Erotica, Obscenity and Lenore Kandel

[Angeline]

The current issue of New Yorker magazine has a great article about a poet new to me, Lenore Kandel. She was associated with the Beat poetry movement (Kerouac immortalized her as a character in his novel Big Sur) and the hippies. Most erotic poetry written outside Literotica and other porn-oriented sites is more metaphorical than graphic. Certainly in the 1950s and 1960s few poets were publishing explicit poems and when they did (like Ginsberg's Howl), obscenity charges ensued. This happened to Kandel, resulting in the longest obscenity prosecution of a poet.

Personally I think it's really hard to write good explicit poetry. At least in my experience reading it here at Lit the poems usually are inadvertently silly and/or funny. But Kandel wrote an explicit masterpiece imho in her poem, To Fuck With Love. Check it out and see what you think. Is this superior explicit poetry, especially from a woman writing at a time when to do so was an act of utter feminist defiance?

 

[Winter_Fare]

Yes, superior. It's sex as power, boundless energy, is definitely a product of its time and place. It is ecstatic, pure, transcendent in the most obvious sense. Extending beautiful spiritual meaning to sex and freedom, exploring the divinity of humanity but it's almost too tied up with youth and perfection to be real.

"Noumenon-phenomenon transcended", Honestly? I wish sex was really that powerful.

Reality broke her thread. Injury and getting older, fading out of public life into obscurity. The poem stands as a superior poem years later but for spiritual freedom not for its eroticism.

In an interview in 2007 she says, "my only desire is to have no desire." A sensitive soul frustrated with the imperfect world.

 

[Angeline]

Yes, superior. It's sex as power, boundless energy, is definitely a product of its time and place. It is ecstatic, pure, transcendent in the most obvious sense. Extending beautiful spiritual meaning to sex and freedom, exploring the divinity of humanity but it's almost too tied up with youth and perfection to be real.

"Noumenon-phenomenon transcended", Honestly? I wish sex was really that powerful.

Reality broke her thread. Injury and getting older, fading out of public life into obscurity. The poem stands as a superior poem years later but for spiritual freedom not for its eroticism.

In an interview in 2007 she says, "my only desire is to have no desire." A sensitive soul frustrated with the imperfect world.

I read that she lived with crippling pain for many years following an accident. Maybe that's where her retreat from desire came from. And maybe I agree that what's most exciting about that poem is its cry for freedom. But I've rarely seen explicit modern poetry so alive and exciting. On another note I thought it somewhat derivative of Ginsberg's style and maybe William Blake, too, in a way.

Have you read more of her? Anything you'd recommend? I got sidetracked with other stuff tonight but I want to read more of her poetry.

 

[Wonderer67]

That is a seriously great poem.

I love to equate sacredness with sex. Not in a religious way, but because there is some kind of greater meaning to sex for me.

Thanks for sharing this.

 

[Winter_Fare]

Have you read more of her? Anything you'd recommend? I got sidetracked with other stuff tonight but I want to read more of her poetry.

No! But now I want too. I love the style, and I love the message. I found this old blog:
http://michaeldennispoet.blogspot.com/2014/01/collected-poems-of-lenore-kandel-lenore.html?m=1

 

[Angeline]

That is a seriously great poem.

I love to equate sacredness with sex. Not in a religious way, but because there is some kind of greater meaning to sex for me.

Thanks for sharing this.ful

Yes the ecstatic celebratory quality of it is fantastic imo!

 

[Angeline]

No! But now I want too. I love the style, and I love the message. I found this old blog:
http://michaeldennispoet.blogspot.com/2014/01/collected-poems-of-lenore-kandel-lenore.html?m=1

Thanks for the link!

 

[Angeline]

No! But now I want too. I love the style, and I love the message. I found this old blog:
http://michaeldennispoet.blogspot.com/2014/01/collected-poems-of-lenore-kandel-lenore.html?m=1

Wow! I especially like her Eros poem. It very much has that Ginsberg Beats vibe, too.

 

[Tzara]

I'd read about Kandel a few years ago, probably on one of those start with some completely different topic and link your way around the Internet to an unforeseen endpoint sessions.

Anyway, interesting poet, especially for her time. She read a poem at The Band's Last Waltz concert in 1976 that you can view here.

 

[Angeline]

I'd read about Kandel a few years ago, probably on one of those start with some completely different topic and link your way around the Internet to an unforeseen endpoint sessions.

Anyway, interesting poet, especially for her time. She read a poem at The Band's Last Waltz concert in 1976 that you can view here.

I just today read that she read a poem at The Last Waltz concert (which eagleyez attended btw: growing up in San Francisco had many musical benefits!). I saw that her reading was not included in either the film or the record, but of course it's on YouTube. Thank you for sharing it.

I think they kept McClure's reading of the Prologue to The Canterbury Tales in the film. I haven't watched it for years, but now I want to again. I have that Prologue memorized (in Middle English even!) from college. Stuff from yesterday I forget, but that bit of Chaucer is still with me. Go figure.

 

[Tzara]

Personally I think it's really hard to write good explicit poetry. At least in my experience reading it here at Lit the poems usually are inadvertently silly and/or funny.

I think the problem with many sexually explicit poems (i.e. what one might call "fuck/cunt/cock" poems as opposed to poems using more metaphorical language to depict sexual situations) is that they are relying on the explicit language to be arousing to the reader by itself. This might work if the poem is one written to an actual or potential sexual partner. For example, if someone I was attracted to wrote a poem in which she said something like

I want you to fuck me,
to feel your cock
thrust deep inside​

I would probably be pretty aroused. If I was reading some random person's poem with that language, it would probably not be very interesting, let alone arousing. Context and intent are everything.

Kandel's poem works, in my opinion, because it isn't about trying to arouse the reader sexually--it's her celebration of her personal experience of sex, which makes it quite a different kind of poem. The reader isn't so much aroused by her words as they share in her arousal and joy in the experience.

My thoughts on it, anyway.

 

[Angeline]

I think the problem with many sexually explicit poems (i.e. what one might call "fuck/cunt/cock" poems as opposed to poems using more metaphorical language to depict sexual situations) is that they are relying on the explicit language to be arousing to the reader by itself. This might work if the poem is one written to an actual or potential sexual partner. For example, if someone I was attracted to wrote a poem in which she said something like

​

I want you to fuck me,​

to feel your cock​

thrust deep inside​

I would probably be pretty aroused. If I was reading some random person's poem with that language, it would probably not be very interesting, let alone arousing. Context and intent are everything.

Kandel's poem works, in my opinion, because it isn't about trying to arouse the reader sexually--it's her celebration of her personal experience of sex, which makes it quite a different kind of poem. The reader isn't so much aroused by her words as they share in her arousal and joy in the experience.

My thoughts on it, anyway.

I agree. Her excitement communicates to the reader in ways material that is explicit but simply descriptive (i.e., this happened then that happened then blah blah) can't. At least it can't for me as a reader.

 

[LarryTee50]

It's about the erotic as a gateway to spiritual ecstasy. This poem celebrates primal pleasure and contains no shame..... therein lies its power.