk orecharg’d with brain against me cry.
Let clouds bedim my face, break in mine eye,
··Let me no steps but of lost labour trace,
··Let all the earth with scorn recount my case,
But do not will me from my love to fly.
··I do not envy Aristotle’s wit,
Nor do I aspire to Caesar’s bleeding fame,
Nor aught do care, though some above me sit,
Nor hope, nor wish another course to frame,
··But that which once may win thy cruel heart,
··Thou art my wit, and thou my virtue art.

Next, the scansion. The lines are space so that I can insert scansion markings. All unmarked feet are iambic. If you’re unsure of scansion, my post on Iambic Pentameter (The Basics) might help you.

A Note about the Scansion

There are modern readers and poets who make the argument that meter doesn’t exist. Then there are others who grudgingly admit that English is an accentual language (sort of like admitting the earth is round) but that scansion is arbitrary. And then there are readers and scholars who argue that we should scan poems the way we read them, now, without regard to the poet’s intentions or how language was spoken in the poet’s day.

I disagree with all of them.

In the scansion above, I try to take into consideration the era in which Sidney was writing. Iambic Pentameter was brand-spanking new, Elizabethan poets were excited to have a meter comparable to that of the Lain poets. Poets weren’t yet interested in how they could break the rules. They were still making the rules. With that in mind, I’ve scanned the sonnet with the assumption that Sidney intended his poem to be Iambic Pentameter throughout.  In the first foot of the third quatrain, one can easily read |Nor do I| as an Iambic foot if one slurs the vowels. This, in fact, was standard practice in the day and is reflected in the punctuation of a poet like Donne (when modern editors don’t blithely edit it out). So, Sidney probably would have read the first foot: (Nor d’I). Modern speakers of English do the same thing on a daily basis. We slur our words when it suits us.

• The poet Sydney Lea (and my state’s Poet Laureate) rightly points out (in my Guest Book) that Chaucer wrote Iambic Pentameter. As a historical matter, Iambic Pentameter was not new to the English language. However, Chaucer’s innovations were not adopted by the poets immediately following him or in the centuries that followed. By the  time Sidney and his circle settled on Iambic Pentameter, their experimentation shows little, if any, of Chaucer’s influence. Iambic Pentameter was essentially new to the Elizabethans.  They rediscovered it, in a sense, and reinvented it, making it the verse form that we are now familiar with. As to the Elizabethans’ opinion of Chaucer, Donald R. Howard writes:

Between Chaucer’s time and Shakespeare’s, the pronunciation of English changed, so much so that Chaucer’s poems no longer sounded right. He was admired for his rhetoric and his “philosophy,” his skill as a storyteller, and as the “first finder of our fair language,” but his rhythms were a puzzle and his rhymes did not sound true. People tolerated Chaucer’s “rough” verse and assumed he had a tin ear. Henry Peacham, writing in 1622, found “under a bitter and rough rind,” a kernel of “conceit and sweet invention.” Dryden said there was in his verse “the rude sweetness of a Scotch tune” — “natural and pleasing, though not perfect.” (p. 513Chaucer: His Life, His Works, His World)

• I have only one objection to free verse and that is that it seems to me to be a makeshift. About the best I can say is that the best free verse that I have seen contains subject matter for good poems. ~ EA Robinson

Before Frost brought a vernacular gait to Iambic Pentameter, Robinson was the first poet to bring a modern American diction to meter and form. Some readers might argue for Emily Dickinson, but Dickinson never ventured beyond the common meter of the hymn and ballad.  I also don’t feel a uniquely modern American diction in her poetry (as opposed to British). If we heard Emily Dickinson speak today, she would probably sound more British than American. (In the environs of Boston and Amherst the British accent was still studiously cultivated.)

• I know that many of the new writers insist that it is harder to write good vers libre than to write good rhymed poetry. And judging from some of their results, I am inclined to agree with them. ~ EA Robinson

But where Robinson’s voice may sound modern, his heart remains with the classicists. Where modern poets write as though the poem were just another species of prose, poetry to Robinson is more than content. A poem is also an excursion into the felicities of language. The two go together. A good subject is heightened by the language’s expressiveness, and vice versa. I know I like to get my licks in when it comes to free verse (it’s like skeet shooting), but appreciation of Robinson’s poetry is heightened when a reader understands a little about his life.

