The Erotic Spirit: An Anthology of Poems of Sensuality, Love, and Longing - Softcover

Hamill, Sam

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1570622345 ISBN 13: 9781570622342

Publisher: Shambhala, 1999

Synopsis

This extraordinary collection of poems—covering thirty centuries of poetry from around the world—celebrates the erotic spirit in all its forms, from the passion of sexual desire to the intense longing for spiritual union. Beginning with anonymous Egyptian love songs from the fifteenth century BCE and continuing up to today's finest poets, the book draws on a broad range of cultural and spiritual traditions, including ancient Greek and Roman erotic poems, ecstatic Sufi songs, Chinese elegies for lost lovers, and bawdy English satires. Many of the poems are presented here in new translations by the editor, Sam Hamill, one of America's premier poet translators.

About this title

About the Author

Sam Hamill is the author of more than thirty books of poetry, essays, and translations from the classical Chinese and Japanese, ancient Greek, Latin, and other languages. He has been a recipient of fellowships from the Woodrow Wilson Foundation, the Andrew Mellon Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Guggenheim Foundation, and the Japan-U.S. Friendship Commission. He lives near Port Townsend, Washington.

From Booklist

Hamill, poet and translator, has created a ravishing anthology of poetry celebrating the spiritual aspect of eros, the longing not only to merge one's body with another, but to join souls. This sacred eroticism, expressed in such poems as the "Song of Songs," has been experienced through the ages and around the world as a path to a perfect love, to God no less. Hamill has chosen poems from various cultures expressing this soulful passion, but he hasn't neglected the wry side of eros, that is, the often disappointing conflict between idealized desire and the complex realities of corporal love. Hamill begins with Sappho and other early Greeks and moves on to the ever-teasing Catullus and, of course, Ovid. His selections of love poems by T'ang dynasty Chinese poets and Japanese poets are either gentle or piquant, balancing the rarefied view of Buddhists with the practiced physicality of the Taoists. Sufi love poems stand in interesting contrast to such teasing British bards as Robert Herrick and Andrew Marvell, who in turn, seem quite facile in comparison to such earthy romantics as Walt Whitman and Pablo Neruda. Other poets include Charles Baudelaire, Anna Akhmatova, Denise Levertov, Robert Creeley, Lucille Clifton, and Adrienne Rich. Donna Seaman

About this edition

• Publisher: Shambhala
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 1570622345
• ISBN 13: 9781570622342
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 3
• Number of pages: 224