Skip to Main Content

The Best American Erotic Poems

From 1800 to the Present

Edited by David Lehman

LIST PRICE $18.00

PRICE MAY VARY BY RETAILER

Buy from Other Retailers

About The Book

There is a deep tradition of eroticism in American poetry. Thoughtful, provocative, moving, and sometimes mirthful, the poems collected in The Best American Erotic Poems celebrate this exuberant sensuality.

These poems range across the varied landscapes of love and sex and desire -- from the intimate parts of the body to the end of an affair, from passion to solitary self-pleasure. With candor and imagination, they capture the delights and torments of sex and sexuality, nudity, love, lust, and the secret life of fantasy.

David Lehman, the distinguished editor of the celebrated Best American Poetry series, has culled a witty, titillating, and alluring collection that starts with Francis Scott Key, Emily Dickinson, Walt Whitman, and Hart Crane, encompasses Frank O'Hara, Anne Sexton, John Updike, Charles Simic, Billy Collins, Kevin Young, and Sharon Olds, and concludes with the rising stars of a whole new generation of versifiers, including Sarah Manguso, Ravi Shankar, and Brenda Shaughnessy.

In a section of the book that is sure to prompt discussion and further reading, the living poets write about their favorite works of erotic writing.

This book will delight, surprise, and inspire.

Product Details

  • Publisher: Scribner (February 5, 2008)
  • Length: 336 pages
  • ISBN13: 9781416537465

Browse Related Books

Resources and Downloads

High Resolution Images