Info on recent eros-related poems by author,
here
Dark Love Poems by Michael Benedikt
Last Modified 4/04
Poems about Love, Passion & Erotic Excess from
THE BODY,
Benedikt's 1st poetry book (Wesleyan U. Press, l968). Selections &
revisions 2001.
Reminder--this site for college-level & above only, please.
Poems At This Page:
(1) Divine Love (2) The Grand Guignols of Love (3) Joy
(4) Sextette: The Great Divan (5) Before Going On (6) Events by Moonlight
& (7) A Memory: The Young Lovers
Info re eros-related verse coming in '04 to our
New
companion-page with poems from Sky,
here. See our
New Sky
page
here
Info re our Valentine page with hearth
for chilly Autumn, Winter, & Spring nights,
here
This page of Love Poems by a Contemporary
US poet is part of a website with selections from
THE BODY and SKY, the lst two poetry books by
Michael
Benedikt
Both books were lst published in the Wesleyan U. Press
Poetry Program, but are now out-of-print.
Besides dark love poems, THE BODY contains many other
dark poems/poems of 'Black Humor' in a Surrealist vein
--and many other types of poems, too.
Other Themes/Types of Poems in THE BODY
Links to the other pages of this Benedikt early poetry site are given towards end of this page at
Links to Other Pages Within This BODY-SKY Website
Info on recent eros-related poems by author,
here
for Robert Bly
A lip which had once been stolid, now moving
Gradually around the side of its head
Eye-like
The eye dangling from a single twisted thread tied to the end of somebody's
rapidly circling finger and spinning
Around the sun, its ear,
And the brain aloft above the lake of the face--
Well above the cataract of the body--
Like a cumulus cloud enlarged before a rainstorm:
A sound
That grows gradually in the East
Driving everything apocalyptically before it: moonbeams and cattle and rainbows
and
lovers
Swept on
To the slanting table of the body at which five men and two women are
casually sitting down to eat
Dedicated to Louis Simpson and Milton Gilman with thanks for their suggestions on the verse
"The generosity of her love provides me
With practically all edibles.
It is like coming constantly to table.
If only we were not in our underwear, or bare," my sensualist friend
proclaimed
"It would be ideal dining."
He thought he might tie his lady up, to a chair, to amuse them one day;
Once affixed, he would tickle mercilessly.
She arrived panting, and was soon
Attendant in her underthings
His hideous plan, upon a chair. Then he thought: No rope there!
"Must the executioner's victim
Supply her own weapons of destruction?" she inquired.
"It would have been thoughtful,"
He replied, as yet undaunted.
"Wait," he said. "I have thought
A marvelous entertainment:
You will dress up for a fantasy-role
And I will beat you with these chains withal
While you dangle from this ceiling by one foot."
She, imagining the benefit
Straightway consulted her tinted wardrobe.
The array of costumes was endless
Once they started upon them.
He never knew what she would be
And she, for her part, never knew.
Courtesan, faun and fireman they ranged
And down through mythologies and classes
They plunged, then surfaced and lay gasping.
Sitting late at table that night
Solemnly, yet not without an undertone
Of genuine joy, they concurred
That they were lucky to have encountered.
In a word fraught with indifference and danger
Here each had come upon the rare, "Oral" Type.
Like the captains of two explorer-ships
Perpetually ready to depart, yet without a wish to ever reach port
Nightly, hand in hand they would sail away
With a sharpened sense of savoir faire.
And sometimes their thoughts would travel together
To lands of such gentle events
That their eyes would meet
And they would look at one another.
How can I get through that sweet, insipid innocence?
Jump through, and land in a damp swamp?
No, I'd rather go bicycling
Around it, and enjoy its nearly impenetrable sogginess
Starred with flowers so magnificently sickly
Only the most rotted self-deception regarding the value of their own
virtue,
could impel them.
Another thing I like doing a lot
Is helping you across busy boulevards
With a specially enlargeable hand
Implying friendly aid at first,
Secondly a growing degree of passion;
--Then I inflate it and make it throb! I also enjoy
Watching you tremble in otherwise empty, echoing underground tunnels
How you cry out in horror when days turn even slightly cloudy
Your wonderful trembling, too, when we sit
side-by-side and the clock strikes
midnight
And kayaking in mid-Atlantic, alone.
"Nous nous sommes souvent ennuyés, comme ici"--Baudelaire
And one of them, a sweet young thing, looked up
And said, though her words
Were almost lost in the general thrashing of that moment
"It's getting late, and so I must return soon to my parents' house
Which represents stability to me"
Then plunged back, faltering only slightly, into the writhing, moonlit
mass
While another, whose lorgnette
Had lately been thoughtlessly shattered by the Teamster from East Nanuet
Genuflected beside the great divan
But abased herself by abandoning the sextette
As the divan's owner--a legendary hostess, and an old friend of mine--
Reported to me peevishly the next afternoon, over tea and crumpets.
