Introduction to Poetry
Prof. Jamie Thomas
Final Paper
Fall 2007
Anthology of Poetry on Sexuality in the Post-Imagism Era.
Compiled by Anthony Ryder
Table of Contents.
Critical Introduction………………………………………………………3
Poems…………………………………………….……………………….8
Works Cited………………………………………………………………26
Critical Introduction.
The theme of sexuality has been considerably addressed by poets of the twentieth century more than ever before. Two factors may explain why this phenomenon has occurred in literature. On the one hand, the impact of Walt Whitman’s influences on the poets of the later generations is noticeable because he reinstated vigorously the use of free verse styles. In addition, the poets of the Imagism movement dovetailed their efforts with that of Whitman with regard to the free verses. Furthermore, they enhanced the emergence of a new poetic style that often breaks the traditional rules of syntax and grammar and often compose stanzas made of lines of various lengths.
On the other hand, the sexual revolution that erupted in the western society of the twentieth century meant that the society was eager to trim down many of the restrictive rules of the past and to set the stage for embracing innovative ideas and implementing new concepts. In Poetry for example, the compounded contribution of Whitman’s style, the Imagism philosophy and the new concept of sexual revolution yielded a new poetical trend that dislodged out the infamous stigmas related to discussing sexual fantasies and sexual experiences in the public arena.
In the post Imagism era dominated by a constant pursuit of freedom in the expression of sexuality, this new poetical trend has stimulated the proliferation of poets who elect to tackle the theme of human sexuality without being embarrassed by it. At the same token, this trend has gradually guided the modern society towards more tolerance and acceptance of open debates on sexuality. This anthology is a collection of a limited selection of poems written in the twentieth century by authors who addressed the theme of sexuality. As the debate on sexual revolution intensifies in the community, more poets will be inspired to write about human sexuality. Thus the prospect of such an anthology expanding in volume and diversity of sub-topics is astronomical.
“Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” of Eliot is published in 1915 in the middle of the period of the molding of the Imagism style. It is included in the anthology because it is written in the Imagism spirit. In addition, its narrator, J. Alfred Profrock, strives hesitantly, indirectly but surely to disclose in the poem, his sexual attraction towards a woman. Lines 1 to 12 read:
“Let us go then, you and I, When the evening is spread out against the skyLike a patient etherized upon a table; Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets, The muttering retreatsOf restless nights in one-night cheap hotelsAnd sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells: Streets that follow like a tedious argumentOf insidious intentTo lead you to an overwhelming question . . . Oh, do not ask, "What is it?"Let us go and make our visit.”
“Marriage” of Gregory Corso is released in 1952. It is chosen because its narrator is more forthcoming about his sexuality than Alfred Profrock whom we met in the previous poem. Corso’s narrator is a man who instead chooses the pathway of a real and stable sexual relationship with a woman. Lines 49 to 52 read:
“But I should get married I should be goodHow nice it'd be to come home to herand sit by the fireplace and she in the kitchenaproned young and lovely wanting my baby”
“Howl” by Allen Ginsberg is published in 1956. This poem is one of the literary cornerstones that mark the evolution of the poetry of the 20th century from a heavily and morally driven writing style to new indulgent style that tolerates a lavish and exuberant expression of sexuality. No wonder it caused deliriant reactions with spikes of hysteria in the society at large shortly after its release because of its offensive description of what was considered as flagrant and blatant homosexual acts. For example, line 36 reads as follow:
“Who let themselves be fucked in the ass by saintly motorcyclist, and
screamed with joy,”
“After Making Love We Hear Footsteps” by Galway Kinnel is released in 1980. Its narrator brings the openly graphic representation of heterosexual practices into poetry. Lines 9 to 11 read as follow:
“and make for it on the run—as now, we lie together,
after making love, quiet, touching along the length of our bodies,
familiar touch of the long-married,”
“The Knowing” by Sharon Olds is an excellent illustration of a Modernist poet who uses Walt Whitman’s style to describe the voluptuous desires of her sexuality in a raw, liberated and provocative manner. Her female narrator honestly portrays her sensual perceptions about the intensity of a moment of her physical union with her male lover. Lines 35 to 44 read as follow:
“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 knowthat though we are sated, though we are hardlytouching, this is the coming the otherbrought 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 makinglove.”
