Marla Muse has told us poetry and sex are opposites—but is this true?
We know religion and academia have a civilizing role. But all attempts to civilize breed resentment.
Poetry belongs to both: civilization—and resentments and rebellions thereof.
The best poets, I’m sure Marla would say, are highly moral. Virgil, Dante, Shakespeare, Milton.
The minor poets, full of resentment, tend to be highly immoral. (And the cleverer minor poets call their immorality a “higher” morality.)
The laborer resents the rich. Freedom resents Law. And so on.
Think of the bombastic rantings of a Nietzsche or a Baudelaire, Dionysian effusions which appeal to the deformed adolescent, seeking in underground places, love and affirmation.
What happened to “sex sells?”
What about the obscenity trials which propel books to fame?
What of the Marquis de Sade?
Some are getting impatient with Marla Muse lecturing us on these ‘civilized’ forces which conspire to make poetry essentially chaste. And all in the name of what she vaguely calls “good taste.”
Marla Muse: Resentment speaks!
Marla, where did you come from?
MM: I’ve been here the whole time.
You frightened me!
MM: Ahh like your conscience.
I’m only asking questions. You seem so sure that sexuality doesn’t really exist in poetry.
MM: It was you who brought up “obscenity.”
What of it? Obscenity is only a point of view.
MM: So is poetry.
A larger one, hopefully.
MM: Bad poets hope.
Hope for what?
MM: That a dirty limerick will count as ‘a poem.’
Are you saying moralistic poetry is always superior? Shelley and Poe (whom you both admire) opposed moral poetry.
MM: They opposed the didactic—morality isn’t really the issue at all. Beauty is moral. Or not. It’s all the same—as long as it’s beautiful.
Baudelaire—
MM: Bombast.
He made the Final Four!
MM: His pretty bombast happens to hint at sex in a lush and properly histrionic manner. It appeals. That’s all poetry can do. If it tries to do anything else, it’s not poetry. Baudelaire learned this from Poe—
And how convenient! Poe is your God of Beauty and rare good Taste!
MM: Exactly. Poe was the antidote to Sade.
It’s all about chastity with you, finally!
MM: No, it just seems that way to the resenters, who fancy themselves free, earthy and virile. Which are good things, obviously. But the landscape is large. Here’s the thing: poets shouldn’t get stuck in taking sides. Poets don’t need to pick a side. Play with this so-called debate we’re having. Mock it. Transcend it.
Oh I love you Marla.
MM: I’ll say one more thing about private and public. Poetry belongs to the public sphere—but the private often needs to refresh and rejuvenate a weak or poisoned public. Private isn’t necessarily a place to which we escape; the private, thanks to the actions of the refined genius, becomes a gift to the public.
“Lesbos” by Charles Baudelaire was banned by an obscenity judge—such opinions would make Joyce notorious 50 years later, and Ginsberg famous a couple of generations after that. Here is a translation Scarriet cobbled together from different translators: William Aggeler, 1954 Roy Campbell, 1952 George Dillon, 1936 Richard Herne Shepherd 1869. This is the poem moving with the most success through the International Bracket:
LESBOS
Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867)
Mother of Latin sports and Greek delights,
Where kisses languishing or pleasureful,
Warm as the suns, as the water-melons cool,
Adorn the glorious days and sleepless nights,
Mother of Latin sports and Greek delights,
Lesbos, where kisses are as waterfalls
That fearless into gulfs unfathom’d leap,
Now run with sobs, now slip with gentle brawls,
Stormy and secret, manifold and deep;
Lesbos, where kisses are as waterfalls!
Lesbos, where the sweet slaves one to another yearn,
Where there is never a glance without an echoing sign;
Even as upon Cyprus the stars upon thee burn
With praise, and Cyprus’ queen is envious of thine,
Lesbos, where the sweet slaves one to another yearn —
Lesbos, of sultry twilights and pure, infertile joy,
Where deep-eyed maidens, thoughtlessly disrobing, see
Their beauty, and are entranced before their mirrors, and toy
Fondly with the soft fruits of their nubility;
Lesbos, of sultry twilights and pure, infertile joy!
