Poetry Corner: A View From Across The Trenches

I was tooling around on Google the other day trying to find the poem "When Man Enters Woman," because I really like the final image. I mistakenly thought it was Sharon Olds--it's in fact Anne Sexton--and thus discovered an ACTUAL Olds poem that I didn't previously know:

Sex Without Love

How do they do it, the ones who make love
without love? Beautiful as dancers,
Gliding over each other like ice-skaters
over the ice, fingers hooked
inside each other's bodies, faces
red as steak, wine, wet as the
children at birth, whose mothers are going to
give them away. How do they come to the
come to the come to the God come to the
still waters, and not love
the one who came there with them, light
rising slowly as steam off their joined
skin? These are the true religious,
the purists, the pros, the ones who will not
accept a false Messiah, love the
priest instead of the God. They do not
mistake the lover for their own pleasure,
they are like great runners: they know they are alone
with the road surface, the cold, the wind,
the fit of their shoes, their over-all cardio
vascular health--just factors, like the partner
in the bed, and not the truth, which is the
single body alone in the universe
against its own best time.

I myself have wondered at those who have sex exclusively within relationships, so it's interesting to have the favor returned.

Having never seen the poem before, I'm still trying to parse it. I would call it "not unflattering," certainly. I enjoy the religious imagery--that resonates--and am intrigued by the athletic metaphors. I relate strongly to the idea of sex making something of its own (aside from procreation), of taking us somewhere. But really, the poem speaks for itself; I'll let you enjoy it.

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Chicks I Like: Figs and Thistles Edition

Today is a very special day, my friends: the 116th birthday of my favorite poet, Edna St. Vincent Millay!

(February 22, 1892–October 19, 1950)

As you may know, Millay was the first woman ever to win the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, for her book The Harp-Weaver, and Other Poems. You might know her long poem "Renascence," or if you grew up in NYC you might remember her "Recuerdo" as among the early batch of poems up in the subways (back when they were still good). But her best-known poem is probably "First Fig," which in its entirety goes:

My candle burns at both ends;

It will not last the night;

But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends--

It gives a lovely light!

Truthfully, she may be most famous for her bisexuality and her bohemian lifestyle. (But then whom among us is not?) She was one of those Greenwich-Village-in-the-1920's types* who had lots of beautiful affairs with lots of brilliant people, and when she married in 1923, she and her husband had an open relationship. Part of my love for her is due to her awareness of the masculinity within her--she sometimes wrote from a man's perspective and as a child went by "Vincent," as she thought "Edna" was plain. Her poetry is beautiful and lyrical (often with a 'fear of commitment' theme, which is always fun), and she turned political as World War II drew nigh, so good on her. She died in her early 50's, less than a year after her husband died. Now, on her birthday, I share with you my favorite of her poems--which is also my favorite poem, period. You can probably tell why.

Witch-Wife

She is neither pink nor pale,
And she never will be all mine;
She learned her hands in a fairy-tale,
And her mouth on a valentine.

She has more hair than she needs;
In the sun 'tis a woe to me!
And her voice is a string of coloured beads,
Or steps leading into the sea.

She loves me all that she can,
And her ways to my ways resign;
But she was not made for any man,
And she never will be all mine.

This is, of course, a small sample of how wonderful her work is. But you don't have to take my word for it!


*In high school I used to make pilgrimages to the tiny house on Bedford Street where she'd lived for the years during which she wrote Harp-Weaver and met her husband. It had been converted from a stable and is about 9 feet wide, no joke.

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