The Best American Erotic Poems

From 1800 to the Present

David Lehman

• Publisher: Scribner
• Year: 2008
• Topic: Literature
• eBook ISBN:
  9781416564409
• Subtopic: Poetry
• Index: Literature

This thoughtful, provocative, and moving poetry collection celebrates the deep tradition of eroticism in American poetry, from the editor of The Best American Poetry.

These poems range across the varied landscapes of love and sex and desire—from the intimate parts of the body to the end of an affair, from passion to solitary self-pleasure. With candor and imagination, they capture the delights and torments of sex and sexuality, nudity, love, lust, and the secret life of fantasy.

David Lehman, the distinguished editor of the celebrated Best American Poetry series, has culled a witty, titillating, and alluring collection that starts with Francis Scott Key, Emily Dickinson, Walt Whitman, and Hart Crane, encompasses Frank O’Hara, Anne Sexton, John Updike, Charles Simic, Billy Collins, Kevin Young, and Sharon Olds, and concludes with the rising stars of a whole new generation of versifiers, including Sarah Manguso, Ravi Shankar, and Brenda Shaughnessy.

In a section of the book that is sure to prompt discussion and further reading, the living poets write about their favorite works of erotic writing. This book will delight, surprise, and inspire.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Colophon
• ALSO BY DAVID LEHMAN
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
•  
• Introduction by David Lehman
• FRANCIS SCOTT KEY (1780–1843) “On a Young Lady’s Going into a Shower Bath”
• EDGAR ALLAN POE (1809–1849) “Song” [“I saw thee on thy bridal day”]
• WALT WHITMAN (1819–1892) “I Sing the Body Electric”
• GEORGE HENRY BOKER (1823–1890) from Sonnets: A Sequence on Profane Love
• EMILY DICKINSON (1830–1886)
• EMMA LAZARUS (1849–1887) “Assurance”
• EDITH WHARTON (1862–1937) “Terminus”
• ROBERT FROST (1874–1963) “The Subverted Flower”
• AMY LOWELL (1874–1925) “Anticipation”
• GERTRUDE STEIN (1874–1946) from Lifting Belly
• WALLACE STEVENS (1879–1955) “Peter Quince at the Clavier”
• WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS (1883–1963) “Young Sycamore”
• CONRAD AIKEN (1889–1973) “Sea Holly”
• EDNA ST. VINCENT MILLAY (1892–1950) Sonnet [“I too beneath your moon, almighty Sex”]
• E. E. CUMMINGS (1894–1962) “as /we lie side by side/my little breasts […]”
• H. PHELPS PUTNAM (1894–1948) “Sonnets to Some Sexual Organs”
• HART CRANE (1899–1932) “Episode of Hands”
• LANGSTON HUGHES (1902–1967) “Desire”
• KENNETH REXROTH (1905–1982) from The Love Poems of Marichiko
• W. H. AUDEN (1907–1973) “The Platonic Blow”
• ELIZABETH BISHOP (1911–1979) “It Is Marvellous…”
• J. V. CUNNINGHAM (1911–1985) “It Was in Vegas”
• TENNESSEE WILLIAMS (1911–1983) “Life Story”
• MURIEL RUKEYSER (1913–1980) “What I See”
• MAY SWENSON (1913–1989) “A New Pair”
• ISABELLA STEWART GARDNER (1915–1981) “The Milkman”
• RUTH STONE (born 1915) “Coffee and Sweet Rolls”
• THOMAS McGRATH (1916–1990) from Letter to an Imaginary Friend
• ROBERT DUNCAN (1919–1988) “The Torso” (Passage 18)
• CHARLES BUKOWSKI (1920–1994) “Hunk of Rock”
• HAYDEN CARRUTH (born 1921) “Assignment”
• RICHARD WILBUR (born 1921) “A Late Aubade”
• JAMES SCHUYLER (1923–1991) “A photograph”
• LOUIS SIMPSON (born 1923) “Summer Storm”
• ROBIN BLASER (born 1925) “2nd Tale: Return”
• KENNETH KOCH (1925–2002) “To Orgasms”
• A. R. AMMONS (1926–2001) “Their Sex Life”
• PAUL BLACKBURN (1926–1971) “The Once-Over”
• ALLEN GINSBERG (1926–1997) “Love Poem on Theme by Whitman”
• JAMES MERRILL (1926–1995) “Peeled Wands”
• FRANK O’HARA (1926–1966) “To the Harbormaster”
• DAVID WAGONER (born 1926) “Trying to Write a Poem While the Couple in the Apartment Overhead Make Love”
• GALWAY KINNELL (born 1927) “Last Gods”
• DONALD HALL (born 1928) “When I Was Young”
• ANNE SEXTON (1928–1974) “December 11th”
• RICHARD HOWARD (born 1929) “Move Still, Still So”
• ADRIENNE RICH (born 1929) “(The Floating Poem, Unnumbered)”
• SYLVIA PLATH (1932–1963) “The Beekeeper’s Daughter”
• JOHN UPDIKE (born 1932) “Fellatio”
• MARK STRAND (born 1934) “The Couple”
• TED BERRIGAN (1934–1983) “Dinner at George Katie Schneeman’s”
