by David Lehman
In this context it is not a surprise that poets would write openly and rhapsodically about their sexual lives and dreams. What is eye-opening are the lusty freedom and literary skill with which they have celebrated their erotic imaginations. When I am asked to talk about new trends, the emergence of a voluptuous body of erotic poems is almost always first on my list. It seems that nothing is off-limits to the contemporary poet. Office sex, first sex, oral sex, cybersex (“in a tangle of Internet”), solo sex, sex from the other’s point of view, voyeurism, bondage, parables of gardens with snakes, allegories of flowers and bees, dreams of horses or swans, and the use of a gin bottle as a surrogate lover: They’re all here. And no terms are forbidden from use. There is almost a mini-genre of poems devoted to the attractions and drawbacks of such words as fuck, cunt, pussy, and orgasm. Not that the liberal sprinkling of profanities assures anyone of anything. “I cannot honestly say I see any noteworthy improvement in our life, thought, or writing, now that ‘fuck’ can be heard and seen in public,” William Gass wrote in On Being Blue, “because its appearance is as unmeant and hypocritical as its former absence was. We fear to seem a prude.” Point well taken: Marlon Brando in an undershirt clinching with Eva Marie Saint in a slip (in On the Waterfront, 1954), or Rita Hayworth and Orson Welles embracing on a yacht (in The Lady from Shanghai, 1948), will get your blood going faster than any number of nude scenes in more recent films. Nevertheless, the greater freedom of vocabulary in tandem with a loosening of moral or religious restraint has spurred poets to tackle subjects formerly taboo, and they have done so with such freshness and style that you can’t help taking notice.
For the sake of inclusiveness and variety, I decided to limit each poet (except Emily Dickinson) to one poem. For reasons of space, the unkindest cuts of all had to be made at the last minute. I had to shelve so many worthy poems that I could have made a second anthology approximately the length of this one. The dates given in parentheses following the poems refer usually to year of publication, easier to ascertain than year of composition. In lieu of the conventional biographical note, I have asked the contributors to write a paragraph about their all-time favorite work of erotic writing, any genre, any language, any period. The preferences registered thus far include the Song of Songs, The Tale of Genji, The Story of O, Shakespeare, “No Platonic Love” by the seventeenth-century poet William Cartwright, Robert Herrick, John Donne, Andrew Marvell, Rainer Maria Rilke, Pablo Neruda, E. E. Cummings, Vladimir Nabokov, Anaïs Nin, Marguerite Duras, Frank O’Hara, and Edward Gorey. Seven of the poems in this volume have been named as contributors’ personal favorites: W. H. Auden’s “The Platonic Blow,” Emily Dickinson’s “Come slowly—Eden!” and “Wild Nights—Wild Nights!,” Galway Kinnell’s “Last Gods,” Adrienne Rich’s “(The Floating Poem, Unnumbered),” Charles Simic’s “Breasts,” and Gertrude Stein’s Lifting Belly. Other contributors (such as Walt Whitman, E. E. Cummings, Dennis Cooper, Jennifer L. Knox, Paul Muldoon, John Updike, and Sharon Olds) are also cited as exemplars. The range of opinion is wide, and it’s my hope that people will consult these notes as one would consult an annotated reading list on this most irresistible of subjects.
Although there is plenty of competition, I would cast my own vote for the modern Greek poet C. P. Cavafy (1863–1933). I have long loved such of his poems as “Days of 1908” (trans. James Merrill), “The Next Table” and “Body, Remember…” (trans. Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard), and “The Tobacco Shop Window” and “Their Origin” (trans. Theoharis C. Theoharis). Gore Vidal calls Cavafy “the Pindar of the one-night stand between males.” I admire the frank sensuality of Cavafy’s poems, the way he balances memory and desire. He can capture remembered lovers and affairs without falling into the usual traps; he doesn’t overwrite or sentimentalize his feelings. He is a truth-teller. There is a little poem entitled “One Night” in which Cavafy quite characteristically contrasts the gorgeous fever of lovemaking with the humble or seedy circumstances in which it takes place. Emboldened by Nin Andrews, who composed her note on César Vallejo in verse, I have done the same in crafting this imitation of “One Night”:
POEM IN THE MANNER OF C. P. CAVAFY
The room had a bed with torn sheets
above the bar where I met her
on Tuesdays in June and July.
And the light was bad, and there were
holes in the screens in the windows
where flies and mosquitoes
came in with the heat
and the laughter of the workers
playing poker downstairs.