“Morning” by Frank O’Hara is included in the anthology because it symbolizes the continuity of the ideal platonic love as a valid form of sexual expression in the twentieth century. For example, in the following excerpt, the narrator verbalizes the emotional turmoil he or she experiences because of the prolonged absence of his or her soul mate. Lines 16 to 19 read:
“I miss you always
when I go to the beach
the sand is wet with
tears that seem mine”
“The Elephant is Slow To Mate” by D.H. Lawrence is an illustration of another modernist poet who was inspired by the theme of sexuality. In this poem, the narrator uses rhyme and meter he fantasizes about the sexual behavior of elephants. Lines 21 to 24 read:
“They do not snatch, they do not tear; their massive bloodmoves as the moon-tides, near, more neartill they touch in flood”
“What do Women Want” by Kim Addonizio, exemplifies the reality that some poets are committed in digging so passionately around the theme of sexuality nowadays. The female narrator in this excerpt displays to the reader partial clues as to why she believes that women deliberately choose to wear tight outfits. Lines 1 to 4 read as follow: “I want a red dress.I want it flimsy and cheap,I want it too tight, I want to wear ituntil someone tears it off me.” Poems
1) The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
S'io credesse che mia risposta fosseA persona che mai tornasse al mondo,Questa fiamma staria senza piu scosse.Ma perciocche giammai di questo fondoNon torno vivo alcun, s'i'odo il vero,Senza tema d'infamia ti rispondo.
Let us go then, you and I, When the evening is spread out against the skyLike a patient etherized upon a table; Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets, The muttering retreatsOf restless nights in one-night cheap hotelsAnd sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells: Streets that follow like a tedious argumentOf insidious intentTo lead you to an overwhelming question . . . Oh, do not ask, "What is it?"Let us go and make our visit.In the room the women come and goTalking of Michelangelo. The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes, The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panesLicked its tongue into the corners of the evening, Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains, Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys, Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap, And seeing that it was a soft October night, Curled once about the house, and fell asleep.And indeed there will be timeFor the yellow smoke that slides along the street,Rubbing its back upon the window-panes;There will be time, there will be timeTo prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;There will be time to murder and create,And time for all the works and days of handsThat lift and drop a question on your plate;Time for you and time for me,And time yet for a hundred indecisions,And for a hundred visions and revisions,Before the taking of a toast and tea.In the room the women come and goTalking of Michelangelo.And indeed there will be timeTo wonder, "Do I dare?" and, "Do I dare?"Time to turn back and descend the stair, With a bald spot in the middle of my hair--[They will say: "How his hair is growing thin!"]My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin, My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin--[They will say: "But how his arms and legs are thin!"]Do I dareDisturb the universe?In a minute there is timeFor decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.For I have known them all already, known them all:--Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;I know the voices dying with a dying fallBeneath the music from a farther room.So how should I presume?And I have known the eyes already, known them all--The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase,And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall,Then how should I beginTo spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?And how should I presume?And I have known the arms already, known them all--Arms that are braceleted and white and bare[But in the lamplight, downed with light brown hair!]Is it perfume from a dressThat makes me so digress?Arms that lie along a table, or wrap about a shawl.And should I then presume?And how should I begin?. . . . .Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streetsAnd watched the smoke that rises from the pipesOf lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows? . . .I should have been a pair of ragged clawsScuttling across the floors of silent seas.. . . . .And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully!Smoothed by long fingers,Asleep . . . tired . . . or it malingers,Stretched on the floor, here beside you and me.Should I, after tea and cakes and ices, Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed,Though I have seen my head [grown slightly bald] brought in upon a platter, I am no prophet--and here's no great matter;I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker,And in short, I was afraid.And would it have been worth it, after all,After the cups, the marmalade, the tea,Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me,Would it have been worth while,To have bitten off the matter with a smile,To have squeezed the universe into a ballTo roll it toward some overwhelming question,To say: "I am Lazarus, come from the deadCome back to tell you all, I shall tell you all"--If one, settling a pillow by her head,Should say: "That is not what I meant at all.That is not it, at all."And would it have been worth it, after all,Would it have been worth while,After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets,After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail along thefloor--And this, and so much more?--It is impossible to say just what I mean!But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen:Would it have been worth whileIf one, settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl,And turning toward the window, should say:"That is not it at all,That is not what I meant, at all.". . . . .No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;Am an attendant lord, one that will doTo swell a progress, start a scene or two,Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,Deferential, glad to be of use,Politic, cautious, and meticulous;Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuseAt times, indeed, almost ridiculous--Almost, at times, the Fool.I grow old . . .I grow old . . .I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.I do not think that they will sing to me.I have seen them riding seaward on the wavesCombing the white hair of the waves blown backWhen the wind blows the water white and black.We have lingered in the chambers of the seaBy sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brownTill human voices wake us, and we drown.