• RUSSELL EDSON (born 1935) “Conjugal”
• LUCILLE CLIFTON (born 1936) “to a dark moses”
• FREDERICK SEIDEL (born 1936) “Heart Art”
• MARGE PIERCY (born 1936) “Salt in the Afternoon”
• C. K. WILLIAMS (born 1936) “Ethics”
• CHARLES SIMIC (born 1938) “Breasts”
• BILLY COLLINS (born 1941) “Pinup”
• STEPHEN DOBYNS (born 1941) “Desire”
• ROBERT HASS (born 1941) “Against Botticelli”
• LINDA GREGG (born 1942) “Kept Burning and Distant”
• SHARON OLDS (born 1942) “The Sisters of Sexual Treasure”
• LOUISE GLÜCK (born 1943) “The Encounter”
• SANDRA ALCOSSER (born 1944) “By the Nape”
• PAUL VIOLI (born 1944) “Resolution”
• ROBERT OLEN BUTLER (born 1945) “Walter Raleigh, courtier and explorer, beheaded by King James I, 1618”
• ALAN FELDMAN (born 1945) “A Man and a Woman”
• BERNADETTE MAYER (born 1945) “First turn to me…”
• HONOR MOORE (born 1945) “Disparu”
• STAR BLACK (born 1946) “The Evangelist”
• ELLEN BASS (born 1947) “Gate C22”
• AI (born 1947) “Twenty-Year Marriage”
• JANE KENYON (1947–1995) “The Shirt”
• YUSEF KOMUNYAKAA (born 1947) “Lust”
• MOLLY PEACOCK (born 1947) “She Lays”
• JAMES CUMMINS (born 1948) “The Body Is the Flower”
• HEATHER McHUGH (born 1948) “Gig at Big Al’s”
• LYNN EMANUEL (born 1949) “Dreaming of Rio at Sixteen”
• DENIS JOHNSON (born 1949) “Poem”
• DANA GIOIA (born 1950) “Alley Cat Love Song”
• PAUL JONES (born 1950) “To His Penis”
• WILLIAM WADSWORTH (born 1950) “The Snake in the Garden Considers Daphne”
• MARC COHEN (born 1951) “It Never Happened”
• JUDITH HALL (born 1951) “In an Empty Garden”
• CYNTHIA HUNTINGTON (born 1951) from Shot Up in the Sexual Revolution (The True Adventures of Suzy Creamcheese)
• PAUL MULDOON (born 1951) “The Little Black Book”
• BOB FLANAGAN (1952–1996) from Slave Sonnets [“I’ve been a shit and I hate fucking you now”]
• DORIANNE LAUX (born 1952) “The Shipfitter’s Wife”
• PETER SERCHUK (born 1952) “The Naked Women”
• DENNIS COOPER (born 1953) “After School, Street Football, Eighth Grade”
• MARK DOTY (born 1953) “Lilacs in NYC”
• TONY HOAGLAND (born 1953) “Visitation”
• RICHARD JONES (born 1953) “Wan Chu’s Wife in Bed”
• HARRYETTE MULLEN (date of birth unknown) “Pretty Piece of Tail”
• KIM ADDONIZIO (born 1954) “The Divorcée and Gin”
• SARAH ARVIO (born 1954) “Mirrors”
• DEAN YOUNG (born 1955) “Platypus”
• AMY GERSTLER (born 1956) “Ode to Semen”
• SARAH MACLAY (born 1956) “My Lavenderdom”
• CECILIA WOLOCH (born 1956) “Bareback Pantoum”
• CATHERINE BOWMAN (born 1957) “Demographics”
• ED SMITH (1957–2005) “Poem”
• NIN ANDREWS (born 1958) “How to Have an Orgasm: Examples”
• CARL PHILLIPS (born 1959) “I See a Man”
• DENISE DUHAMEL (born 1961) “House-Sitting”
• ELIZABETH ALEXANDER (born 1962) “At Seventeen”
• OLENA KALYTIAK DAVIS (born 1963) “Francesca Says More”
• BETH GYLYS (born 1964) “Preference”
• LISA WILLIAMS (born 1966) “On Not Using the Word ‘Cunt’ in a Poem”
• DEBORAH LANDAU (born 1967) “August in West Hollywood”
• JEFFREY McDANIEL (born 1967) “When a man hasn’t been kissed”
• RICHARD SIKEN (born 1967) “Little Beast”
• JENNIFER L. KNOX (born 1968) “Another Motive for Metaphor”
• JANICE ERLBAUM (born 1969) “The Temp”
• JENNY FACTOR (born 1969) “Misapprehension”
• CATE MARVIN (born 1969) “Me and Men”
• CATHERINE WAGNER (born 1969) “Lover”
• C. DALE YOUNG (born 1969) “Maelstrom”
• BRENDA SHAUGHNESSY (born 1970) “Voluptuary”
• KEVIN YOUNG (born 1970) “Étude”
• JILL ALEXANDER ESSBAUM (born 1971) “On Reading Poorly Transcribed Erotica”
• BETH ANN FENNELLY (born 1971) “Why We Shouldn’t Write Love Poems, or If We Must, Why We Shouldn’t Publish Them”
• TERRANCE HAYES (born 1971) “Preface”
• CATHERINE WING (born 1972) “Eye-Fucked”
• ROSS MARTIN (born 1973) “Body Cavity”
• SARAH MANGUSO (born 1974) “Reverence”
• RAVI SHANKAR (born 1975) “Lucia”
• LAURA CRONK (born 1977) “From the Other”
• DANIELLE PAFUNDA (born 1977) “Courtesy”
• MICHAEL QUATTRONE (born 1977) “February”
• MAGGIE WELLS (born 1977) “Sonnet from the Groin”
• NOAH MICHELSON (born 1978) “Valentine”
• HEATHER CHRISTLE (born 1980) “Letter to My Love”
• RACHEL SHUKERT (born 1980) “Subterranean Gnomesick Blues; or, the Gnome Who Whet My Fleshy Tent.”
• Contributors’ Notes
• Acknowledgments
• A NOTE ON THE TYPE