Lord Alfred Douglas, known affectionately as “Bosie,” was the infamous young lover of Oscar Wilde (think Jude Law and Stephen Fry in 1997’s “Wilde”) — infamous not only because of his late-19th-century indiscretion, but because of his Veruca-Salt tendencies (“I want it now, Daddy!”). Two of his poems were brought up in Wilde’s “gross indecency” […]
THE WINNER: Kids at last asleep My wife went out to Costco A break from laundry — Carol R. Congratulations to Carol, who will soon be the proud owner of a luxury Ina Wave pleasure object from LELO.com (worth $200). With so many fantastic entries to choose from, it was a tough call to make, […]
English and Scottish ballads from centuries past — most famously collected by 19th-century American folk scholar Francis J. Childs and delightfully creepily illustrated in the 1912 book Ballads Weird and Wonderful — were pretty, pretty, pretty salacious. Illicit sex? Check! Murder most foul? Check! Spooky spirits? Check! Satisfyingly, “The Cruel Mother” — and it’s numerous versions — have all of the […]
It’s always the quiet ones. Introverted Emily Dickinson led a solitary life in a 19th century Puritanical Massachusetts community — the kind of ascetic, lonely life that really knows true longing and yearning. Think of St. Teresa, the 14th century cloistered nun whose description of her ecstatic vision of God is hotter than most erotica. When spirituality […]
Late 18th-century poet William Blake’s famous Songs of Innocence were often thought to be merely children’s verse. But don’t mistake simplicity and concision for lack of depth. Take this little gem, one of his Gnomic Verses — just 4 lines, 26 words in total, and only 14 unique words in all! In that neat package, he […]
Allen Ginsberg’s openness about his homosexuality didn’t just make him controversial, it made him politically significant during the second half of the 20th century. And his infamous “Please Master” is Exhibit A of just how open he could be. This ode to BDSM certainly opened my eyes when I accidentally discovered it in middle school while doing research at my small-town […]
THIS CONTEST IS CLOSED: SEE WHO WON HERE! We’re giving you the chance to win a great, romantic, sensual gift set worth almost $200 from LELO.com for Valentine’s Day! LELO just launched Tux, a sophisticated, elegant, and luxurious…wait for it…willy warmer! (Only LELO could combine humor and refinement so effectively.) In honor of the occasion, we’d like you to […]
Adrienne Rich (1929-2012) was one of the best known, most beloved American poets of the second half of the 20th century. And “Diving into the Wreck” is one of her best known, most beloved poems. In 1973, Erica “Zipless Fuck” Jong analyzed it beautifully for Ms. Magazine: In “Diving into the Wreck,” the title poem, it is the […]
Update the language, and John Donne’s “To His Mistress Going to Bed” could be an R&B sex song on the radio today. All about trying to get his lady buck nekkid, this late 16th/early 17th-century British elegy employs hilarious metaphors and euphemisms for body parts and bodily functions (e.g. his soldier is tired of standing, […]
Allen Ginsberg wrote “A Supermarket in California” in his 1956 masterpiece, Howl and Other Poems, in honor of the centennial anniversary of Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass. Its focus is on modern American consumerism, but there’s an undercurrent of “counter-culture” sexuality throughout: Ginsberg (the narrator of the poem), Whitman (the focus), and 1930s poet García Lorca (the side character) were […]
Walter de la Mare (25 April 1873 – 22 June 1956) was an English writer best known for his childrens’ works, psychological horror stories, and poetry (he also wrote plays and non-fiction). According to the Poetry Foundation, he’s “is considered one of modern literature’s chief exemplars of the romantic imagination. His complete works form a sustained […]
First we gave you a taste of Pushkin’s more romantic side, and then we showed you Pushkin being playful. Today, in the third installment of our mini-series on naughty Pushkin poetry, we turn to our old friend Jack Murnighan for inspiration, and his erstwhile Nerve.com column Jack’s Naughty Bits. There’s a real dearth of Pushkin translations online, […]
Last week, we gave you a taste of Pushkin the Romantic’s more romantic side. This week, we’re giving you a peak at his more playful side. (Stay tuned for a look at his truly trashy stuff, coming soon.) The following is Pushkin’s early-1800s “Advancing from the Rear”, translated by A.Z. Foreman from his blog Poems Found […]
Not only was Alexander Pushkin the father of Russian literature, he was also a very naughty boy. In the early 1800s, he wrote plays, poetry, novels, essays and also incredibly dirty erotica. In fact, in 2005 some of his adult verses were seized in a crackdown on obscene materials near Moscow. And in 2014, a Russian […]
Rupert Brooke (1887-1915) was a World War One poet best known for his sonnet “The Soldier,” which opened with these lines: “If I should die, think only this of me: / That there’s some corner of a foreign field / That is forever England.” The New Yorker describes him this way: “Upper-class and stiff-upper-lipped, blond-haired and […]
Bernadette Mayer, born in 1945, is an avant-garde American writer known for her stream-of-consciousness narrative style that draws heavily on her journals. Her poetry about the experience of motherhood was groundbreaking for its accuracy and honesty. Oh, yeah, and she likes to talk about oral sex, anal sex, kinky sex, and why women deserve to […]