2) 'Marriage' by Gregory Corso
Should I get married? Should I be good?1Astound the girl next door with my velvet suit and faustus hood?Don't take her to movies but to cemeteriestell all about werewolf bathtubs and forked clarinetsthen desire her and kiss her and all the preliminariesand she going just so far and I understanding whynot getting angry saying You must feel! It's beautiful to feel!Instead take her in my arms lean against an old crooked tombstoneand woo her the entire night the constellations in the sky- 9
When she introduces me to her parentsback straightened, hair finally combed, strangled by a tie,should I sit with my knees together on their 3rd degree sofaand not ask Where's the bathroom?How else to feel other than I am,often thinking Flash Gordon soap-O how terrible it must be for a young manseated before a family and the family thinkingWe never saw him before! He wants our Mary Lou!After tea and homemade cookies they ask What do you do for a living?19
Should I tell them? Would they like me then?Say All right get married, we're losing a daughterbut we're gaining a son-And should I then ask Where's the bathroom?
O God, and the wedding! All her family and her friendsand only a handful of mine all scroungy and beardedjust wait to get at the drinks and food-And the priest! he looking at me as if I masturbatedasking me Do you take this woman for your lawful wedded wife?And I trembling what to say say Pie Glue!I kiss the bride all those corny men slapping me on the backShe's all yours, boy! Ha-ha-ha!And in their eyes you could see some obscene honeymoon going on-Then all that absurd rice and clanky cans and shoesNiagara Falls! Hordes of us! Husbands! Wives! Flowers! Chocolates!All streaming into cozy hotelsAll going to do the same thing tonightThe indifferent clerk he knowing what was going to happenThe lobby zombies they knowing whatThe whistling elevator man he knowingEverybody knowing! I'd almost be inclined not to do anything!40Stay up all night! Stare that hotel clerk in the eye!Screaming: I deny honeymoon! I deny honeymoon!running rampant into those almost climactic suitesyelling Radio belly! Cat shovel!O I'd live in Niagara forever! in a dark cave beneath the FallsI'd sit there the Mad Honeymoonerdevising ways to break marriages, a scourge of bigamya saint of divorce- 48
But I should get married I should be good49How nice it'd be to come home to herand sit by the fireplace and she in the kitchenaproned young and lovely wanting my baby52and so happy about me she burns the roast beefand comes crying to me and I get up from my big papa chairsaying Christmas teeth! Radiant brains! Apple deaf!God what a husband I'd make! Yes, I should get married!So much to do! Like sneaking into Mr Jones' house late at nightand cover his golf clubs with 1920 Norwegian booksLike hanging a picture of Rimbaud on the lawnmowerlike pasting Tannu Tuva postage stamps all over the picket fencelike when Mrs Kindhead comes to collect for the Community Chestgrab her and tell her There are unfavorable omens in the sky!And when the mayor comes to get my vote tell himWhen are you going to stop people killing whales!And when the milkman comes leave him a note in the bottlePenguin dust, bring me penguin dust, I want penguin dust-
Yes if I should get married and it's Connecticut and snowand she gives birth to a child and I am sleepless, worn,up for nights, head bowed against a quiet window, the past behind me,finding myself in the most common of situations a trembling manknowledged with responsibility not twig-smear nor Roman coin soup-O what would that be like!Surely I'd give it for a nipple a rubber TacitusFor a rattle a bag of broken Bach recordsTack Della Francesca all over its cribSew the Greek alphabet on its bibAnd build for its playpen a roofless Parthenon
No, I doubt I'd be that kind of fatherNot rural not snow no quiet windowbut hot smelly tight New York Cityseven flights up, roaches and rats in the wallsa fat Reichian wife screeching over potatoes Get a job!And five nose running brats in love with BatmanAnd the neighbors all toothless and dry hairedlike those hag masses of the 18th centuryall wanting to come in and watch TVThe landlord wants his rentGrocery store Blue Cross Gas & Electric Knights of Columbusimpossible to lie back and dream Telephone snow, ghost parking-No! I should not get married! I should never get married!But-imagine if I were married to a beautiful sophisticated womantall and pale wearing an elegant black dress and long black glovesholding a cigarette holder in one hand and a highball in the otherand we lived high up in a penthouse with a huge windowfrom which we could see all of New York and even farther on clearer daysNo, can't imagine myself married to that pleasant prison dream-
O but what about love? I forget lovenot that I am incapable of loveIt's just that I see love as odd as wearing shoes-I never wanted to marry a girl who was like my motherAnd Ingrid Bergman was always impossibleAnd there's maybe a girl now but she's already marriedAnd I don't like men and-But there's got to be somebody!Because what if I'm 60 years old and not married,all alone in a furnished room with pee stains on my underwearand everybody else is married! All the universe married but me!
