Erica Jong

Erica Jong Poems

After the first astounding rush,
after the weeks at the lake,
the crystal, the clouds, the water lapping the rocks,
the snow breaking under our boots like skin,
...

I was sick of being a woman,
sick of the pain,
the irrelevant detail of sex,
my own concavity
...

I want to understand the steep thing
that climbs ladders in your throat.
I can't make sense of you.
Everywhere I look you're there--
...

You gave me the child
that seamed my belly
& stitched up my life.
...

Dear Colette,
I want to write to you
about being a woman
for that is what you write to me.
...

For Naomi Lazard

Sometimes I can't wait until I look like Nadezhda Mandelstam.
-- Naomi Lazard
...

Sometimes the poem
doesn't want to come;
it hides from the poet
like a playful cat
...

On the first night
of the full moon,
the primeval sack of ocean
broke,
...

I sit at home
at my desk alone
as I used to do
on many sunday afternoons
...

You call me
courageous,
I who grew up
gnawing on books,
...

The decorum of fire...
-- Pablo Neruda

We learned the decorum of fire,
...

12.

Smoke, it is all smoke
in the throat of eternity. . . .
For centuries, the air was full of witches
Whistling up chimneys
...

Now, moving in, cartons on the floor,
the radio playing to bare walls,
picture hooks left stranded
in the unsoiled squares where paintings were,
...

Because she wants to touch him,
she moves away.
Because she wants to talk to him,
she keeps silent.
...

Spring, rainbows,
ordinary miracles
about which
nothing new can be said.
...

Here, at the end of the world,
the flowers bleed
as if they were hearts,
the hearts ooze a darkness
...

People who live by the sea
understand eternity.
They copy the curves of the waves,
their hearts beat with the tides,
...

In Autumn,
as in Spring,
the sap flows,
the sap wishes to race
...

You open to me
a little,
then grow afraid
and close again,
...

The lover in these poems
is me;
the doctor,
Love.
...

Erica Jong Biography

Erica Jong is an American author and teacher best known for her fiction and poetry. Career A 1963 graduate of Barnard College, and with an M.A. in 18th century English Literature from Columbia University (1965), Jong is best known for her first novel, Fear of Flying (1973), which created a sensation with its frank treatment of a woman's sexual desires. Although it contains many sexual elements, the book is mainly the account of a young, hypersensitive woman, in her late twenties, trying to find who she is and where she is going. It contains many psychological, humorous, descriptive elements, and rich cultural and literary references. The book tries to answer the many conflicts arising in women in today's world, of womanhood, femininity, love, one's quest for freedom and purpose. Personal Life Jong was born and grew up in New York City. She is the middle daughter of Seymour Mann (né Nathan Weisman, died 2004), a drummer turned businessman of Polish Jewish ancestry who owned a gifts and home accessories company known as "one of the world's most acclaimed makers of collectible porcelain dolls". Born in England of a Russian immigrant family, her mother, Eda Mirsky (born 1911), was a painter and textile designer who also designed dolls for her husband's company. Jong has an elder sister, Suzanna, who married Lebanese businessman Arthur Daou, and a younger sister, Claudia, a social worker who married Gideon S. Oberweger (the chief executive officer of Seymour Mann Inc. until his death in 2006). Among her nephews is Peter Daou, who writes "The Daou Report" for salon.com and was one-half of the dance-music group The Daou. Jong has been married four times. Her first two marriages, to college sweetheart Michael Werthman and to Allan Jong, a Chinese American psychiatrist, share many similarities to those of the narrator described in Fear of Flying.[citation needed] Her third husband was Jonathan Fast, a novelist and social work educator, and son of novelist Howard Fast (this marriage was described in How to Save Your Own Life and Parachutes and Kisses). She has a daughter from her third marriage, Molly Jong-Fast. Jong is now married to Kenneth David Burrows , a New York litigation attorney. In the late 1990s Jong wrote an article about her current marriage in the magazine Talk. Jong lived for three years, 1966–69, in Heidelberg, Germany, with her second husband, while he was stationed at an army base there. She was a frequent visitor to Venice, and wrote about that city in her novel, Shylock's Daughter. Jong is mentioned in the Bob Dylan song "Highlands." In 2007, her literary archive was acquired by Columbia University in New York City. Awards Poetry Magazine's Bess Hokin Prize (1971) Sigmund Freud Award For Literature (1975) United Nations Award For Excellence In Literature (1998) Deauville Award For Literary Excellence In France)

The Best Poem Of Erica Jong

After The Earthquake

After the first astounding rush,
after the weeks at the lake,
the crystal, the clouds, the water lapping the rocks,
the snow breaking under our boots like skin,
& the long mornings in bed. . .

After the tangos in the kitchen,
& our eyes fixed on each other at dinner,
as if we would eat with our lids,
as if we would swallow each other. . .

I find you still
here beside me in bed,
(while my pen scratches the pad
& your skin glows as you read)
& my whole life so mellowed & changed

that at times I cannot remember
the crimp in my heart that brought me to you,
the pain of a marriage like an old ache,
a husband like an arthritic knuckle.

Here, living with you,
love is still the only subject that matters.
I open to you like a flowering wound,
or a trough in the sea filled with dreaming fish,
or a steaming chasm of earth
split by a major quake.

You changed the topography.
Where valleys were,
there are now mountains.
Where deserts were,
there now are seas.

We rub each other,
but we do not wear away.

The sand gets finer
& our skins turn silk.