"Still, it was curious the way they chuckled"
She concluded, brushing crumbs from her cuffs
"When they found themselves alone there then
--Just the five of them."
An entire curvature, for a change!
So many others are broken up into arcs
By the cunning construction
And also the panting
Of this face-down, prone body
Which is a world unto itself and therefore surely worthy, when pausing
from
passionate activity
Of our closer examination, lingering attention and leisurely ocular study
The particular curvature along which our eyes adventure
Begins with the slight indentation
At the nape of her neck, roams down below her collarbone
And between shoulderblades and rear of ribcage,
Arching down further then to the hollow of her waistline--offering to travelers
aboard this
highly educational visual roller-coaster
A chance to pause amidst observations there, and take a little breather.
Then whoops!--there it goes again, that same spine
Arching outwards and upwards this time, only to form a deep
dividing-line
On either side of which lie twin globes, each of which when properly seen,
presents yet another fascinating world unto
itself
For study, observation and perhaps eventual exploration
As does the shadowy division lying between--as the case may be...
So, let our eyes rest for a while, even if only temporarily,
on that little stable plateau in the hollow
At the back of this lady's waist
Before going on....
Some intense event dictated a poem;
Poem and event had come closer together than ever before.
It was as if, in passing,
The event had pressed its own image against the page
And its shape had left a mark
The hand lay uselessly atop the desk. It
smoked.
The pencil fell under the desk unsharpened and
broken
And the moon rising over the intensely intimate little room
where the exceptionally wild party had just been
held
Pressed itself very hard against the windowpane, it seemed,
Behind which the groups of lovers had recently been assembled
An entire landscape of possible future events of
that kind
was illuminated by that moon, stretching all
the way to the very rear of that room
--A sparsely-furnished chamber with only deeply cushioned couches
there,
and various mats and throw-rugs plus pillows
thrown all over the floor
But nothing could be without the moon's being
And the dust of events was never shed on the
paper as well, except beneath moonlight and its spell
The embarrassed moon turned away
It was like a door swinging
Which slammed at morning
Our ears hurt
Watching from our twin beds in the attic
But nobody ever learned
of our interest in
the heavens
Shyly, our fingertips
touched
As the glaring lighthouse beam
Swept across the room
And landed on our dominoes...
Illustrations for dark love poems are by graphic artist June Hildebrand. Used with Permission.
Earlier versions of 'Divine Love,' 'The Grand Guignols
of Love,' 'Joy,' 'The Great Divan: Sextette,' 'Events by
Moonlight'
& 'Before Going On' lst appeared in THE BODY (Wesleyan University
Press, l968), © l968 by Michael Benedikt.
Revised versions, © 2001 by Michael Benedikt.
'The Young Lovers--a contrasting poem about innocent
young romance--1st appeared in 8 POEMS
a limited-edition portfolio of prints by June Hildebrand, with poetry by
Benedikt (Igal Roodenko, NYC, l965).
© l965 by June Hildebrand & © l965 by Michael Benedikt. Revision
of 'The Young Lovers' © 2001 by Michael
Benedikt.
'The Young Lovers' is a Surrealistic love
poem about memories of young love. It was written several years before most
of the poems
in THE BODY. And a couple of years after the publication of a chapbook of
short poems, CHANGES (Detroit, New Fresco Inc.,
l961).
Above: A 1960's sketch by poet Benedikt
FORTHCOMING TO OUR NEW PAGE WITH POEMS FROM SKY
Love poem inspired by Jane Fonda in an early
starring role--in Roger Vadim's 1968 film
Barbarella--
'For Jane (& Roger) But Certainly Not For Henry;
or, Barbarella.' Also a Companion-Piece--'Modest
Undressings'
Above: Close-up from
a rare Barbarella movie-poster. Collection Benedikt. Web Premiere
of this relatively early Jane Fonda image.