• Nine-tenths of poetry is how it’s done…. Ideas are, of course, inseparable from the medium, but much memorable poetry is not important for what is said. ~ EA Robinson

Until the very end of his life, Robinson was ignored. Times and poetic tastes were changing, and for good reason. As Robert Mezey points out in his introduction to The Poetry of E.A. Robinson, the luminaries of the times were writing chestnuts like the following:

What is a sonnet? ‘T is the tear that fell
From a great poet’s hidden ecstacy;
A two-edged sword, a star, a song–ah me!
Sometimes a heavy-tolling funeral bell.

And that little morsel was by Watson Gilder, the John Ashbery of his day, famous in his age and held in high esteem by his contemporaries. Every heard of him? Mezey provides another example:

Alone it stands in Poesy’s fair land,
A temple by the muses set apart;
A perfect structure of consummate art,
By artists builded and by genius planned.

The subject matter of these two extracts by no means typify every poem written at the end of the 19th century, but they do reflect what was popular and esteemed. Poetry by this point was so pleased with itself that poets could write swooning poems about poetry.

The only poet to survive the 1890′s was E.A. Robinson. When every other poet of his generation was writing forgettable metrical and rhyming poetry in a decidedly British tradition, Robinson’s survived by doing something none of the other poets did – appealing to readers in their own language.

• I had no idea of establishing any new movement in poetry. As I look back I see that I wrote as I did without considering how much of the old poetical machinery I left behind. I see now that I have always disliked inversions as well as many other conventional solemnities which seem to have had their day. I could never, even as a child, see any good reason why the language of verse should be distorted almost out of recognition in order to be poetical.  ~ EA Robinson

Just as Robinson rejected the burgeoning age of free verse, he also rejected the excesses of traditional poetry. He represented the first among America’s rarest poets – those who could infuse traditional poetry with a the modern voice – something that a poet like the much younger Edna Saint Vincent Millay, for example, never really managed to do. Even in the 21rst century, the number of poets who can skillfully infuse traditional poetry with a modern, vernacular voice are few and far between.

• My poetry is rat poison to editors, but here and there a Philistine seems to like it. ~ EA Robinson

Despite Robinson’s unique genius, he was ignored until the last decade of his life. He lived in boarding houses, with generous admirers and friends and skirted homelessness. He lived, at times, in abject poverty, drank whiskey to excess, depended on free lunches at saloons, and haunted taverns. He was the Charles Bukowski of his age and, in truth, his clear-eyed observation of fellow men put him in the same league as Bukowski. The two poets could have been friends in another era.

• I’ve always rather liked the queer, odd sticks of men, that’s all. ~ EA Robinson

It’s hard to exaggerate the degree to which Robinson was ignored. Mezey, in his introduction, suggests that Robinson was a poor self-promoter. He kept to himself. He didn’t tour or give lectures. He preferred solitude. But luck and critical reception plays a part. Frost’s sudden success, for example, was more luck than design. Frost met Ezra Pound and was championed by the famous poet. As a result, American publishers, who had previously ignored Frost, took notice. Robinson, it seems, never enjoyed that kind of breakthrough until the very last decade of his life, when Tristram won the Pulitzer prize. A healthy income and fame finally caught up with him. That was in 1927. He died April 6th, 1935.

• I think we must leave my contemporaries out of it. I don’t mind your saying, though, that I think a lot of Robert Frost’s work. ~ EA Robinson

Robinson continues to be overlooked. My own opinion is this: Robinson possessed a masterful ear for the colors of language, its rhythm and poetic form. What he lacked, perhaps, is a great poet’s gift for imagery. One will rarely find the ravishing sensuality of a Keats— sensitivity to touch, taste, smell and texture— or the arresting metaphor (or extended metaphor) of a Robert Frost or T.S. Eliot. Robinson’s plain style equally characterizes his poetic abilities. He seems, sometimes, almost embarrassed by the poetic image. He limits himself to only the most necessary description. In what some consider to be one of his greatest poems, Eros Turannos, the reader will be hard put to find anything that might be called simile, metaphor or imagery. A face is an “engaging mask”. We read of the “foamless weirs of age”, but the image is more like a still-life. Robinson frequently prefers the abstract to the concrete. We find collocations like “blurred sagacity” or “dirge of her illusions”, or “kindly veil”. These evoke nothing and range from the inventive to the mundane. They are intellectual abstractions. In his great poem For A Dead Lady, the reader will find abstractions like “overflowing light”, “eyes that now are faded”, “flowing wonder”, and the slightly more inventive “woman-hidden world”, but all these collocations are of the still-life variety, and some are just mundane, like “flowing wonder”. When Robinson does describe, his sense of imagery is mostly prosaic. We find “pounding waves” or “A sense of ocean and old trees”. Such descriptions are as typical of the novelist as of the poet. You will never find anything like Frost’s extended metaphor in Birches:

They click upon themselves
As the breeze rises, and turn many-colored
As the stir cracks and crazes their enamel.
Soon the sun’s warmth makes them shed crystal shells
Shattering and avalanching on the snow-crust–
Such heaps of broken glass to sweep away
You’d think the inner dome of heaven had fallen.

You will only find, every now and then, the seeds and hints of something that might have more fully flourished in the hands of a poet with a more metaphorical bent. What Robinson excels at is the pithy line. There’s a tight, powerfully succinct, terse and epigrammatic feel to his lines that, to a reader who revels concision and eloquence, is a joy to read. Robinson’s style is compressed and elliptical – talents that naturally made him a master of the short poem. In truth, most modern poets (some of whom are widely read) have no more talent for simile or metaphor than Robinson, but lack Robinson’s powerful feel for language. The wonder is that Robinson isn’t more widely read. To some, probably, he reads like a watered-down Frost, to others, more used to the transparently straight forward voice of free verse, Robinson’s powerfully compressed lines can feel archly intellectual. Robinson ends up neither here nor there. But read him for the concision of his lines. Read Robinson for his ability to compress a whole story into the space of a few lines.

• I am essentially a classicist in poetic composition, and I believe that the accepted media for the masters of the past will continue to be used in the future. There is, of course, room for infinite variety, manipulation and invention within the limits of traditional forms and meters, but any violent deviation from the classic mean may be a confession of inability to do the real thing, poetically speaking. ~ EA Robinson

What makes Robinson’s poem, The Sheaves, so unique among his poems is that it offers the reader both powerful concision and  an almost Keatsian (or Frostian) beauty of imagery and metaphor – the latter being more of a rarity. To me, who values both these elements, The Sheaves is his greatest, most perfect and most moving poem. Others, for other reasons, might choose other poems.

Here it is:

Where long the shadows of the wind had rolled
Green wheat was yielding to the change assigned;
And as my some vast magic undivined
The world was turning slowly to gold.
Like nothing that was ever bought or sold
It waited there, the body and the mind;
And with a mighty meaning of a kind
That tells the more the more it is not told.

So in a land where all days are not fair,
Fair days went on till on another day
A thousand golden sheaves were lying there,
Shining and still, but not for long to stay —
As if a thousand girls with golden hair
Might rise from where they slept and go away.

And here, for those who enjoy such things, is how I’ve scanned the poem:

What does it mean?

My first answer would be to say that it means what it says. Robinson called himself a classicist. What that means aesthetically, and from a poet’s perspective, is that the beauty of the great poem is both in what is said and how it’s said. Robinson’s quote: “Nine-tenths of poetry is how it’s done…. Ideas are, of course, inseparable from the medium, but much memorable poetry is not important for what is said.” To a classicist, a poem is a linguistic performance. (In that respect, rap has more in common with traditional poetry than with free verse.) Perhaps an apt analogy is to compare the classicist’s ideal oem to a statue by Michelangelo. We might ask how to interpret the Pietà: Why, for instance, did Michelangelo choose to omit signs of the passion when sculpting Christ? But no one would care if the sheer skill of its conception, in and of itself, weren’t a masterpiece of genius. In other words, we can appreciate the beauty of the statue without needing to interpret it or give it meaning. It’s meaning is, emphatically, not what makes the Pietà a masterpiece. Likewise, Robinson’s sonnet, The Sheaves, isn’t memorable for what it says (which is fairly mundane) but for how it’s said – the sheer skill of its conception. Robinson’s sonnet is, in a sense, like a sculpture. It’s an aesthetic, by the way, a way of writing poetry that is almost entirely absent in modern poetry. As I have writtene elsewhere, modern poets write at the alter of content. If we were to rewrite Robinson’s sonnet as  free verse, it would loose much of a power and beauty, and this isn’t necessarily to diminish free verse, in and of itself, but to distinguish between the different aesthetic approaches of a poet like Robinson and most modern poets.

