Maltz - Passionate hearts: the poetry of sexual love

PASSIONATE
HEARTS

the poetry of
sexual love

AN ANTHOLOGY
COMPILED AND EDITED BY
WENDY MALTZ

NEW WORLD LIBRARY
NOVATO, CALIFORNIA

New World Library
14 Pamaron Way
Novato, CA 94949

Copyright 1996 Wendy Maltz

All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced
in whole or in part without written permission from the
publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief
passages in a review; nor may any part of this book be
reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted
in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical,
photocopying, recording, or other, without written
permission from the publisher.

Cover and text design: Aaron Kenedi
Cover photograph: Paul Dahlquist
Editorial: Becky Benenate

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Passionate hearts : the poetry of sexual love : an anthology / compiled and
edited by Wendy Maltz. 10th anniversary ed.

p. cm.

ISBN-13: 978-1-57731-567-4 (pbk. : alk. paper)

ISBN-10: 1-57731-567-7

1. Erotic poetry. 2. Love poetry. I. Maltz, Wendy.

PN6110.E65P37 2007

ISBN-10: 1-57731-567-7
ISBN-13: 978-1-57731-567-4
First printing, December 1996
First printing of tenth-anniversary edition, January 2007
Printed in Canada on acid-free partially recycled paper

Distributed by Publishers Group West

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

To Larry, my Love

CONTENTS

I t is with great pleasure that I introduce this ten-year anniversary edition of Wendy Maltzs award winning anthology Passionate Hearts: The Poetry of Sexual Love. This book provides a creative, unique window into the intimate nature and pleasures of healthy sexuality. Over the past ten years Passionate Hearts has proven itself as a poetry classic as well as a valued resource in the field of sexuality education and counseling. It speaks to a diverse audience people who are single, dating, in committed relationships, or married.

The popularity of Passionate Hearts has grown with the word-of-mouth reviews of professionals and readers alike. In a world inundated by commercially driven, non-relationship-oriented eroticism, this book presents an integrated image of intimacy, pleasuring, and eroticism. In reading Passionate Hearts, I am extremely moved and impressed with the emphasis on healthy intimate sexuality, described in a variety of poetic and personally meaningful ways. Wendy Maltz encourages couples to explore a wide variety of roles, experiences, and meanings of healthy sexuality. These poems identify what allows sexuality to be loving, caring, beautiful, inviting, and even spiritual. The sequencing of the poetry is truly creative from the tender meanings of initial en-counters to the graceful transformations that occur when two people have been together sexually for a long time.

As a psychologist and sex therapist I know that one of the most difficult challenges couples face is finding ways to integrate emotional intimacy with intensely pleasurable eroticism. Sex counseling and therapy can help by offering concepts and interventions. But they often focus too much on addressing sexual problems and not enough on enhancing sexual intimacy. This wonderful, loving book with its message of accepting healthy, intimate sexuality is a special resource for individuals and couples. It provides the inspiration and direction we all genuinely need. The challenge to you the reader is to develop a clear, affirmative sexual voice, and together as a couple, to discover your own unique ways of celebrating intimacy, pleasure, and eroticism.

Barry McCarthy, PhD, CST,
coauthor, with his wife Emily, of Rekindling Desire

T his is a book of passion. Take it to bed with you. Curl up with it alone or with another passionate heart. This is a book of poems that put the ancient wisdom of the body into words. It is full of the little miracles of understanding that only poets know how to make.

As we perceive through our tongues, noses, skin, ears, and eyes, we learn to delight in the world. But sometimes our deepest physical responses are so strong and connected with our emotions, we hardly know how to convey them in words. That is where poetry comes in, and where Wendy Maltz, the editor of this collection, has worked her wizardry.

As a healer, she appreciates how poetry can universalize our experience simply by being so intimate, and she has searched beyond the predictable choices for Passionate Hearts: The Poetry of Sexual Love. Discovering gems of poetry by emerging writers as well as established ones, she has grouped them to show us how to feel our way through sensual experience within an intimate relationship.

Of all the freedoms of the late 20th century, my favorite is how explicit poets can be. They can take timeless themes and deliver them to us with the images and associations of right now. In this way poets are the truth tellers of the cultural body. Here, in this collection, they uncover erotic truths and supply us with metaphors that heal as well as reveal: bold, positive, direct language for sexual sharing.

Each of us is capable of passion, but the poems gathered here kindle passion. As they touch us, they deepen our capacities for touch.

Molly Peacock

What sex is, we dont know, but it must be some sort of fire. For it always communicates a sense of warmth, of glow. And when the glow becomes a pure shine, then we feel the sense of beauty.

D. H. LAWRENCE

T his book of poetry has come about through my quest to unlock the mystery of sexual love. This is not a new quest for me. Its a search Ive been on, in some fashion, for most of my life. As a sex therapist, Ive made a profession of understanding and explaining sex.

As a young child, I remember repeatedly harassing my parents with question after question about sex. Their answers changed over time, becoming more specific and elaborate as I grew more mature and inquisitive. By the time I was eleven, budding with my own sexual feelings, curious about true love, and frustrated with technical sounding sperm and egg explanations, I pressed them for more information about the act itself. The woman lies on her back with her legs in the air and arms open, and the man lies on top of her.... Although my parents continued talking, I heard only an occasional word after this opening line. I was stunned. The image that formed in my mind was of dead bugs on the sidewalk lying with their feet in the air, tangled together, and parched by the sun. My first explicit sexual image was a major disappointment. Why would anyone want to share an experience like that with someone they love?

For each of us, our concept of sexual love has been shaped over many years by the sexual images permitted and promoted in our culture. Today, its hard not to find images of sex in our society. Since the dawn of the sexual revolution in the 1960s, we have stripped away the old, puritanical restrictions that once made sex a taboo subject. Erotic images are woven so extensively into every aspect of our culture that they leap out at us when we open a magazine, turn on the television set, settle back in a movie theater, or pass a billboard on the freeway. It is sad and ironic that while our sexually obsessed culture feeds us a steady stream of arousing sexual images, many of us feel starved when it comes to understanding or sharing sexual love.