Later in '04, we plan to re-photograph & post a complete image at
our New page with
poems from
Sky
(Complete bio. in Marquis' Who's Who in America; World; East; Entertainment; & Bowker's Who's Who in American Art)
Selections from many of Benedikt's books now appear at various Websites
Contemporary US Poet Michael Benedikt has published 5 collections of poetry: The Badminton at Great Barrington; or, Gustave Mahler & The Chattanooga Choo-Choo (University of Pittsburgh Press, l980)--a book of tragi-comical love poems; and with Wesleyan University Press Night Cries (prose poems, l976); Mole Notes (prose poems, l971); Sky (l970); and The Body (l968). Anthologies of poetry under his editorship are: The Prose Poem: An International Anthology (Dell/Laurel, l976); and The Poetry of Surrealism (Little Brown, l974). Benedikt has also co-edited/co-translated 3 anthologies of European, Surrealism-influenced 'poetic theater' & other drama, all 3 anthos. issued by E.P. Dutton & Co: Modern French Theatre: The Avant-Garde, Dada, & Surrealism (l964, Faber Ltd. in UK); Post-War German Theatre (l966; Macmillan Ltd. in UK); & Modern Spanish Theatre (l969). He's also the editor of Theatre Experiment: American Plays (Doubleday, l967). Benedikt is a former Art Critic & Associate Ed., Art News and Art International. A former Poetry Editor of The Paris Review, his editorial selections are represented in The Paris Review Anthology (Norton, l990). He's currently a Contributing Ed., American Poetry Review. Recent poetry's appeared in literary magazines such as Agni, Iowa Review, Jerusalem Review, Lips, Michigan Quarterly Review, New Republic, New York Quarterly, Partisan Review , Paris Review & Washington Square. Work's represented in some 65+ anthologies of US poetry. Grants and awards have included an NEA Fellowship, a NY State Council On The Arts Grant, and a Guggenheim Grant. Benedikt has taught Literature and Creative Writing as Visiting Prof. at Bennington, Sarah Lawrence, Hampshire, and Vassar College/s, and at Boston University. Poetry readings at colleges and bookstores around the USA--in l986, at invitation of US Poet Laureate Gwendolyn Brooks, at Library of Congress. Most recent readings at several Barnes & Noble 'superstores' in NY Metro area. Poet resides in Manhattan. E-mail at benedit5@aol.com.
Info re Background of Benedikt Websites via article at
About.com
'The Compleat
Michael Benedikt--Poet Laureate of The Net'
Other Topics/Types of poems in THE BODY
Categories starred
[*] are followed by Notes
& Commentary
by The Benedikt Team at page
Thematic
Index to The Body/Sky
The Four Elements, Childhood and Youth and Growing Up, Gardens and Their Symbolic Meanings,
Time, Space, Spirituality,
Love, Philosophy [*], Business and Finance, Social Concerns,
Language and Esthetics, Film and Theatre [*], References to l960's Art & Artists & Rock Music [*],
& Poems that go to Classifiable Extremes:
(1) Poems in Unusual Forms[*]; (2) Highly Surrealistic Poems [*]
(3) Poems With Multiple Dictional Shifts [*]
LINKS TO OTHER PAGES
WITHIN THIS BODY-SKY
WEBSITE
Page 1--Home Page: Benedikt photos & Bio
Includes 1968 & 1998 photos & a more complete bio than appears at this page
Page 2--Selections from THE
BODY
Selected poems from the opening sections of this unusual, sometimes
Surrealistic first book
by a much-published contemporary US Poet. Early poems in a range of
tones--some cheery, lots dark.
Page 3-- 'Dark Love Poems' from THE BODY
This Page. Modern love poems. Hedonists, sensualists, &
erotic extremists. Satires re alternative sex.
Verse re Love vs Lust. Off-beat lovers & romantic lunacy. Warnings of
course, re What A Little Moonlight Can Do.
Page 4--'Spooky Poems for Halloween'
From THE BODY and SKY & on the very eerie side.
Award-Winning Page which may haunt you even between
Halloweens
Page 5--Thematic Index to THE BODY and SKY
Subject-Index classifying poems in both books by topic. Cites related
titles. With notes focussing so far on
philosophy behind the poems, on innovative techniques used in them, &
on their visual arts inspirations.
(Above page is mainly intended as a college-level
scholarly resource on modern poetry, but also has info
on how these two unusual first books of poems came to be written, & much
else).
Illustrated with 1960's photos & other documents from
Benedikt's Archive.
SELECTIONS FROM OTHER BENEDIKT BOOKS
*
Prose Poems
& Microfictions
Brief Prose
Poems (with Interview, too)
From Benedikt's fourth book of poetry, NIGHT
CRIES
The Badminton at Great Barrington
From Benedikt's fifth & most recent book of poetry. Love poems re a not-so-comical Valentine
The Thesaurus & Other New Verse
Includes 'Of Panty-Lines
That Show' & "Of Sexual Style.'
Erotic verse from OF:--a
manuscript-in-progress.
Mini-Site: 'American Vibrations'
Recent poetry about a dark side of 19th-century
USA Pioneer Life
Mini-Site: 'Valentine Hearts & Hearth'
Above site's a billboard for those who
haven't visited us here yet. Also a Valentine
card to visitors to this site. Love
to all !
Note: Music by Ravel at Valentine Hearth site
for chilly nights, recently restored.
Other Pages Within This BODY-SKY Website
Next Page of This Site-- 'Spooky Poems For Halloween'
This Webpage Established 1/01
Counter for this page only