• Many causes prevent poetry from being correctly appraised in its own time. Any poetry that is marked by violence, that is conspicuous in color, that is sensationally odd, makes an immediate appeal. On the other hand, poetry that is not noticeably eccentric sometimes fails for years to attract any attention… More than ever before, oddity and violence are bringing into prominence poets who have little besides these two qualities to offer the world… ~ EA Robinson

The sonnet is a beautiful example of a Petrarchan Sonnet written in Iambic Pentameter. As far as metrical innovation goes, the sonnet has nothing out of the ordinary to offer. There is one interesting spondaic foot: |vast mag|ic. The spondee, I think, reinforces the sense of vastness. The effect probably wasn’t cultivated by Robinson but, in a metrical poem, the accentual nature of the language takes on a little added emphasis.

What is beautiful about the poem is an opening quatrain like the following:

Where long the shadows of the wind had rolled
Green wheat was yielding to the change assigned;
And as my some vast magic undivined
The world was turning slowly to gold.

Robinson’s sonnet begins in a kind of darkness – the beautiful image ‘shadows of the wind’. From there, the sonnet’s world begins to grow into a beautiful golden brilliance: green wheat, as though by some vast magic, is turning “slowly into gold”. After the first quatrain, the second gives to an impersonal landscape, something like thought, shape and intent.

Like nothing that was ever bought or sold
It waited there, the body and the mind;
And with a mighty meaning of a kind
That tells the more the more it is not told.

What is the It that begins the second line of the quatrain? – body and mind. Robinson begins to shape the landscape into something human or divine (though the magic is undivined).  The reader is in a world of ambiguity, but Robinson has introduced all the elements of a metaphor that, like the landscape, will coalesce and beautifully take shape in the sonnet’s closing sestet (last six lines). What is the body? What is the mind? Does the mind of meaning or intent? He doesn’t yet tell us, only that it is like nothing that was ever bought or sold. It is without price or estimation. It cannot be constrained by any limitation but is free. And it’s meaning? Robinson is content with ambiguity. The read will ask, but Robinson will only answer that it is a “mighty meaning of a kind, That tells the more the more it is not told.” There is a power in these lines that is comparable to a zen koan. Lao Tse might have written such lines in his Tao Te Ching. To me, the simple, plain spoken mystery and truth in these two lines is equal to anything written by any other poet in any other language or  time. Such is the mystery of life that tells the more the more it is not told. The reader, the novitiate, seeking answers, must be silent. True knowledge does not come through the telling, and yet tells the more it is not told.

And now all the pieces of the metaphor will come together in one of the most beautiful images of all of poetry.

So in a land where all days are not fair,
Fair days went on till on another day
A thousand golden sheaves were lying there,
Shining and still, but not for long to stay —

Robinson begins the patrarchan sestet with an almost off-handed tone, anticipating and equal to anything Robert Frost was to write in later years. We are back to the impersonal landscape of wind and shadow. Robinson writes, simply and matter-of-factly, that though all days are not fair, fair days went on until a thousand golden sheaves “were lying there”. The first three lines are all but a restatement of the sonnet’s opening octave. But Robinson has placed the elements of a greater “meaning”, a “meaning of a kind that tells the more it is not told” the will take life with “body and mind”. The leaves will lie there, shining and still, but not for long. They will wait there like nothing that was ever bought or sold, until one day, they will be embodied,

As if a thousand girls with golden hair
Might rise from where they slept and go away.

Body and mind coalesce. In these last two lines, with a power akin to the closing couplet of a Shakespearean Sonnet, body, mind and meaning take shape, become metaphor, embodied in the inexpressible will and beauty of a thousand girls, whose meaning is greatest if left, perhaps, “untold”.  They have slept but will arise out of the impersonal shadow of the wind, suddenly alive, willful, free, golden haired, light, and inexpressibly lovely. Their meaning is in a beauty that defies definition. Beauty is truth and truth is beauty, Robinson almost seems to say. But their beauty is fleeting. The arise. They do not come to us, speak to us, or explain. They will go way and that is all ye know and all ye need to know.

So will we all.

Can there be a more beautiful or profound way to express something so simple? I find this poem to be one of the greatest poems of the English language.

Other readers of Robinson:

• The Era of Casual Fridays
• Amy Reads
• World of Poets
• Unexpected Paths
• Commonly
• rethinking education