Ah, yet well I know that were a woman possible as I am possiblethen marriage would be possible-Like SHE in her lonely alien gaud waiting her Egyptian loverso i wait-bereft of 2,000 years and the bath of life.
3) “Howl” By Allen Ginsberg For Carl Solomon I I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked, dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix, angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machin- ery of night, who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high sat up smoking in the supernatural darkness of cold-water flats floating across the tops of cities contemplating jazz, who bared their brains to Heaven under the El and saw Mohammedan angels staggering on tene- ment roofs illuminated, who passed through universities with radiant cool eyes hallucinating Arkansas and Blake-light tragedy among the scholars of war, who were expelled from the academies for crazy & publishing obscene odes on the windows of the skull, who cowered in unshaven rooms in underwear, burn- ing their money in wastebaskets and listening to the Terror through the wall, who got busted in their pubic beards returning through Laredo with a belt of marijuana for New York, who ate fire in paint hotels or drank turpentine in Paradise Alley, death, or purgatoried their torsos night after night with dreams, with drugs, with waking nightmares, al- cohol and cock and endless balls, incomparable blind; streets of shuddering cloud and lightning in the mind leaping toward poles of Canada & Paterson, illuminating all the mo- tionless world of Time between, Peyote solidities of halls, backyard green tree cemetery dawns, wine drunkenness over the rooftops, storefront boroughs of teahead joyride neon blinking traffic light, sun and moon and tree vibrations in the roaring winter dusks of Brook- lyn, ashcan rantings and kind king light of mind, who chained themselves to subways for the endless ride from Battery to holy Bronx on benzedrine until the noise of wheels and children brought them down shuddering mouth-wracked and battered bleak of brain all drained of brilliance in the drear light of Zoo, who sank all night in submarine light of Bickford's floated out and sat through the stale beer after noon in desolate Fugazzi's, listening to the crack of doom on the hydrogen jukebox, who talked continuously seventy hours from park to pad to bar to Bellevue to museum to the Brook- lyn Bridge, lost battalion of platonic conversationalists jumping down the stoops off fire escapes off windowsills off Empire State out of the moon, yacketayakking screaming vomiting whispering facts and memories and anecdotes and eyeball kicks and shocks of hospitals and jails and wars, whole intellects disgorged in total recall for seven days and nights with brilliant eyes, meat for the Synagogue cast on the pavement, who vanished into nowhere Zen New Jersey leaving a trail of ambiguous picture postcards of Atlantic City Hall, suffering Eastern sweats and Tangerian bone-grind- ings and migraines of China under junk-with- drawal in Newark's bleak furnished room, who wandered around and around at midnight in the railroad yard wondering where to go, and went, leaving no broken hearts, who lit cigarettes in boxcars boxcars boxcars racketing through snow toward lonesome farms in grand- father night, who studied Plotinus Poe St. John of the Cross telep- athy and bop kabbalah because the cosmos in- stinctively vibrated at their feet in Kansas, who loned it through the streets of Idaho seeking vis- ionary indian angels who were visionary indian angels, who thought they were only mad when Baltimore gleamed in supernatural ecstasy, who jumped in limousines with the Chinaman of Okla- homa on the impulse of winter midnight street light smalltown rain, who lounged hungry and lonesome through Houston seeking jazz or sex or soup, and followed the brilliant Spaniard to converse about America and Eternity, a hopeless task, and so took ship to Africa, who disappeared into the volcanoes of Mexico leaving behind nothing but the shadow of dungarees and the lava and ash of poetry scattered in fire place Chicago, who reappeared on the West Coast investigating the F.B.I. in beards and shorts with big pacifist eyes sexy in their dark skin passing out incom- prehensible leaflets, who burned cigarette holes in their arms protesting the narcotic tobacco haze of Capitalism, who distributed Supercommunist pamphlets in Union Square weeping and undressing while the sirens of Los Alamos wailed them down, and wailed down Wall, and the Staten Island ferry also wailed, who broke down crying in white