Stephen kissed me in the spring,
Robin in the fall,
But Colin only looked at me
And never kissed at all.
Stephen’s kiss was lost in jest,
Robin’s lost in play,
But the kiss in Colin’s eyes
Haunts me night and day.”
Sara Teasdale
In almost every culture throughout history, women’s sexuality has been more feared than celebrated. Time and again we have witnessed men attempt to control the choices of women. Flirtation, romance, and courtship have become tools but only in the hands of men.
Women are not intrinsically less sexual than men. As a matter of fact women’s sexuality is far superior to the men’s and her sex drive increases as she ages, something that’s quite the opposite in men.
“When man enters woman,
like the surf biting the shore,
again and again,
and the woman opens her mouth in pleasure
and her teeth gleam
like the alphabet,
Logos appears milking a star,
and the man
inside of woman
ties a knot
so that they will
never again be separate
and the woman
climbs into a flower
and swallows its stem
and Logos appears
and unleashes their rivers.
This man,
this woman
with their double hunger,
have tried to reach through
the curtain of God
and briefly they have,
though God
in His perversity unites the knot”
Anne Sexton
Furthermore, a woman desires emotional closeness and intimacy.
“If you want my apartment, sleep in it
but let’s have a clear understanding:
the books are still free agents.
If the rocking chair’s arms surround you
they can also let you go,
they can shape the air like a body.
I don’t want your rent,
I want a radiance of attention
like the candle’s flame when we eat,
I mean a kind of awe
attending the spaces between us
Not a roof but a field of stars”
Jane Cooper
A woman enjoys the attention and compliments about her abilities as well as her body.
“My hair is springy like the forest grasses
That cushion the feet of squirrels-
Crinkled and blown in a south breeze
Like small leaves of native bushes.
My black eyes are coals burning
Like a low, full, jungle moon
Through the darkness of being.
In a clear pool I see my face,
Know my knowing.
My hands move pianissimo
Over the music of the night:
Gentle bird fluttering through leaves and grasses
They have not always loved,
Nesting, finding home.
Where are my lovers?
Where are my tall, my lovely princes
Dancing in slow grace
Toward knowledge of my beauty”.
Naomi Madgett
Tales like “Arabian Nights” dramatize to some extend about women. In these tales a woman is regularly presented as sexually insatiable, just waiting for the chance to copulate with any man – even a slave, a worker, a stranger once the husband is out of the house. But even the women in those tales, if we pay more attention, were looking to fill an emotional void that existed for them in addition to the sexual needs. They were taking the step in their empowering. An affair is a daring active choice, not a more-of- the-same passive response in the arranged marriages that the women of old tales were forced to. Now traditionally and culturally speaking these things do not necessarily belong to the these tales only.
For whatever reason that is out there, women sexuality has been suppressed greatly by the society that she lives in.
“I married a man of the Croydon class
When I was twenty-two
And I vex him and he bores me
Till we don’t know what to do!
It isn’t good form in the Croydon class
To say you love your wife,
So I spend my days with the tradesmen’s books
and pray for the end of life.
In green fields are blossoming trees
And a golden wealth of gorse,
And the young birds sing for joy of worms:
It’s perfectly clear of course,
That it wouldn’t be taste in the Croydon class
To sing over dinner or tea:
But I sometimes wish the gentleman
would turn and talk to me!
But every man of the Croydon class
Lives in terror of joy and speech.
‘Words are betrayers’, ‘Joys are brief’ –
The maxims their wise ones teach –
And for all my labour of love and life
I shall be clothed and fed,
And they’ll give me an orderly funeral
When I’m still enough to be dead”.
Anna Wickham
When it comes to the world of poetry, even though traditionally love poems were written by men we still encounter a few women poets who were brave enough to break the taboos. Despite of all the constraints and punishments aiming indiscriminately against women, these female poets did not shy away from their sexuality, desires, and longings. They have contributed to incredibly beautiful poetry as the result of their love affairs.
Whether or not the affair was a prelude to marriage or was just an extramarital love affair, the public display of sexual independence on the part of these female poets are admirable.
In my first blog I wrote about the first published woman poet Sappho. In my current one and in the continuation of the series of “ Women and poetry “ rather than digging into the past I would like to share with you the amazing poetry of some more recent female poets that I came to appreciate.
“From Sappho to myself, consider the fate of women “
Carolyn Kizer (born 1925) fearlessly writes about feminine sensibility and love. In ” pro Femina ” which is a satiric piece, she clearly states that women still confront obstacles related to their gender.
“But we’re emerging from all that, more or less,
Except for some ladylike laggards and Quarterly priestesses
Who flog men for fun, and kick women to maim competition.