Erica Jong Comments

Mariessa Retuya 16 September 2012

Hi Ms. Erica Jong good evening.. I'm Mariessa Retuya from Philippines a 3rd year student at University of Cebu Lapu-lapu and Mandaue taking up Bachelor of Science in Secondary Education specializing English and one of my course for this semester is Literary Criticism. In line with this, I would like to ask your permission to allow me to use your poem entitled WRINKLES as a material on the said course because I found your poem interesting and nice, and this would be a great help for us students. Your possible response with this message would be of great help, thank you and god speed ;)

4 1 Reply
Mariessa Retuya 16 September 2012

Hi Ms. Erica Jong good evening.. I'm Mariessa Retuya from Philippines a 3rd year student at University of Cebu Lapu-lapu and Mandaue taking up Bachelor of Science in Secondary Education specializing English and one of my course for this semester is Literary Criticism. In line with this, I would like to ask your permission to allow me to use your poem entitled WRINKLES as a material on the said course because I found your poem interesting and nice, and this would be a great help for us students. Your possible response with this message would be of great help, thank you and god speed ;)

1 1 Reply
Elinoar rozen 18 January 2018

Looking for the poem Cornucopia by Erica jong

1 0 Reply
Pete Levine 09 May 2021

I've got a signed copy I can send you

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M Asim Nehal 16 February 2019

Great thinker and fantastic quote: ''Everyone has talent. What is rare is the courage to follow the talent to the dark place where it leads.''

1 0 Reply
Sylvia Frances Chan 05 June 2020

PLEASE, NEVER FORGET THE NEW ATTITUDE and HABITS since corona-virus PANDEMIC has become a constant own country's ENDEMIC. So OUR WEAPON IS those HABITS and ATTITUDES I have written above. MERCI BEAUCOUP - THANK YOU SO MUCH - TERIMA KASIH- DANK U WEL - DANKEN SIE - SYAY - SYAY MAKASIH - this is noted by © SYLVIA FRANCES CHAN - ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. GRAZIAS - GRAZIE

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Sylvia Frances Chan 05 June 2020

ANOTHER SEQUEL: The NEW attitude and habit must be for the next days, weeks months and years: ALWAYS DESINFECT HANDS BEFORE EAT (morn-noon-night) ALWAYS TAKE A SHOWER (NOT A BATH! !) EVERY SINGLE DAY! ALWAYS DESINFECT BEFORE AND AFTER BEING TO THE TOILET.............KEEP THAT 1,5 METER DISTANCE from the other, not your own husband (!)

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Sylvia Frances Chan 05 June 2020

SORRY, without an aneasthesiolog, a surgeon cannot do operations even it be on one single patient. I have written this, yes you ARE an AUTHOR, not a writer as I have scribbled down in my recent page, this message is written by me during corona quarantaine cyclus coming to its very end, corona-virus is no pandemic anymore, this most aggressive virus has become every country's OWN ENDEMIC. Always desinfect.

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Sylvia Frances Chan 05 June 2020

THE SEQUEL: I reside in The Netherlands married to a medical specialist, an urologist Dr. Tan, a Dutch Chinese surgeon, very accurate, have three sons, the youngest, a medical specialist, aneasthesiolog, most important job, since WITHOUT an aneasthesiolog, a surgeon cannot do his job one single patient. Merci beaucoup for the read. SFC

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Sylvia Frances Chan 05 June 2020

ERICA JONG YOU ARE SIMPLY SENSATIONAL, YOU ARE AN AWESOME APPEARANCE, YOU ARE MAGIC MADNESS YOU ARE STILL MY MOST LOVED LIVING POETESS WHOM I ADORE AND LOVE, I am just like you, but I am original born in BATAVIA (that is JAKARTA at present) , Please see the sequel. Thank YOU.

1 0 Reply

Erica Jong Quotes

Where is Hollywood located? Chiefly between the ears. In that part of the American brain lately vacated by God.

Jealousy is all the fun you think they had.

To name oneself is the first act of both the poet and the revolutionary. When we take away the right to an individual name, we symbolically take away the right to be an individual. Immigration officials did this to refugees; husbands routinely do it to wives.

Every country gets the circus it deserves. Spain gets bullfights. Italy gets the Catholic Church. America gets Hollywood.

Everyone has talent. What is rare is the courage to follow the talent to the dark place where it leads.

Perhaps all artists were, in a sense, housewives: tenders of the earth household.

If sex and creativity are often seen by dictators as subversive activities, it's because they lead to the knowledge that you own your own body (and with it your own voice), and that's the most revolutionary insight of all.

Men and women, women and men. It will never work.

Men have always detested women's gossip because they suspect the truth: their measurements are being taken and compared.

Gossip is the opiate of the oppressed.

In a bad marriage, friends are the invisible glue. If we have enough friends, we may go on for years, intending to leave, talking about leaving—instead of actually getting up and leaving.

Friends love misery, in fact. Sometimes, especially if we are too lucky or too successful or too pretty, our misery is the only thing that endears us to our friends.

Advice is what we ask for when we already know the answer but wish we didn't.

The only difference between men and women is that women are able to create new little human beings in their bodies while simultaneously writing books, driving tractors, working in offices, planting crops—in general, doing everything men do.

My generation had Doris Day as a role model, then Gloria Steinem—then Princess Diana. We are the most confused generation.

There is still the feeling that women's writing is a lesser class of writing, that ... what goes on in the nursery or the bedroom is not as important as what goes on in the battlefield, ... that what women know about is a less category of knowledge.

A baby is a full time job for three adults. Nobody tells you that when you're pregnant, or you'd probably jump off a bridge. Nobody tells you how all-consuming it is to be a mother—how reading goes out the window and thinking too.

Solitude is un-American.

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