The Poetry of Sex Read online

  THE POETRY OF SEX

  Edited by Sophie Hannah

  Contents

  Introduction

  1 ‘So ask the body’

  Saturday Morning – Hugo Williams

  The Plague – Caroline Bird

  The Elephant is Slow to Mate – D. H. Lawrence

  On the Happy Corydon and Phyllis – Sir Charles Sedley

  No Platonic Love – William Cartwright

  I Who Am – C. H. Sisson

  Leda and the Swan – W. B. Yeats

  ‘I, being born a woman and distressed’ – Edna St Vincent Millay

  And – Alison Brackenbury

  I Sing the Body Electric – Walt Whitman

  Figs – D. H. Lawrence

  Animal, Vegetable, Mineral – Naomi Foyle

  Eve to the Serpent – Catherine Smith

  A Woman Waits for Me – Walt Whitman

  My Black Triangle – Grace Nichols

  2 ‘Also those desires glowing openly’

  ‘If you were coming in the fall’ – Emily Dickinson

  ‘First, I want to make you come in my hand’ – Marilyn Hacker

  Non Sum Qualis Eram Bonae Sub Regno Cynarae – Ernest Dowson

  I Feel – Elizabeth Jennings

  He Asked About the Quality – C. P. Cavafy

  Guacamole – Kaddy Benyon

  Daniel Craig: The Screensaver – Rich Goodson

  Hypothetical – Maria Taylor

  Found Wanting – Rosie Sandler

  Young Men Dancing – Linda Chase

  Sandcastles – Richard Scott

  Remember, Body … – C. P. Cavafy

  Love & Sex & Boys in Showers – John Whitworth

  Service – Gregory Woods

  O Little One – Marilyn Hacker

  Troilism – Roddy Lumsden

  Assurance – Emma Lazarus

  Losing It to David Cassidy – Catherine Smith

  A Man Greets His Wife from Her Short Break Away – Rebecca Goss

  Wanting to Think – Michael Schmidt

  3 ‘A night picked from a hundred and one’

  Imperial – Don Paterson

  Viginty Alley – Tim Liardet

  Outside – Robert Frant

  Amores 1.5 – Ovid

  The Wasp Station – Paul Johnston

  And Looking Back – A. F. Harrold

  Explode – John Etchingham

  The Man in the Print Room – Sarah Salway

  La Noche Oscura (Dark Night) – San Juan de la Cruz

  i like my body – e. e. cummings

  Ur Thurs Reidh Ansur – Ros Barber

  Punctuation – Claire Dyer

  On being in Bed with Your Brand-new Lover – Amy Key

  The Platonic Blow (A Day for a Lay) – W. H. Auden

  Rhetorical Questions – Hugo Williams

  Haikus to Fuck to – Leo Cookman

  The Sun Rising – John Donne

  Flicker – Robert Frant

  4 ‘All our states united’

  Tying the Knots – Anna-May Laugher

  Bicycle Pump – Irving Layton

  Magnets – Jo Bell

  Muse – Jo Bell

  The Day He Met His Wife – Peter Sansom

  Conception – Sarah Salway

  After Making Love We Hear Footsteps – Galway Kinnell

  Their Sex Life – A. R. Ammons

  Featherlite – Neil Rollinson

  Casanever – Nic Aubury

  The Couple Upstairs – Nic Aubury

  Putting in the Seed – Robert Frost

  And So Today Take Off My Wristwatch – A. F. Harrold

  An Epic in Me – Eva Salzman

  Ménage à Trois – Neil Rollinson

  Intimacy – Elizabeth Barrett

  Embrace – Rhian Gallagher

  Topography – Sharon Olds

  Like the Blowing of Birds’ Eggs – Neil Rollinson

  5 ‘But your wife said she’