Now, if we struggle abnormally, we may almost seem normal;
If we submerge our self-pity in disciplined industry;
If we stand up and be hated, and swear not to sleep with editors;
If we regard ourselves formally, respecting our true limitations
Without making an unseemly show of trying to unfreeze our assets;
Keeping our heads and our pride while remaining unmarried;
And if wedded, kill guilt in its tracks when we stack up the dishes
And defect to the typewriter. And if mothers, believe in the luck of our children,
Whom we forbid to devour us, whom we shall not devour,
And the luck of our husbands and lovers, who keep free women.”
It is said about Carolyn that she is not a feminist who threatens to tilt the scales of past injustice. Her view of the sexual universe contains polarity without hostility.
Remembering the past
And gloating at it now,
I know the frozen brow
And shaking sides of lust
Will dog me at my death
To catch my ghostly breath.
I think that Yeats was right,
That lust and love are one.
The body of this night
May beggar me to death,
But we are not undone
Who love with all our breath.
I know that Proust was wrong,
His wheeze: love, to survive,
Needs jealousy, and death
And lust, to make it strong
Or goose it back alive.
Proust took away my breath.
The later Yeats was right
To think of sex and death
And nothing else. Why wait
Till we are turning old?
My thoughts are hot and cold.
I do not waste my breath.
As an Iranian woman, it is not fair to continue with this series of mine without mentioning Forough . She was not only a bird caged by a marriage that she no longer wished to stay in if not was for her son, but she also was trapped in a traditional society where women were forced to believe that they have no sexual needs or desires. But Forough so fearlessly emerged from the depth of these unfair assumptions and she loudly and proudly expressed herself in the most beautiful poetic way possible. Forough showed to the Iranian women that there is no shame in being a woman. She was a victim and poetry was her only self-defense.
My nights are painted bright with your dream,
sweet love and heavy with your fragrance is my breast.
you fill my eyes with your presence, sweet love.
giving me more happiness than grief.
like rain washing through the soil
you have washed my life clean.
you are the heartbeat of my burning body;
a fire blazing in the shade of my eyelashes.
you are more bountiful than the wheat fields,
more fruit-laden than the golden boughs.
against the onslaught of darkening doubts
you are a door thrown open to the suns.
when I am with you, I fear no pain
for my only pain is a pain of happiness.
this sad heart of mine and so much light?
sounds of life from the bottom of a grave?
…………..
You are hidden under my skin
flowing through my every cell,
singeing my hair with your caressing hand,
leaving my cheeks sunburned with desire.
you are, sweet love, a stranger to my dress
but so familiar with the fields of my nakedness.
…………..
You are the convulsions of ecstasy in my body,
like a garment, the lines of your figure covering me
.…………..
What else but “love” that Forough felt so deeply could have ever been able to produce such a beautiful poetry …She herself finishes her ” Love Song ” with these verses:
“You have touched me with the frenzy of poetry;
pouring fire into my songs,
kindling my heart with the fever of love,
thus setting all my poems ablaze, sweet love”.
In love there is always a beloved, a lover and a love story. In the poetry of love in addition to all the above, there exists a passionate pouring of heart in the form of words to the point that leaves everyone speechless. The best poems are the ones that leave the reader silent and indeed a ” love poem ” has no difficulty doing that.
“My eyes want to kiss your face.
I have no power over my eyes.
They just want to kiss your face.
I flow towards you out of my eyes,
a fine heat trembles round your shoulders,
it slowly dissolves your contours
and I am there with you, your mouth
and everywhere around you —
I have no power over my eyes.
I sit with my hands in my lap,
I shan’t touch you and I’ll never speak.
But my eyes kiss your face,
I rise out of myself and no one can stop me,
I flow out and I’m invisible,
I cannot stop this unfathomable flowing,
this dazzle that knows neither end nor beginning —
but when at last you turn your eyes towards me,
your unaware, questioning, stranger’s eyes,
I sink myself back into my hands
and take up my place again under my eyelids”.
Solveig Schoultz
Where does this tenderness come from?
Where does this tenderness come from?
These are not the – first curls I
have stroked slowly – and lips I
have known are – darker than yours
as stars rise often and go out again
(where does this tenderness come from?)
so many eyes have risen and died out
in front of these eyes of mine.
and yet no such song have
I heard in the darkness of night before,
(where does this tenderness come from?):
here, on the ribs of the singer.
Where does this tenderness come from?
And what shall I do with it, young
sly singer, just passing by?
Your lashes are – longer than anyone’s “.
Marina Tsvetaeva
Some of the finest poetry has been written under the influence of love or as Plato says:
” At the touch of love everyone becomes a poet”
to be continued …….
