Poems About Sex

Last Christmas I received this anthology of erotic poems, Poems to F*ck To, edited by Jason Brain (2015).

Here’s is almost 200 pages of sex poems that are much better than the red-faced, skin-blotched, badly-lit, very unromantic or sexy cover photograph implies.

Another surprise, this book was very professional laid out, (no pun intended), and, in fact, I found zero typos. Zero! This is an amazing feat for a CreateSpace book. And the anthology was lacking the many clichés I was anticipating. Some very creative descriptions and various types of sexuality were represented. There were ars poeticas and many literary references including some to Shakespeare and Georgia O’Keeffe.

These were very present poems, meaning they mostly took place in a present tense. They explored bodies, gender, and even philosophy. There were free verse poems and forms, including a memorable villainelle. Many poems were not only lustful but very wishful thinkings. But some smart poems in here, a few that reminded me of the best of Eric Jong.

I kept track of the authors and the gender breakdown (as far as I could determine):

• Men: 63
• Women: 60
• Ambiguous It’s Pats: 18

The book was pretty evenly represented.

For such a large anthology, curated sections would have been helpful (and pleasurable).