  The Faithful – Dan Burt

  The Sting – Patience Agbabi

  In the Victoria Hotel – John Saunders

  ‘For each ecstatic instant’ – Emily Dickinson

  ‘Doing, a filthy pleasure is, and short’ – Gaius Petronius

  The Marriage of Consonant and Vowel – Adam Horovitz

  In Defence of Adultery – Julia Copus

  Office Friendships – Gavin Ewart

  Her News – Hugo Williams

  Story of a Hotel Room – Rosemary Tonks

  may i feel – e. e. cummings

  Adultery – Carol Ann Duffy

  The Dark Night of the Sole – Kit Wright

  ‘The expense of spirit in a waste of shame’ – William Shakespeare

  Cyber Infidelity – Jane Holland

  To His Lost Lover – Simon Armitage

  Ending – Gavin Ewart

  Rubbish at Adultery – Sophie Hannah

  End of the Affair – Dan Burt

  6 ‘What’s in it for me?’

  Badly Chosen Lover – Rosemary Tonks

  Fetish – Samantha Willis

  From Strugnell’s Sonnets – Wendy Cope

  Message – Wendy Cope

  Benny Hill – Paul McGrane

  Anal Obsessive – Jane Holland

  Katya is Bored – Fiona Pitt-Kethley

  Chris of Dublin – Fiona Pitt-Kethley

  Jaffa Cakes – Fiona Pitt-Kethley

  Buggery – Don Paterson

  Carmen 16 – Gaius Valerius Catullus

  To His Coy Mistress – Andrew Marvell

  The Flea – John Donne

  Hombres Necios (Stupid Men) – Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz

  Ego – Eileen Sheehan

  Annus Mirabilis – Philip Larkin

  7 ‘Oh right. You people don’t remove that bit’

  Bloody Hell, It’s Barbara! – Luke Wright

  Sex without Love – Sharon Olds

  Out of Office – Cora Greenhill

  Poem while Reading Miroslav Holub in the Genito-urinary Clinic Waiting Room – Rich Goodson

  King Solomon and King David – James Ball Naylor

  The Walk of Shame – Nikki Magennis

  Municipal Ambition – Amy McCauley

  Madmen – Fleur Adcock

  Can Clio Do More than Amuse? – Eva Salzman

  The Final Coming – Irving Layton

  8 ‘God, to be wanted once more’

  To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time – Robert Herrick

  One Flesh – Elizabeth Jennings

  To Her Ancient Lover – John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester

  Address – C. H. Sisson

  ‘What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why’ – Edna St Vincent Millay

  On the French Riviera – Ian Pindar

  Mick Jagger’s Penis Turns 69 – Amorak Huey

  If You are Lucky – Michelle McGrane

  ‘You come to me quiet as rain not yet fallen’ – Brian Patten

  Arrival – William Carlos Williams

  Whatever Happened to Sex? – Amorak Huey

  Acknowledgements

  Follow Penguin

  Introduction

  There are two poems in this book about the actor Daniel Craig, and none about any other Hollywood star. While the situation with regard to rock and pop legends is a little (though not much) more equitable, with Mick Jagger and David Cassidy cropping up in one poem each, it is impossible to deny that, on the actor front, this anthology is heavily biased in favour of Daniel Craig over and above all others.

  I draw readers’ attention to this feature of the book because I wouldn’t want anyone to imagine I’m unaware of it. Editors of poetry anthologies, like the judges of literary prizes, are often criticized for perceived imbalances of this sort. As a co
mmitted positive-discrimination enthusiast, when I saw that a weighting in favour of Daniel Craig was a risk, I tried to redress the balance by introducing an All-Tom-Cruise shortlisting policy, but then had to abandon it when I found not a single poem about Tom Cruise, which suggests that the teaching of creative writing has been woefully inadequate for the last twenty years, or however long it is since Risky Business came out.

