Embracing Eroticism in Verse - Audre Lorde and Sharon Olds

There are many kinds of writers, believable and unbelievable, celebrated and ignored, read or otherwise forgotten. There are writers that seem pivotal to literature and its entirety, and then there are writers that are extremely important to the personal as they strike a chord with their readers, writing with, as it seems, their very soul. Two authors that embody both qualities of the personal voice and the overall necessary literary achievements are Audre Lorde with "Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power" and Sharon Olds with "Sex without Love". Both authors clearly define and celebrate the erotic connection to their femininity, and call for all women and mankind alike to embrace and embody the erotic, but also both believe in the condemnation of loveless sex.

In her essay "Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power" Audre Lorde defines both the erotic and its opposite the pornographic with the statement, "But pornography is a direct denial of the power of the erotic, for it represents the suppression of true feeling. Pornography emphasizes sensation without feeling. The erotic is a measure between the beginnings of our sense of self and the chaos of our strongest feelings. It is an internal sense of satisfaction to which, once we have experienced it, we know we can aspire. For having experienced the fullness of this depth of feeling and recognizing its power, in honor and self-respect we can require no less of ourselves" (537). Lorde is directly saying that pornography, which can acutely resemble sex without love, is a denial of self respect and of the power that erotic, or "our sense of self and the chaos of our strongest feelings"(537), which is a bad thing and leads to the corruption of the soul. She believes that the erotic is a celebration of feeling and embracing life and all its sensations. She believes that to be erotic is to be fully connected to "how acutely and fully we can feeling the doing. Once we know the extent to which we are capable of feeling that sense of satisfaction and completion, we can then observe which of our various life endeavors bring us closest to that fullness"(537). Lorde believes that this fullness, this sense of satisfaction with an identity, fully comes from embracing the erotic by experiencing emotions and being alive in life.

The pornographic has no benefactor. Lorde and Olds both concur on one particular facet of modern life, the removal of the erotic from the spiritual world. Lorde says, "we have attempted to separate the spiritual and the erotic, thereby reducing the spiritual to a world of flattened affect, a world of the ascetic who aspires to feel nothing....the severe abstinence of the ascetic becomes the ruling obsession. And it is one not of self-discipline but of self-abnegation."(538), and she argues that to make spirituality personal, which it was always designated to be, one must embrace the eroticisms and psychic feelings belonging to something so pivotal as faith. Also Sharon Olds emphasizes religion depersonalizing the act of love making as she says in her poem, "These are the true religious, the purist, the pros, the ones who will not accept a false Messiah, love the priest instead of the God. They do not mistake the lover for their own pleasure", and refers to the overbearing religious beliefs decreeing that sex be for procreation instead of the enjoyment of love and the connection of the bodies. Both authors reject the objectivity present in pornography and causal sex, and require that the embracing of eroticism and the enjoyment of such embraces be celebrated. They both believe the body and its pleasures should be celebrated as such, and not denied by any means or suppressed.

For both authors the erotic includes everything that is very personal and intimate to a person. It speaks through spirituality and sensuality, it lives in the touches and embraces of your lover, and it promotes the closeness and genuine connection between two people. In her poem, "Sex Without Love" Sharon Olds compares the loveless sexual encounter to that of ice-skaters seemingly having an intimate dance at first read, but upon further inspection the parallels to a cold, noncommittal performance become apparent. She describes their encounter as something that seems methodical, not personal or as filled with emotion as she believes it is mean to be. She describes the faces of these lovers as "faces read as steak, wine, wet as the children at birth whose mothers are going to give them away." and at this point is definitely meaning to convey the objectivity and purely physical act these two are engaging in. She believes that to truly enjoy the body one must share an experience with another, rather than look at sex mechanically or "single body alone in the universe against its own best time". She believes that sensuality belongs in the enjoyment of the use of our bodies; in the running and freedom of spirit rather than the time and measure of the race.

Both authors embrace their femininity in the full experience of their emotions, and both authors believe that sensuality, and not the denial of feeling and expression, should be included more in women's lives. They both believe that a person should share their satisfaction with another rather than use one for an objective without that person's consent (540). They agree that the true beauty in life and love are the connections one can make with the heart and mind, and not only the stimulations one can feel. Eroticism is so much more than sexuality. It is the final embrace one can have with every feeling and mental sensation one can connect with the enjoyment in one's life. Eroticism is the celebration of femininity, and the ability to love oneself with love all encompassing.