And in that narrow room stinking
of cigarette smoke I breathed in
the bliss that only the young
and invincible know when
her young breasts rose and pressed
against my chest, and I was drunk
on her kisses and all these years later
I am drunk again though alone
as I think of those nights with her.
Ithaca, NY
July 2007
THE BEST AMERICAN EROTIC POEMS
FRANCIS SCOTT KEY (1780–1843)
On a Young Lady’s Going into a Shower Bath
“O that this too too solid flesh would melt
Thaw and resolve itself” to water clear,
And pure as that which flows through flowery vales
Of Arcady, and stays its gentle wave
To kiss the budding blossoms on its brink,
Or to encircle in its fond embrace
Some trembling, blushing maid, who doubting stands,
And hopes and fears to trust the smiling stream!
Then, as the amorous rise of Gods and men
From Heav’n descended in a golden show’r
To Danaë’s open arms, another heav’n
So from the bath, that o’er the shrinking charms
Of Sweet Nerea hung, would I more blest
Than rapturous love, upon a form more fair
Than Danaë’s a silver show’r descends.
O then those charms of which the lighted touch
Would fire the frozen blood of apathy,
Each drop of me should touch, should eager run
Down her fair forehead, down her blushing cheek
To taste the more inviting sweets beneath,
Should trickle down her neck, should slowly wind,
In silver circles round those hills of snow,
Or lingering steal through the sweet vale between
And when at length perplex’d with the rich store
Of nature’s varied, most luxuriant charms,
Amid the circling tendrils which entwine
An altar form’d for love’s soft sacrifice,
Insinuating creep, there as a bee
In a fresh rosebud hid, a refuge find
From the rude napkin’s sacrilegious touch.
(1857)
EDGAR ALLAN POE (1809–1849)
Song
I saw thee on thy bridal day—
When a burning blush came o’er thee,
Though happiness around thee lay,
The world all love before thee:
And in thine eye a kindling light
(Whatever it might be)
Was all on Earth my aching sight
Of Loveliness could see.
That blush, perhaps, was maiden shame—
As such it well may pass—
Though its glow hath raised a fiercer flame
In the breast of him, alas!
Who saw thee on that bridal day,
When that deep blush would come o’er thee,
Though happiness around thee lay,
The world all love before thee.
(1827)
WALT WHITMAN (1819–1892)
I Sing the Body Electric
1
The bodies of men and women engirth me, and I engirth them,
They will not let me off nor I them till I go with them and respond
to them and love them.
Was it doubted if those who corrupt their own live bodies conceal
themselves?
And if those who defile the living are as bad as they who defile the
dead?
2
The expression of the body of man or woman balks account,
The male is perfect and that of the female is perfect.
The expression of a well-made man appears not only in his face,
It is in his limbs and joints also, it is curiously in the joints of his
hips and wrists,
It is in his walk, the carriage of his neck, the flex of his waist and
knees—dress does not hide him,
The strong sweet supple quality he has strikes through the cotton and
flannel,
To see him pass conveys as much as the best poem, perhaps more,
You linger to see his back and the back of his neck and shoulder-side.
The sprawl and fulness of babes, the bosoms and heads of women,
the folds of their dress, their style as we pass in the street, the
contour of their shape downwards,
The swimmer naked in the swimming-bath, seen as he swims through
the salt transparent green-shine, or lies on his back and rolls silently
with the heave of the water,
Framers bare-armed framing a house, hoisting the beams in their places,
or using the mallet and mortising-chisel,
The bending forward and backward of rowers in row-boats—the
horseman in his saddle,
Girls and mothers and housekeepers in all their exquisite offices,
The group of laborers seated at noon-time with their open dinner-kettles,
and their wives waiting,
The female soothing a child—the farmer’s daughter in the garden or
cow-yard,
The young fellow hoeing corn—the sleigh-driver guiding his six horses
through the crowd,
The wrestle of wrestlers, two apprentice-boys, quite grown, lusty,
good-natured, native-born, out on the vacant lot at sun-down
after work,
The coats vests and caps thrown down, the embrace of love and
resistance,
The upper-hold and under-hold—the hair rumpled over and blinding
the eyes,
The march of firemen in their own costumes—the play of the masculine
muscle through clean-setting trowsers and waist-straps,
The slow return from the fire, the pause when the bell strikes
suddenly again—the listening on the alert,
The natural perfect and varied attitudes—the bent head, the curved
neck, the counting:
Such-like I love—I loosen myself and pass freely—and am at the
mother’s breast with the little child,
And swim with the swimmer, and wrestle with the wrestlers, and
march in line with the firemen, and pause and listen and count.