  All might be fair in love and war (though in fact it isn’t), but all is certainly not fair in sex. Nevertheless, Daniel Craig stranglehold notwithstanding, there is much diversity in this anthology – diversity of writers, of subject matter and of approach. I am happy to report that the two poems about Daniel Craig couldn’t be more different from one another. One, by a male author, has its narrator gazing lustfully at a photograph of Craig when he ought to be working. The lust is enthusiastic and uncomplicated. The other Craig poem, by a woman, deals with the problems and potential life wreckage associated with sleeping with the actor, even though the narrator doesn’t even like him and therefore has no desire to do so – or so she says.

  It would be a mistake to conclude from this exhaustive study of two poems about Daniel Craig that women and men have radically different approaches to sex and that one is more straightforwardly physical than the other. If this book suggests any kind of generalizable truth, it is surely that each writer’s experiences, psychological approach to those experiences and choice of words in expressing him- or herself are unique. Some female poets in this anthology have adopted what might be seen as a traditionally male attitude to sex, at least for as long as it takes to complete a sonnet, and could reasonably claim dual citizenship of Mars and Venus. One of my favourites included here, Edna St Vincent Millay’s ‘I, being born a woman and distressed’, has a narrator who wishes to make it clear in advance that, once the carnal frolics are concluded, she will no longer have any use for her sexual partner; she wants his body but has no interest in his mind.

  Outrageous, you might say, particularly if you were a close friend of the man in question. Indeed, if one wanted to take umbrage on behalf of ill-treated sexual partners, there are many hapless victims of poets to be found among these pages, as well as authors and narrators (and authors posing as fictional narrators, as a convenient relationship-saving device), who have been exploited and crushed by cads, the emotionally illiterate, the pathologically narcissistic and the infuriatingly married of both sexes. There are poems here that might seem misandrist or misogynist – Irving Layton’s ‘Bicycle Pump’, for example, or Fleur Adcock’s ‘Madmen’ – which I have included because I am more interested in the ‘Is’ of sex than the ‘Should’. We all make sexist generalizations from time to time – often after sleeping with someone whom we perceive as typifying his or her gender. ‘Men!’ we cry, or ‘Women!’ We forget to qualify our derision with the prefix ‘Some’; sexual disillusionment and a sense of proportion are largely incompatible.

  There are poems in this anthology written specifically to encourage people into bed and urge them not to take too long about it – Marvell’s ‘To His Coy Mistress’ being one brilliant example, and Wendy Cope’s ‘Message’ another. There are poems that take a cheerful and cavalier approach to sexual behaviour that many would regard as immoral, poems about fantasizing in the direction of one lover while being in bed with another, about continuing to use a partner’s body for low-level gratification when you know the relationship is over but they don’t. There is a poem about getting a quick blow job in a car and then making a run for it, a poem celebrating illicit sex with colleagues in the office on the grounds that it makes the daily routine of ‘wives and work’ more bearable. Balancing out all of the above are the many poems about wholesome, committed, sanctioned sex that breaks no rules at all.

  There was absolutely no moral weighting in the selection I made. To make this clear, I chose to name each chapter of the anthology after a line from one of the poems it contains, rather than use titles such as ‘Married Sex (Holding Society Together)’ and ‘Adultery (Poems by Slags and Home-wreckers)’; I liked the idea of the poets being represented in their own words not only in the poems they have written but even when it came to naming the section of this book in which they would eventually find themselves. There is something dangerous about trying to define another person’s sexual experience, and what might be seen externally as coming under the heading ‘Adultery’ could well feel more like ‘Life Support’ or ‘My One Chance of Happiness’ from the inside. It is hard to define without moralizing, and the constant attempts by many to force sex and morality together – an ineptly arranged marriage of two strangers, bound to end in disaster – often leads to absurdity. As I write this introduction, David Cameron is trying very hard to ban pornography that involves simulated rape scenes between consenting adults, even though many vocal intelligent women are waving copies of Nancy Friday’s My Secret Garden in the air and trying to tell their prime minister that, no, they do not wish to be raped, but that, yes, they do have rape fantasies, which are an entirely different thing and should not be banned or judged. It is possible that, by the time this anthology is published, the only sexual fantasies still legal in the UK will be those that feature Ed Miliband in conversation with a group of intersectionalist feminists who check their privilege every thirty seconds.

