Selections from the book Lesbians A-Go-Go, edited by Mildred Faintly, published by 96th of October, and available here. It contains poetry by Sappho, Emily Dickinson, Renée Vivien, Anna Margolin, and Marina Tsvetaeva, newly translated from Ancient Greek, French, Yiddish and Russian. This unprecedented and international anthology places beyond dispute the genius of lesbian poets and their distinguished place in the canon.
Sappho
The Crush
He might as well be a god,
that man, whoever he is,
who has the more than mortal happiness
of sitting so close, facing you,
hearing your dear voice,
your seductive little laugh.
The whole situation makes my heart thud
in suspense each time I steal
a fast glance at you.
I want to say something,
so you’ll look my way—
nothing comes to me.
I feel sudden warmth just under my skin—
I’m blushing. I stutter. Eyes out of focus,
I hear in my own ears my pulse
subtly thundering.
I go pale,
my armpits trickle sweat,
it feels like I’m dying.
Goodbye
I just want to die. I just do.
She left me here in tears.
She said a lot, and she said this,
“We’ve suffered so much, Sappho,
it amazes me, and it scares me,
what they’ve done to us. Sappho, you know
I never wanted to leave.”
All I could say back was, “Go,
and try to be happy.
Remember me, remember
how good it was for us,
how fine and how right,
“and let me remember the way
you made me crowns of flowers,
violets, roses and crocus,
“the way you wove garlands of many a blossom,
how gently you set them on my neck,
“how richly you would anoint me
with myrrh, royally costly,
“how you alone, how completely
you satisfied all my desires
on the soft splendid quilts
you spread for me on your bed.”
Girlhood
The bride cries, “O my girlhood,
how I’ve lost you!
To what far land have you vanished,
where can I find you again?”
The echo answers, “Never,
I return to you never and nevermore.”
Artemis
But Artemis abjured father Zeus,
making him swear a tremendous oath,
calling as witness the Styx,
whose bare name
the very gods shudder to utter—
made him swear by the river of death,
into which all things, even the gods,
will at last dissolve,
“Vow to me, father,
on pain of forfeiting
your own immortal existence,
vow I’m allowed to remain
eternally virgin,
untamed, never subjected
to man in marriage
which breaks a woman’s spirit
as a plough-beast is broken to serve.
“Give me to be independent forever,
lone as only a hunter can be,
sole roving the hilltops,
in the unalloyed joy
of solitary pursuits,
the whole world unshared and her own.
“Grant what I ask, all-father,
nod now in sign of grace granted,
incline your almighty head
at which the sky mutters thunder
and shaken earth trembles assent.”
He did so at her asking,
father of the gods—
the gods, who alone are happy here
in this world, he granted her wish,
he let her become
Artemis the huntress,
herself as wild and free
as any beast of prey.
Gods and humans address her,
now and forever,
by the great names of Virgin and Huntress
and Slayer of Deer, she,
from the love that makes women weaklings
forever exempt.
the selections from Sappho are taken from Sappho for Girls, translated by Jocelyn Beckett
Emily Dickinson
The text of Dickinson’s lesbian poems, equipped with commentary adequate to clarify their content, may be found in Mildred Faintly’s annotated anthology It Came from Amherst. In Lesbians A-Go-Go she summarizes and synthesize Dickinson’s lesbian poems, giving her own words in italics along with the number of the poem (Johnson/Franklin numeration). This passage will give an idea of what was discovered.
When, in the volcano poems, Emily allows the Vesuvian face of her libido to let its pleasure shine through (764/754), it is fiery indeed. In this one she gives truly seething testimony to her erotic longing, a still volcano, ready to erupt,
that flickered in the night
when it was dark enough
that is, when she lay alone in bed, thinking of Sue, and her body, shuddered with delight. Her vagina, that solemn, torrid symbol, the lips that never lie, spasmed, causing her labia, pink and precious as corals, to part and shut and ooze. (516/601)
When the love between Emily and Susan was actually consummated, it was so profound and poignant an experience that Emily wished this foretaste of paradise could go on an on. She cried,
Come slowly, Eden!
These words open a poem which is a lesbian valentine in the style of Georgia O’Keefe. Emily describes how timidly her shy and inexperienced lips taste Susan’s most sensitive flesh, which she compares to tender petals of Jessamine, a blossom with a candy-like smell.
In such flowery language does Dickinson decorously allude to the intoxicating scent which is a feature of lesbian oral adoration.
