All We Know of Pleasure: Poetic Erotica by Women - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0932112978 ISBN 13: 9780932112972

Publisher: Carolina Wren Press, 2018

Synopsis

Here is the good stuff: poetry written by women that actually excites the thinking reader. This anthology, spanning work of the last 75 years, will broaden its readers’ notions of what defines erotic poetry. For what is more intriguing, more satisfying than strong, self-assured writing?

This groundbreaking anthology includes some of our most powerful women writers―among them Sharon Olds, Elizabeth Alexander, Anne Sexton, Dorianne Laux, Denise Levertov, Adrienne Rich, Lucille Clifton, and Louise Glück. These poets fully demonstrate that, far from being prurient, the erotic can permeate even the most mundane aspects of life, from reading a book to buying clothes.

At the same time, the collection affirms the enormous meaningfulness of poetry―its ability to express the inexpressible and to illuminate the most private and intimate of human experiences. The poets included here represent different ethnicities, geographies, social classes, and sexual preferences. The only characteristic they share is that they are women writing about sex.

About this title

About the Author

Enid Shomer, Anthology Editor

Poet and fiction writer Enid Shomer is the author of four books of poetry and three of fiction, most recently the novel The Twelve Rooms of the Nile (Simon & Schuster, 2012). Her work has been collected in more than fifty anthologies and textbooks, including POETRY: A Harper Collins Pocket Anthology, Best American Poetry, and New Stories from the South. Two of her books, Stars at Noon (poetry) and Imaginary Men (short fiction), were the subject of feature interviews on NPR's Morning Edition and All Things Considered. In 2013, she received the Lifetime Achievement Award in Writing from the Florida Humanities Council.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

The Knowing

SHARON OLDS

Afterwards, when we have slept, paradise-

comaed and woken, we lie a long time

looking at each other.

I do not know what he sees, but I see

eyes of surpassing tenderness

and calm, a calm like the dignity

of matter. I love the open ocean

blue-grey-green of his iris, I love

the curve of it against the white,

that curve the sight of what has caused me

to come, when he's quite still, deep

inside me. I have never seen a curve

like that, except the earth from outer

space. I don't know where he got

his kindness without self-regard,

almost without self, and yet

he chose one woman, instead of the others.

By knowing him, I get to know

the purity of the animal

which mates for life. Sometimes he is slightly

smiling, but mostly he just gazes at me gazing,

his entire face lit. I love

to see it change if I cry―there is no worry,

no pity, no graver radiance. If we

are on our backs, side by side,

with our faces turned fully to face each other,

I can hear a tear from my lower eye

hit the sheet, as if it is an early day on earth,

and then the upper eye's tears

braid and sluice down through the lower eyebrow

like the invention of farmimg, irrigation, a non-nomadic people.

I am so lucky that I can know him.

This is the only way to know him.

I am the only one who knows him.

When I wake again, he is still looking at me,

as if he is eternal. For an hour

we wake and doze, and slowly I know

that though we are sated, though we are hardly

touching, this is the coming the other

coming brought us to the edge of-we are entering,

deeper and deeper, gaze by gaze,

this place beyond the other places,

beyond the body itself, we are making

love

The Lovers

DORIANNE LAUX

She is about to come. This time,

they are sitting up, joined below the belly,

feet cupped like sleek hands praying

at the base of each other’s spines.

And when something lifts within her

toward a light she’s sure, once again,

she can’t bear, she opens her eyes

and sees his face is turned away,

one arm behind him, hands splayed

palm down on the mattress, to brace himself

so he can lever his hips, touch

with the bright tip the innermost spot.

And she finds she can’t bear it―

not his beautiful neck, stretched and corded,

not his hair fallen to one side like beach grass,

not the curved wing of his ear, washed thin

with daylight, deep pink of the inner body―

what she can’t bear is that she can’t see his face,

not that she thinks this exactly―she is rocking

and breathing―it’s more her body’s though,

opening, as it is, into its own sheer truth.

So that when her hand lifts of its own violation

and slaps him, twice on the chest,

on that pad of muscled flesh just above the nipple,

slaps him twice, fast, like a nursing child

trying to get a mother’s attention,

she’s startled by the sound,

though when he turns his face to hers―

which is what her body wants, his eyes

pulled open, as if she had bitten―

she does reach out and bite him, on the shoulder,

not hard, but with the power infants have

over those who have borne them, tied as they are

to the body, and so, tied to the pleasure,

the exquisite pain of this world.

And when she lifts her face he sees

where she’s gone, knows she can’t speak,

is traveling toward something essential,

toward the core of her need, so he simply

watches, steadily, with an animal calm

as she arches and screams, watches the face that,

if she could see it, she would never let him see.

The Encounter

LOUISE GLUCK

You came to the side of the bed

and sat staring at me.

Then you kissed me―I felt

hot wax on my forehead.

I wanted it to leave a mark:

that’s how I knew I loved you.

Because I wanted to be burned, stamped,

to have something in the end―

I drew the gown over my head;

a red flush covered my face and shoulders.

It will run its course, the course of fire,

setting a cold coin on the forehead, between the eyes.

You lay beside me; your hand moved over my face

as though you had felt it also―

you must have known, then, how I wanted you.

We will always know that, you and I.

The proof will be my body.

Edition details

• Publisher: Carolina Wren Press
• Publication date: 2018
• ISBN 10: 0932112978
• ISBN 13: 9780932112972
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 224
• Editor: Shomer Enid