Erotic love is one of the highest forms of contemplation. ~Kenneth Rexroth
The Erotic Spirit is a collection of beautiful poems mingling together in a land of sensual nirvana. The minute you enter the pages of this stunning anthology, you will find you have entered a sacred sanctuary of desire. You may find yourself startled by the mirroring of emotions. When Sappho (6th century BCE) wrote: "Eros seizes and shakes my very soul like the wind on the mountain shaking ancient oaks," did she imagine women in the future knowing exactly what she was talking about?
Sam Hamill has included moments of beauty to blur the distinction between spirituality and sensuality. The two become one in a swirling of seductive soul expressions.
When I think of you,
fireflies in the marsh rise
like the soul's jewels,
lost to eternal longing,
abandoning my body
~Izumi Shikibu (970-1030)
Rarely have I read a "Preface" so profound in content and so enlightening in regards to poetry. The "Notes on the Poets" section is also essential to your enjoyment and I was so pleased Sam Hamill included information on each poet. Suddenly a poem becomes all the more significant when you read about Sappho jumping from a cliff because her love was not returned.
Sam Hamill is a poet and the author of over thirty books of poetry, translations and essays. He shows a deep understanding of erotic love and has included poems of longing, passion, compassion, sexual love, adoration, devotion and ecstasy.
There are poems from Egypt, Greece, China, Japan, Turkey, India, America, England, Thailand, Mexico, Spain, France, Lebanon, Pakistan, Estonia and Costa Rica.
Featured Poets: Sappho, Anakreon, Asklepiados, Praxilla, Rufinus, Marcus Argentarius, Catullus, Philodemos, Ovid, Petronius Arbiter, Tzu Yeh, Agathias Scholoasticus, Cometas Chartularius, Paulus Silentiarius, Li Po, Otomo No Yakamochi, Yuan Chen, Li Ho, Ariwara No Narihira, Li Hsun, Ono No Komachi, Izumi Shikibu, Liu Yung, Samuel Ha-Nagid, Ou-Yang Hsiu, Mahadeviyakka, Jelaluddin Rumi, Francesco Petrarch, Ikkyu Sojun, Kabir, Vidyapati, Mirabai, William Shakespeare, Bihari, Robert Herrick, Anne Bradstreet, Se Praj, Andrew Marvell, John Dryden, Jonathan Swift, William Blake, John Keats, Walt Whitman, Charles Baudelaire, Emily Dickinson, Paul Laurence Dunbar, Antonnio Machado, Yosano Akiko, Anna Akhmatova, Pablo Neruda, Kenneth Rexroth, Hayden Carruth, Denise Levertov, Carolyn Kizer, Robert Creeley, Adrienne Rich, Roberto Sosa, Robert Kelly, Lucille Clifton, Jaan Kaplinski, Sam Hamill, Gioconda Belli, Olga Broumas, Maurya Simon and Dorianne Laux.
Within these pages there are poems by an Indian Princess who became a saint, poems by one of the most influential poets in history and even poems from a woman who is considered to be the first poet in America.
Poems to Adore:
Plum Blossoms - A poem describing longing while lovers are apart. The clouds become love notes as a poet drifts in an orchid boat.
Yuan Chen's Remembering - Passion, daydreams and mountains keeping lovers apart.
Fires Run Through My Body - An anonymous Kwakiutl poem describing love as pain. There is a similar theme in Yuan Chen's Remembering where pain is embraced.
The Erotic Spirit will make you breathless! Some of these poems stir up such deep emotions it is as if the poems burst from the pen in order to experience a union with the page on which they were being written.
100 Stars!
~The Rebecca Review
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