Lips unused to thee,
bashful, sip thy jessamines
As it progresses, the poem enters deeper into this aspect of the eros. Emily compares herself to a bee, fainting with bliss on encountering the loved one’s nectars; consciousness is lost, as she experiences Susan’s aromatic resins, her balms.
as the fainting bee,
reaching late his flower,
round her chamber hums,
counts his nectars,
enters–and is lost in balms. (205/211)
It is these nectars which are meant in the famous poem beginning I taste a liquor never brewed—an intoxicating liquid, which leaves Emily love-drunk, reeling thro’ endless summer days.
She explains that she tastes this from tankards scooped in pearl. The tankards in question are ornamental cups made from nautilus shells, polished to a mother-of-pearl sheen. Along with flowers, shells are archetypal emblems of the female genitals. The intoxicating liquor imbibed from a mother-of-pearl natural concavity (scoop), which is tasted (a verb which suggests the play of the tongue rather than the act of swallowing), makes
I taste a liquor never brewed,
from tankards scooped in pearl– (207/214)
savor so unambiguously of Bartholin fluid that one can barely suppress a giggle at the place of pride this poem holds in poetry anthologies.
Renée Vivien
Vivien was a turn of the century decadent: the perfection of her gloomy erotic fantasies earns her the title of “lesbian Baudelaire.”
Amazon
The amazon smiles at the wreckage,
though even the sun has gone to sleep,
sick at last of battle.
The amazon breathes deep, her nostrils widen,
like those of a war-horse, at the scent of blood.
She’s exultant, this bizarre connoisseur of death—
She loves the kind of lover
who screams as if tortured,
who shudders with pleasures that look like pain,
who subsides after crisis into an exhaustion
that looks like death. Kisses and cuddles
make her sick. She needs
the thrill of horror to keep her interest.
What she really wants is to hover like a prey-bird
till she can print a final kiss on lips that don’t respond.
She dreams of that terrible inexpressible tremor,
that spasm more beautiful and frightening
than the ultimate one of love.
taken from Vivien’s brilliant first book, Tentative Melodies, translated from the French by Justin Brumby
Anna Margolin
An decadent poet from Jazz-Age NYC, Margolin gave peerless expression to female friendship.
On a Balcony
The image flickers back at me,
from a long ago summer,
late afternoon heat,
a pair of petite, affectionate women
leafing through an old album, laughing.
Their hands touch, they let them, they leave them,
they want this, they lean together,
shoulder finds shoulder with a shudder of pleasure.
The landscape beyond them is orange-red
from the sunset of a thirsty day in August.
They too thirst, the curves
of their pale bodies blur.
Above them towers a powerful man,
with the weighty grace that men possess,
like a splendid, unnecessary decoration.
taken from Mildred Faintly’s translation of Margolin’s complete poems, Lower East Suicide.
Marina Tsvetaeva
Tsvetaeva is recognized as one of the four greatest Russian poets of the twentieth century. In 1914-15 she had a love affair with Sophia Parnok (the first out lesbian in Russian literary history). She chronicled the affair in a series of 18 poems which it would be fair to call the lesbian Eugene Onegin.
I wouldn’t dare . . .
I wouldn’t dare suggest a direction,
or even take your hand:
you go your own way in the world—
but I long for you with a yearning eternal—
it’s not infatuation, you’re not my first girl.
The second I saw you, my heart told me, “Her!”
You could do no wrong, I forgave in advance,
and at random, anything you’d ever done.
Before I even knew your name,
all I knew was I loved you,
I hoped you could love me.
I see in the near-sneering curve of your lip
defiance and pride;
how nobly you furrow your high genius brow;
these bespeak a heart
that never backs down from a fight!
Your silk dress gleams like dark armor,
the slight Jewish lilt in your speech
makes your words seem even more
exotic and deep.
Everything about you
makes me so happy it hurts,
your unconventional beauty too—
not beautiful so much as handsome,
no delicate flower that wilts in the heat,
you’re all steely, elegant stem;
meaner than mean at need,
sharp as the bite of a spice.
What hot sun hatched you,
what ship brought you back
from what sultry West Indian isle?
You’re equally singular, just as unsettling,
whether you brandish a fan
or a gentleman’s silver-topped cane;
it’s blood-deep, bone-certain in you, who you are,
right down to the tips of your long wicked fingers:
girl-tenderness weirdly at one
with a brashness as butch as a boy’s.
I’m not scared to announce
what this means for us,
what you mean to me:
you with the brow of a Beethoven,
beautiful stranger I’m poet enough
to ward with a word or a verse
all the world’s scorn and its smirks.
Tsvetaeva’s complete cycle of lesbian poems, till now only published in part in bowdlerized versions, is available in Seraphina Powell’s translation, Girlfriend.