gymnasiums naked and trembling before the machinery of other skeletons, who bit detectives in the neck and shrieked with delight in policecars for committing no crime but their own wild cooking pederasty and intoxication, who howled on their knees in the subway and were dragged off the roof waving genitals and manu- scripts, who let themselves be fucked in the ass by saintly motorcyclists, and screamed with joy, who blew and were blown by those human seraphim, the sailors, caresses of Atlantic and Caribbean love, who balled in the morning in the evenings in rose gardens and the grass of public parks and cemeteries scattering their semen freely to whomever come who may, who hiccuped endlessly trying to giggle but wound up with a sob behind a partition in a Turkish Bath when the blond & naked angel came to pierce them with a sword, who lost their loveboys to the three old shrews of fate the one eyed shrew of the heterosexual dollar the one eyed shrew that winks out of the womb and the one eyed shrew that does nothing but sit on her ass and snip the intellectual golden threads of the craftsman's loom, who copulated ecstatic and insatiate with a bottle of beer a sweetheart a package of cigarettes a can- dle and fell off the bed, and continued along the floor and down the hall and ended fainting on the wall with a vision of ultimate cunt and come eluding the last gyzym of consciousness, who sweetened the snatches of a million girls trembling in the sunset, and were red eyed in the morning but prepared to sweeten the snatch of the sun rise, flashing buttocks under barns and naked in the lake, who went out whoring through Colorado in myriad stolen night-cars, N.C., secret hero of these poems, cocksman and Adonis of Denver-joy to the memory of his innumerable lays of girls in empty lots & diner backyards, moviehouses' rickety rows, on mountaintops in caves or with gaunt waitresses in familiar roadside lonely pet- ticoat upliftings & especially secret gas-station solipsisms of johns, & hometown alleys too, who faded out in vast sordid movies, were shifted in dreams, woke on a sudden Manhattan, and picked themselves up out of basements hung over with heartless Tokay and horrors of Third Avenue iron dreams & stumbled to unemploy- ment offices, who walked all night with their shoes full of blood on the snowbank docks waiting for a door in the East River to open to a room full of steamheat and opium, who created great suicidal dramas on the apartment cliff-banks of the Hudson under the wartime blue floodlight of the moon & their heads shall be crowned with laurel in oblivion, who ate the lamb stew of the imagination or digested the crab at the muddy bottom of the rivers of Bowery, who wept at the romance of the streets with their pushcarts full of onions and bad music, who sat in boxes breathing in the darkness under the bridge, and rose up to build harpsichords in their lofts, who coughed on the sixth floor of Harlem crowned with flame under the tubercular sky surrounded by orange crates of theology, who scribbled all night rocking and rolling over lofty incantations which in the yellow morning were stanzas of gibberish, who cooked rotten animals lung heart feet tail borsht & tortillas dreaming of the pure vegetable kingdom, who plunged themselves under meat trucks looking for an egg, who threw their watches off the roof to cast their ballot for Eternity outside of Time, & alarm clocks fell on their heads every day for the next decade, who cut their wrists three times successively unsuccess- fully, gave up and were forced to open antique stores where they thought they were growing old and cried, who were burned alive in their innocent flannel suits on Madison Avenue amid blasts of leaden verse & the tanked-up clatter of the iron regiments of fashion & the nitroglycerine shrieks of the fairies of advertising & the mustard gas of sinis- ter intelligent editors, or were run down by the drunken taxicabs of Absolute Reality, who jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge this actually hap- pened and walked away unknown and forgotten into the ghostly daze of Chinatown soup alley ways & firetrucks, not even one free beer, who sang out of their windows in despair, fell out of the subway window, jumped in the filthy Pas- saic, leaped on negroes, cried all over the street, danced on broken wineglasses barefoot smashed phonograph records of nostalgic European 1930s German jazz finished the whiskey and threw up groaning into the bloody toilet, moans in their ears and the blast of colossal steam whistles, who barreled down the highways of the past journeying