<< 1 >>
Rating: 
Summary: A great gift for a lover or even a friend...
Review: I went into the bookstore looking for a book to share with my current lover, and finally after spending an hour staring at the shelves found this little gem. The book is perfect, because it contains a wide variety of enriching language on the subject of love and sex... which is what I was seeking to share with my signfigant other. But it is also perfect because it makes one aware through reading that the common conceptions of sex that we see in mass media are so very dull compared to the variety present in this small volume. I think I'm going to drop a copy of this wrapped up discretely and anonomously on an over-sexed male co-worker's desk. The book is also perfect as a gift to man who hasn't grown out of his teenage (and porn industry soaked) ideas of sex. If he can spend some time reading it, it might blow his mind (and change his life). Why? Because this is a book that profoundly expresses that the best love and sex come out of the kind of intimacy that's pretty tough to find in a one-night stand.
Rating:
Summary: Intimate Kisses
Review: Intimate Kisses: The Poetry of Sexual Pleasure is a lovely little book edited by Wendy Maltz, M.S.W. This is her fifth book on sexuality. She's a sex therapist and marriage counselor whose work has appeared in national magazines and on video. Maltz says that "negative messages about sexual pleasure cause a lot of unnecessary personal suffering." She believes that understanding sexual pleasure will help people incorporate it into their own lives, while recognizing that "there are many different types and intensities of sexual pleasure." People's concept of pleasure also changes as they change. She divided the book into five sections: anticipation and desire; self-awareness and discovery; admiration and appreciation; union and ecstasy; and afterglow and remembrance. Each section includes twenty or more poems. She includes the poetry of Marge Piercy, Anne Sexton, Sharon Olds, and Elizabeth Barrett-Browning, as well as dozens of lesser-known poets. Maltz says that "my goal in creating Intimate Kisses is to provide an erotic, yet sensitive, collection of poems that describe sexual pleasure based on intimacy." Readers will enjoy discovering that she met her goal.
Rating:
Summary: Intimate Kisses
Review: Intimate Kisses: The Poetry of Sexual Pleasure is a lovely little book edited by Wendy Maltz, M.S.W. This is her fifth book on sexuality. She's a sex therapist and marriage counselor whose work has appeared in national magazines and on video. Maltz says that "negative messages about sexual pleasure cause a lot of unnecessary personal suffering." She believes that understanding sexual pleasure will help people incorporate it into their own lives, while recognizing that "there are many different types and intensities of sexual pleasure." People's concept of pleasure also changes as they change. She divided the book into five sections: anticipation and desire; self-awareness and discovery; admiration and appreciation; union and ecstasy; and afterglow and remembrance. Each section includes twenty or more poems. She includes the poetry of Marge Piercy, Anne Sexton, Sharon Olds, and Elizabeth Barrett-Browning, as well as dozens of lesser-known poets. Maltz says that "my goal in creating Intimate Kisses is to provide an erotic, yet sensitive, collection of poems that describe sexual pleasure based on intimacy." Readers will enjoy discovering that she met her goal.
Rating:
Summary: This is erotica at it's best
Review: Oh my god........ Whoa..... yes. This is a keeper. This small seven by five just over 200 pages long gem of a book. Now I love erotica and sensuality and this book is a keeper. Makes me warm just typing the review. And the lovely thing is, it is a book that a woman or a man can read and enjoy and share together as part of foreplay or simply word play. ... there are no "blurbs" or information about the contributor except Elizabeth Barrett Browings piece on page 116. To share two pieces so you can get a sense of the genre and style: COME TO ME TO OUR SWEET BED page 19 By Penny Harter Come to me to our sweet bed our sweet bed white bed yellow bed blue quilted bed oh the long warm limbs and the soft belly nuzzlings lips to shoulder .....I would be in you here are my breasts take them here is your entering me so deep so deeply come with me to our sweet bed AT THE KITCHEN COUNTER page 120 by Jay Farbstein "....After, back in the kitchen, you call me to you, unfold your robe and draw my hand into your wetness I fall onto my knees to worship and to taste of it And in the night, weaving in and out of sleep, in and out of consciousness every time to find you folded in my arms wrapped up like a present we are giving to each other Trust me it only gets better....
Rating: 
Summary: good reading
Review: smooth poetry, like good brazilian jazz... not all the poems have the same flavor, deepness or power... reason for not giving this a better rating... good for reading after a stressful day at work
Rating: 
Summary: Much more than kisses
Review: This well-meaning little anthology succeeds on several levels. Editor Wendy Maltz has collected 120 poems, from various times and places, on the not at all small topic of sexual love. Maltz explains in her Introduction that she has spent a lot of years pondering the subject - in her work and her life. In addition, Maltz loves poetry and is eager to promote its inestimable ability to provoke desire, describe physical and emotional states - and above all else express what may have hitherto been inexpressible. This collection meets her goals. It is 'erotica,' and these terrific poems are definitely and unabashedly about the real thing. Should you leave it around the house? If you don't object to teenagers (for example) reading poetry of sexual experience that promotes love and some sweetness along with the passion - you can most assuredly leave it around the house. There is no gender bias or sexual orientation bias, although there is also no overt campaigning, either. There is flirtation and playfulness (Nikki Giovanni's 'That Day": " if you've got the key/then I've got the door"). Intense sensuality (Sharon Olds, Walter Benton, David Watts, Neil Carpathias, Laura Gourlay - among many more.) The reader is treated to ways of talking about love and sex that are fresh and surprising. One poem (by Renaissance poet Johannes Secundas) has been translated from Latin. Powerful stuff - that would have enlivened many a Latin class. Unfortunately there is no information on the contributors other than the fulfillment of the legal requirement of Permissions Acknowledgements. The reader is left to his or her own devices to find out more. The title sounds faintly oxymoronic. In addition the poems are presented without dates of either composition or publication. No index of first lines, either. Wonderful poets such as these deserve the kid-glove treatment, and all the publicity they can get. These gripes aside, this is a book of poetry that is well worth reading and rereading.
<< 1 >>
| 