Leave, leave old Plato’s austere eye to frown;
Pardon is thine for kisses’ sweet excess,
Queen of the land of amiable renown,
And for exhaustless subtleties of bliss,
Leave, leave old Plato’s austere eye to frown.
Thy pardon has been bought with our eternal pain,
The lonely martyrdom endured in every age
By those who sigh for pleasures outlandish and insane
To ease the unearthly longing no pleasure can assuage.
Thy pardon has been bought with our eternal pain.
Who, Lesbos, of the gods would dare pronounce thy fate
And brand thy passionate white brow with infamy —
Or hope by any art or science to estimate
The tears, the tears thy streams have poured into the sea?
Who, Lesbos, of the gods would dare pronounce thy fate?
What are men’s laws to us, injurious or benign?
Proud virgins, glory of the Aegean! We know well
Love, be it most foredoomed, most desperate, is divine,
And love will always laugh at heaven and at hell!
What are men’s laws to us, injurious or benign?
For Lesbos chose me among all other poets
To sing the secret of her virgins in their bloom,
And from childhood I witnessed the dark mystery
Of unbridled laughter mingled with tears of gloom;
For Lesbos chose me among all other poets.
Since then I watch on the Leucadian height.
Like a lone sentry with a piercing view
Who sees the vessels ere they heave in sight
With forms that faintly tremble in the blue.
Since then I watch on the Leucadian height
To find if the cold wave were pitiful and good —
And someday I shall see come wandering home, I know,
To all-forgiving Lesbos upon the twilight flood
The sacred ruins of Sappho, who set forth long ago
To find if the cold wave were pitiful and good;
Of her the man-like lover-poetess,
In her sad pallor more than Venus fair!
The azure eye yields to that black eye, where
The cloudy circle tells of the distress
Of her the man-like lover-poetess!
Fairer than Venus towering on the world
And pouring down serenity like water
In the blond radiance of her tresses curled
To daze the very Ocean with her daughter,
Fairer than Venus towering on the world —
Of Sappho, who, blaspheming, died that day
When trampling on the rite and sacred creed,
She made her body fair the supreme prey
Of one whose pride punish’d the impious deed
Of Sappho, who, blaspheming, died that day.
And since that time it is that Lesbos moans,
And, spite the homage which the whole world pays,
Is drunk each night with cries of pain and groans,
Her desert shores unto the heavens do raise,
And since that time it is that Lesbos moans!
“The Song of Everlasting Sorrow” by Po Chu-i (772-846), “The Ode of Imr El-Qais” by Imr El-Qais (530), “The Golden God” from the Upanishads (800 BC), and “Lesbia Let Us Love Only For Loving” by Catullus (8-54 BC) have advanced to the Sweet Sixteen in the Early Bracket.
MM: As we can see from the Baudelaire poem, the best we can hope for in terms of a great ‘sex and death poem,’ is atmosphere, suggestiveness, seductive language. A description of the sex act in simple language would be sexier to 99% of readers. Poetry moralizes and enriches us in an unconscious (and therefore powerful) manner.
Here’s a short poem making a big splash in the International Bracket—Marla is not a fan, since it isn’t “suggestive,” and doesn’t use “seductive language.” It’s by the Polish poet Jan Kochanowski. Translated by Jerzy Peterkiewicz and Burns Singer.
TO A MATHEMATICIAN
Jan Kochanowski (1530-1584)
He discovered the age of the sun and he knows
Just why the wrong or the right wind blows.
He has looked at each nook of the ocean floor
But he doesn’t see that his wife is a whore.
MM: Not my taste. This poem doesn’t have enough meat on its bones.
Colombo, Sri Lanka