to each other's hotrod-Golgotha jail-solitude watch or Birmingham jazz incarnation, who drove crosscountry seventytwo hours to find out if I had a vision or you had a vision or he had a vision to find out Eternity, who journeyed to Denver, who died in Denver, who came back to Denver & waited in vain, who watched over Denver & brooded & loned in Denver and finally went away to find out the Time, & now Denver is lonesome for her heroes, who fell on their knees in hopeless cathedrals praying for each other's salvation and light and breasts, until the soul illuminated its hair for a second, who crashed through their minds in jail waiting for impossible criminals with golden heads and the charm of reality in their hearts who sang sweet blues to Alcatraz, who retired to Mexico to cultivate a habit, or Rocky Mount to tender Buddha or Tangiers to boys or Southern Pacific to the black locomotive or Harvard to Narcissus to Woodlawn to the daisychain or grave, who demanded sanity trials accusing the radio of hyp notism & were left with their insanity & their hands & a hung jury, who threw potato salad at CCNY lecturers on Dadaism and subsequently presented themselves on the granite steps of the madhouse with shaven heads and harlequin speech of suicide, demanding in- stantaneous lobotomy, and who were given instead the concrete void of insulin Metrazol electricity hydrotherapy psycho- therapy occupational therapy pingpong & amnesia, who in humorless protest overturned only one symbolic pingpong table, resting briefly in catatonia, returning years later truly bald except for a wig of blood, and tears and fingers, to the visible mad man doom of the wards of the madtowns of the East, Pilgrim State's Rockland's and Greystone's foetid halls, bickering with the echoes of the soul, rock- ing and rolling in the midnight solitude-bench dolmen-realms of love, dream of life a night- mare, bodies turned to stone as heavy as the moon, with mother finally ******, and the last fantastic book flung out of the tenement window, and the last door closed at 4. A.M. and the last telephone slammed at the wall in reply and the last fur- nished room emptied down to the last piece of mental furniture, a yellow paper rose twisted on a wire hanger in the closet, and even that imaginary, nothing but a hopeful little bit of hallucination ah, Carl, while you are not safe I am not safe, and now you're really in the total animal soup of time and who therefore ran through the icy streets obsessed with a sudden flash of the alchemy of the use of the ellipse the catalog the meter & the vibrat- ing plane, who dreamt and made incarnate gaps in Time & Space through images juxtaposed, and trapped the archangel of the soul between 2 visual images and joined the elemental verbs and set the noun and dash of consciousness together jumping with sensation of Pater Omnipotens Aeterna Deus to recreate the syntax and measure of poor human prose and stand before you speechless and intel- ligent and shaking with shame, rejected yet con- fessing out the soul to conform to the rhythm of thought in his naked and endless head, the madman bum and angel beat in Time, unknown, yet putting down here what might be left to say in time come after death, and rose reincarnate in the ghostly clothes of jazz in the goldhorn shadow of the band and blew the suffering of America's naked mind for love into an eli eli lamma lamma sabacthani saxophone cry that shivered the cities down to the last radio with the absolute heart of the poem of life butchered out of their own bodies good to eat a thousand years.
4) “After Making Love We Hear Footsteps.” By Galway Kinnel
For I can snore like a bullhorn1
or play loud music
or sit up talking with any reasonably sober Irishman
and Fergus will only sink deeper
into his dreamless sleep, which goes by all in one flash,
but let there be that heavy breathing
or a stifled come-cry anywhere in the house
and he will wrench himself awake
and make for it on the run—as now, we lie together,
after making love, quiet, touching along the length of our bodies,10
familiar touch of the long-married,
and he appears—in his baseball pajamas, it happens,
the neck opening so small he has to screw them on—
and flops down between us and hugs us and snuggles himself to sleep,
his face gleaming with satisfaction at being this very child.
In the half darkness we look at each other
and smile
and touch arms across this little, startlingly muscled body—
this one whom habit of memory propels to the ground of his making,
sleeper only the mortal sounds can sing awake,
this blessing love gives again into our arms.