3
I knew a man—he was a common farmer—he was the father of
five sons—and in them were the fathers of sons—and in them
were the fathers of sons.
This man was a wonderful vigor and calmness and beauty of person,
The shape of his head, the richness and breadth of his manners, the
pale yellow and white of his hair and beard, the immeasurable
meaning of his black eyes,
These I used to go and visit him to see—he was wise also,
He was six feet tall—he was over eighty years old—his sons were
massive clean bearded tan-faced and handsome,
They and his daughters loved him—all who saw him loved him—
they did not love him by allowance—they loved him with
personal love,
He drank water only—the blood showed like scarlet through the
clear-brown skin of his face,
He was a frequent gunner and fisher—he sailed his boat himself—he
had a fine one presented to him by a ship-joiner—he had fowling-,
pieces presented to him by men that loved him,
When he went with his five sons and many grand-sons to hunt or fish
you would pick him out as the most beautiful and vigorous of
the gang,
You would wish long and long to be with him—you would wish to
sit by him in the boat that you and he might touch each other.
4
I have perceived that to be with those I like is enough,
To stop in company with the rest at evening is enough,
To be surrounded by beautiful curious breathing laughing flesh is
enough,
To pass among them, to touch any one, to rest my arm ever so lightly
round his or her neck for a moment—what is this then?
I do not ask any more delight—I swim in it as in a sea.
There is something in staying close to men and women and looking
on them and in the contact and odor of them that pleases the
soul well,
All things please the soul, but these please the soul well.
5
This is the female form,
A divine nimbus exhales from it from head to foot,
It attracts with fierce undeniable attraction,
I am drawn by its breath as if I were no more than a helpless vapor—
all falls aside but myself and it,
Books, art, religion, time, the visible and solid earth, the atmosphere
and the fringed clouds, what was expected of heaven or feared
of hell are now consumed,
Mad filaments, ungovernable shoots play out of it, the response
likewise ungovernable,
Hair, bosom, hips, bend of legs, negligent falling hands—all diffused—
mine too diffused,
Ebb stung by the flow, and flow stung by the ebb—love-flesh swelling
and deliciously aching,
Limitless limpid jets of love hot and enormous, quivering jelly of love,
white-blow and delirious juice,
Bridegroom night of love working surely and softly into the prostrate
dawn,
Undulating into the willing and yielding day,
Lost in the cleave of the clasping and sweet-fleshed day.
This is the nucleus—after the child is born of woman the man is born
of woman,
This is the bath of birth—this is the merge of small and large and the
outlet again.
Be not ashamed women—your privilege encloses the rest, it is the exit
of the rest,
You are the gates of the body and you are the gates of the soul.
The female contains all qualities and tempers them—she is in her
place—she moves with perfect balance,
She is all things duly veiled—she is both passive and active—she is to
conceive daughters as well as sons and sons as well as daughters.
As I see my soul reflected in nature, as I see through a mist one with
inexpressible completeness and beauty, see the bent head and
arms folded over the breast—the female I see.
6
The male is not less the soul, nor more—he too is in his place,
He too is all qualities—he is action and power—the flush of the
known universe is in him,
Scorn becomes him well and appetite and defiance become him well,
The fiercest largest passions, a bliss that is utmost and sorrow that is
utmost become him well—pride is for him,
The full-spread pride of man is calming and excellent to the soul,
Knowledge becomes him—he likes it always—he brings everything
to the test of himself,
Whatever th
e survey, whatever the sea and the sail, he strikes
soundings at last only here,
Where else does he strike soundings except here?
The man’s body is sacred and the woman’s body is sacred, it is no
matter who,
Is it a slave? Is it one of the dull-faced immigrants just landed on the
wharf?
Each belongs here or anywhere just as much as the well-off—just as
much as you,
Each has his or her place in the procession.
All is a procession,
The universe is a procession with measured and perfect motion.
Do you know so much yourself that you call the slave or the dull-face
ignorant?
Do you suppose you have a right to a good sight, and he or she has
no right to a sight?
Do you think matter has cohered together from its diffused float, and
the soil is on the surface and water runs and vegetation sprouts
for you only, and not for him and her?
7
A slave at auction!
I help the auctioneer—the sloven does not half know his business.
Gentlemen look on this curious creature,
Whatever the bids of the bidders they cannot be high enough for him,
For him the globe lay preparing quintillions of years without one
animal or plant,
For him the revolving cycles truly and steadily rolled.
