The Erotic Spirit
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--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.