5) “The Knowing” By Sharon Olds
Afterwards, when we have slept, paradise-comaed, and woken, we lie a long timelooking at each other.I do not know what he sees, but I seeeyes of surpassing tendernessand calm, a calm like the dignityof matter. I love the open oceanblue-gray-green of his iris, I lovethe curve of it against the white,that curve the site of what has caused meto come, when he's quite still, deepinside me. I have never seen a curvelike that, except the earth from outerspace. I don't know where he gothis kindness without self-regard,almost without self, and yet16he chose one woman, instead of the others.By knowing him, I get to knowthe purity of the animalwhich mates for life. Sometimes he is slightlysmiling, but mostly he just gazes at me gazing,his entire face lit. I loveto see it change if I cry--there is no worry,no pity, a graver radiance. If weare on our backs, side by side,with our faces turned fully to face each other,26I can hear a tear from my lower eyehit the sheet, as if it is an early day on earth,and then the upper eye's tearsbraid and sluice down through the lower eyebrowlike the invention of farming, 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.34When I wake again, he is still looking at me,35as if he is eternal. For an hourwe wake and doze, and slowly I know37that though we are sated, though we are hardlytouching, this is the coming the otherbrought 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 makinglove.44
6) “Morning “ By Frank O’Hara
I've got to tell you
how I love you always
I think of it on grey
mornings with death
in my mouth the tea5
is never hot enough
then and the cigarette
dry the maroon robe
chills me I need you9
and look out the window
at the noiseless snow
At night on the dock12
the buses glow like
clouds and I am lonely
thinking of flutes
I miss you always16
when I go to the beach
the sand is wet with
tears that seem mine19
although I never weep
and hold you in my
heart with a very real
humor you'd be proud of
the parking lot is
crowded and I stand
rattling my keys the car
is empty as a bicycle
what are you doing now
where did you eat your
lunch and were there
lots of anchovies it
is difficult to think
of you without me in
the sentence you depress
me when you are alone
Last night the stars
were numerous and today
snow is their calling
card I'll not be cordial
there is nothing that
distracts me music is
only a crossword puzzle
do you know how it is
when you are the only
passenger if there is a
place further from me
I beg you do not go
7) “The Elephant Is Slow To Mate” By D.H. Lawrence
The elephant, the huge old beast,1is slow to mate;he finds a female, they show no hastethey wait
for the sympathy in their vast shy hearts5slowly, slowly to rouseas they loiter along the river-bedsand drink and browse
and dash in panic through the brake9of forest with the herd,and sleep in massive silence, and waketogether, without a word.
So slowly the great hot elephant hearts13grow full of desire,and the great beasts mate in secret at last,hiding their fire.
Oldest they are and the wisest of beasts17so they know at lasthow to wait for the loneliest of feastsfor the full repast.
They do not snatch, they do not tear;21their massive bloodmoves as the moon-tides, near, more neartill they touch in flood.24
8) “What Do Women Want?” By Kim AddonizioI want a red dress.I want it flimsy and cheap,I want it too tight, I want to wear ituntil someone tears it off me.I want it sleeveless and backless,this dress, so no one has to guesswhat's underneath. I want to walk downthe street past Thrifty's and the hardware storewith all those keys glittering in the window,past Mr. and Mrs. Wong selling day-olddoughnuts in their cafe, past the Guerra brothersslinging pigs from the truck and onto the dolly,hoisting the slick snouts over their shoulders.I want to walk like I'm the onlywoman on earth and I can have my pick.I want that red dress bad.I want it to confirm you worst fears about me,to show you how little I care about youor anything except whatI want. When I find it, I'll pull that garmentfrom its hanger like I'm choosing a bodyto carry me into this world, throughthe birth-cries and love-cries too,and I'll wear it like bones, like skin,it'll be the goddamneddress they bury me in.
Works Cited.
Addonizio, Kim. “What do Women want”<.">http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/what-do-women-want>.
Corso, Gregory. “Marriage” The Norton Anthology of Short Fiction. Ed. Peter
Simon. New York: Norton & Company, 2006. 1807 - 1810.
Eliot, T. S. “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” The Norton Anthology of Short Fiction. Ed. Peter Simon. New York: Norton & Company, 2006. 1340 - 1343.
Ginsberg, Allen. “Howl.” The Norton Anthology of Short Fiction.
Ed. Peter Simon. New York: Norton & Company, 2006. 1708—1713.
Kinnell, Galway “After Making Love We Hear Footsteps” The Norton Anthology of Short Fiction. Ed. Peter Simon. New York: Norton & Company, 2006. 1742.
Lawrence, D.H. “The Elephant is Slow to Mate”
O’Hara, Frank. “Morning” <http://www.eliteskills.com/analysis_poetry/Morning_by_Frank_O_Hara_analysis.php.>
Olds, Sharon. “The Knowing”
<http://www.geocities.com/area51/neptune/9631/olds.html>