  Meanwhile, in New York, married mayoral candidate Anthony Weiner is busy being solemn and contrite at press conferences after being caught ‘sexting’ a woman who is not his wife, attaching pictures of his private parts and calling himself ‘Carlos Danger’ (which imaginative and rather sweet alias will, I hope, win him at least a few votes – particularly when one considers that Carlos Danger is an anagram of Roger Scandal, and that Roger Scandal would make a great pseudonym for a poet writing about sex).

  Some, though not many, of the poems in this anthology are published under pseudonyms. Auden’s brilliant poem ‘The Platonic Blow’ was first published under another name because of its graphic portrayal of homosexual fellatio. Nowadays, fewer readers would be shocked by that, but when it comes to sex, however far societal norms progress in the direction of enlightened thinking, people will always have something to hide. Many won’t be quite sure why they need to keep their true sexual selves hidden, only that they must. For most of us, our sexual desires pose questions we cannot answer. C. H. Sisson puts it brilliantly in his poem ‘I Who Am’, one of my absolute favourites in this collection, so I will give the last word of this introduction to him, and hope that, wherever he is, he won’t be too shocked by his role as frontman of what I hope will be the raunchiest poetry anthology of the year:

  So ask the body. It alone

  Knows all you know, and it imparts

  Little enough of what is known

  To what we call our minds and hearts.

  So fumbling bodies try to make

  Friendship and love as best they can:

  None ever was without mistake

  And lies by woman and by man.

  Man lies by woman, woman lies

  By man, and in a common bed.

  Where is the rule which truly tries

  What is done there by what is said?

  1

  ‘SO ASK THE BODY’

  Saturday Morning

  Hugo Williams

  Everyone who made love the night before

  was walking around with flashing red lights

  on top of their heads – a white-haired old gentleman,

  a red-faced schoolboy, a pregnant woman

  who smiled at me from across the street

  and gave a little secret shrug,

  as if the flashing red light on her head

  was a small price to pay for what she knew.

  The Plague

  Caroline Bird

  It takes more than pants and zips

  to hide my cunt, it yells in its sleep,

  the town is bucking, villagers are pillaging each other.

  The bodies pile up, threesomes become foursomes,
r />   the priest fucked a firework, a second coming,

  a third, it’s a plague, seven dwarves in one bed,

  the policemen have permanent erections,

  no one has any blood in their heads,

  the vet does curious things to a horse,

  a mattress outside every bank,

  there’s no point trying to read a book

  not unless you take it from behind.

  Someone fetch a bucket, a bible, a plug,

  a hook to hang these fidgeting frocks,

  even that crippled tortoise looks sexy,

  my leg has burnt a hole in my trousers.

  The Elephant is Slow to Mate

  D. H. Lawrence

  The elephant, the huge old beast,

  is slow to mate;

  he finds a female, they show no haste

  they wait

  for the sympathy in their vast shy hearts

  slowly, slowly to rouse

  as they loiter along the river-beds

  and drink and browse

  and dash in panic through the brake

  of forest with the herd,

  and sleep in massive silence, and wake

  together, without a word.

  So slowly the great hot elephant hearts

  grow full of desire,

  and the great beasts mate in secret at last,

  hiding their fire.

  Oldest they are and the wisest of beasts

  so they know at last

  how to wait for the loneliest of feasts

  for the full repast.

  They do not snatch, they do not tear;

  their massive blood

  moves as the moon-tides, near, more near

  till they touch in flood.

  On the Happy Corydon and Phyllis

  Sir Charles Sedley

  Young Corydon and Phyllis

  Sat in a lovely grove,

  Contriving crowns of lilies,

  Repeating toys of love,

  And something else, but what I dare not name.

  But as they were a-playing,

  She ogled so the swain,

  It saved her plainly saying,

  ‘Let’s kiss to ease our pain,