Poetry interprets sexual feelings differently than real life does, simply because there is less time within the poem.
It is impossible to hold these two ideas in our mind at once: sex in life and sex in the poem. They are two different interpretations, two different things. Marla Muse is here to explain the latter. Take it away, Marla.
“Thank you, Mr. Scarriet. By the way, before I begin, I want to let you know I spoke to Tom [Eliot] last night—we spoke well into the evening about all that he is, the mistakes he has made (including remaining friends with Pound for much too long) and he has agreed to be in the Romantic Bracket for this year’s Scarriet Sex and Death Poetry March Madness.”
That’s wonderful news, Marla!
“I knew this would please you, Mr. Scarriet. Now, here’s my quick lecture.”
Poems are not optimized for pictorial revelation (nuanced spatial art is far better)—and if they attempt to instruct, the words lack feeling.
A humorous poem could illustrate this: OK, here is how you cook rice for your spouse, step one, step two, and here is how you have sex with your spouse, step one, step two. But this is really all a poem can do, as far as sex. (Step one, take off your clothes. Step two, embrace your spouse while closing your eyes. Step three, imagine someone else who attracts you.)
Love, of course, is different. Love doesn’t need instructional steps.
Unlike love, sex doesn’t need to be beautiful; nor does sex require a beginning and an end (Aristotle’s theory of art) or a story. Sex only requires a set of instructions—which is not poetry. It can provide humor (which is not nothing!) at best, which I just illustrated above.
But when it comes to love, sex needs to be beautiful, sex does require aesthetics—love, therefore, refines sex—it is one of the things love does.
Now, of course, one could say love is an ally to sex in this manner, or one could make the argument that love makes war against sex and inhibits its freedom. Let’s leave this argument to the side for now. Or, we can accept that we may never understand the alliance of sex and love—and poetry may use this as a wonderful subject to philosophically explore, like the topic which asks, how is the physical body welcomed into heaven?
Sex, which is diminished precisely because it can be reduced to a series of steps, or actions, putting it much closer to a subject for an instruction manual than a poem, gets a reprieve if it is disguised as love—only then is sex permitted in a poem.
Sex, however, can’t participate in homely aspects of love in the poem—love is commonly depicted in a homely guise. If sex does this, especially with passionate advocating, this would be to expose sex, the intruder, like a burglar in a home.
Love is more comfortable if sex isn’t glimpsed under the garments of the poem—which is love’s, not sex’s domain.
If a man is talking to a woman and urging her “to live” and “not waste time,” and so forth, this hints at love, and even sex.
In love, no one says, “we must do this now,” without casting suspicion that sex is the motive.
“Seize the day” is a common theme in “old, wise,” canonized, poetry. I’m against trashy poetry, and happy that ancient brackets in the Sex and Death tournament are filled with poems like the following, which is a brand new translation by Mr. Scarriet. (I am teaching him well.)
Mortality (death) quickens love into an urgency which is as close to sex (in a tasteful manner) as the old, wise poets are going to get.
TO LEUCONOE
HORACE died 8 BC
Dear girl, don’t ask
Our fate, the gods’ task!
What’s your end, my end, the prophecy?
No, let’s live ignorantly.
You may listen to Jupiter:
“This will not be your last winter.”
Or the god’s prophecy might say politely,
“This winter, smashing cliffs along the sea
will be your last.” Take care
of your slow vineyards.
Everything is rare
as we contemplate dying.
Seize the day!
Even as you read this, time
deploys new winds
against this rhyme
Now let me mention another acceptable sex theme for poetry. I shouldn’t need to explain why. I have already told you enough.
The passing of physical beauty, and because of that, the passing of love, is one of the most common themes in the world.
Yes, this theme can be too subtle, too cloying. The best early poets attempted to reconcile sensuality and morality as delicately as possible; sophisticated poetry had not arrived yet. We can’t blame the poets. Life was still ruled by the sword.
BEFORE
MATURAI ERUTTALAN CENTAMPUTAN (TAMIL) (d 200 AD)
Before I laughed with him
nightly, the slow waves beating
on his wide shore
and the palmyra
bringing forth heron-like flowers
near the waters.
My eyes were like the lotus,
my arms had the grace of the bamboo,
my forehead was mistaken for the moon.
But now
(translated, A.K. Ramanujan)
And finally, here’s a famous sex poem by an ancient Roman (in a brand new translation by Mr. Scarriet, which smoothly captures the theme of the poem like no other translation I know).
Or, instead of a sex poem, should we call it a kissing poem? Kissing in poetry can belong to both love and sex, if only by accident. This poem is the most pure sex poem there is—because it fully delights in love. And unlike so many ‘death and sex’ poems, it is not starved by separation; there is no betrayal; it spreads joy and success; the triumph on many levels of this work makes Catullus perhaps the greatest sex poet of all, deserving of his fame.
LET’S LIVE MY LESBIA ONLY FOR LOVING
CATULLUS (d 54 BC)
Let’s live, my Lesbia, only for loving.
A child’s penny can buy the gossip
of these sick, old men—our enemies.
Evil words and suns still rise, but night
will fall all around us. Night will let us
have this: a thousand kisses, a hundred
kisses, a thousand kisses, a hundred kisses,
a thousand kisses, a hundred kisses;
a memo from the bank says the kisses
you gave me destroyed the world economy,
the gossips cannot count your kisses,
too many kisses, the jealous cannot find them.
~~~~~~~
Colombo, Sri Lanka