Last of the LHMP Tag Essays: Poetry

The purpose of tags is to make information relatively easy to find. The topics covered under “people/event tags” are historical persons, authors, written works, and other specific events, organizations, or works that are the subject of the research and publications covered by the Project. This essay is intended to explain briefly how the “people/event” tags are being used.

The second purpose is to provide a tag list that the visitor can use to explore the site. The number of tags used in the project, and the organization into four different categories, doesn’t lend itself to a traditional tag-cloud. The Place and Time Period tags each have a single essay. The Event/Person and Misc. Tags will be covered in thematic groups in multiple essays due to the larger number. I’m planning six essays for the People/Event Tags, each covering a general category with several subcategories.

• Non-Fiction Sources and General Authors
• Historic Crossdressing and Passing/Transgender People
• Historic People Relevant for Emotional, Affectionate, or Sexual Relationships
• Literary Examples of Crossdressing or Gender Disguise
• Literary Examples of Emotional, Affectionate, or Sexual Relationships
• Poetry Expressing Romantic or Sexual Relationships

This present essay covers the sixth category and includes the following:

• Poetry describing love between women, or poets commonly using this theme
• Poetry describing sex between women, or poets commonly using this theme

Obviously these categories are quite fuzzy at the edges, and I've classified individual people according to what seems the most noteworthy aspect of their lives. Every story is far more complex than a single classification. These are only for the purposes of exploring general themes.

Poetry: Love Between Women

• Amy Levy - 19th century English writer who authored several poems expressing the author’s desire for other women.
• Cloe to Artimesa  - Anonymous 18th century English poem that favorably compares love between women to heterosexual love.
• Elegy for a Lady enamoured of another Lady (poem) (Pontus de Tyard) - 16th century French poem by a male author but written from the viewpoint of a woman who is confused and upset by having fallen in love with another woman.
• Eliza Mary Hamilton - 19th century English poet whose work expresses admiration between women with erotic overtones.
• Elizabeth Stuart Phelps - 19th century American author whose work depicted women challenging traditional roles. A poem expressing her beliefs about the afterlife is presented in the voice of a woman mourning a female friend with the implication they had been lovers.
• Friendship between Ephelia and Ardelia (Anne Finch Countess Winchilsea) - 18th century poem celebrating romantic friendship between women.
• Goblin Market (Christina Rossetti) - 19th century English poem that depicts a close emotionally supportive relationship between two women (identified as sisters) that includes erotically suggestive language.
• Juana Inés de la Cruz - 17th century Spanish poet who uses the language and imagery of romantic love and desire in poems addressed to her patroness.
• Katherine Philips - 17th century English poet whose work expresses deep emotional attachments between women that could reasonably be classified as erotic, though not overtly sexual.
• Llangollen Vale (Anna Seward) - 18th century English poetic collection depicting romantic friendship between women.
• Love and Friendship: A Pastoral (Elizabeth Singer Rowe) - 17th century English poem celebrating romantic friendship that equates it with heterosexual love.
• Maitland Quarto Manuscript - 16th century Scottish manuscript that includes an anonymous poem in the voice of a woman who has fallen in love with another woman and desires to change sex in order to marry her.
• Mary Matilda Betham - 18th century English poet who wrote on themes of romantic love between women.
• Na Maria (Bieiris de Romans) - 13th century French poem, the sole surviving work of the author, that expresses romantic love between women in the conventions of Courtly Love.
• Nossis - Greek poet of the 3rd century BCE whose work is inspired by Sappho and expresses erotic feelings for the goddess Aphrodite.
• On a Lady Named Beloved (Anne de Rohan) - 17th century French poem that invokes the poetry of Sappho in the context of love between women, possibly the first post-classical poem to do so.
• On the Death of my Dear Friend and Play-fellow (Jane Barker) - 17th century English poem that expresses romantic love between women.
• On the Friendship Betwixt Two Ladies (Edmund Waller) - 17th century English poem that expresses a man’s frustration that two women scorn male suitors because the love each other.
• On the Soft and Gentle Motions of Eudora (attributed Anne Killigrew) - 17th century English poem that expresses the author’s sensual appreciation for another woman’s beauty.
• Pauline de Simiane - 18th century French poet whose work celebrated romantic friendship between women with an erotic undertone.
• Rosalind and Helen (Percy Bysshe Shelley) - 19th century English poem that celebrates a romantic friendship between two women.
• Sappho to Philaenis (John Donne) - 16th century English poem in the voice of Sappho with a positive take on her homoerotic desires.
• To George Sand: A Desire (Elizabeth Barrett Browning) - 19th century English poem evoking romantic and erotic imagery, particularly interesting for who it was directed to.
• To the Fair Clorinda (Aphra Behn) - 17th century English poem expressing the poet’s romantic attraction to another woman.
• Two Beauties Tender Lovers (Denis Sanguin de Saint-Pavin) - 17th century English poem expressing the male author’s frustration at the romantic bond between two women that excludes him.
• William Wordsworth - 19th century English poet who included themes of admiration for women’s romantic friendships.

Poetry: Sex Between Women

• Adah Isaacs Menken - 19th century American poet and actress, a friend of George Sand while living in Paris. Her poems include themes of devotion and eroticism between women.
• Al-Aghani (Abu Faraj Al-Asfahani) - 10th century Arabic collection of lyrics and poetry that includes several works referirng to sex between women. (Full title “Kitab Al-Aghani” or “Book of Songs”.)
• An Epistle from SIgnora F-a to a Lady - An erotic poem (Italian, 1727) from one lady to another.
• Asklepiades - Classical Greek author of an epigram implying a lesbian relationship.
• Charles Baudelaire - 19th century French author whose poetry included themes of decadent lesbian sexuality.
• Dialogue between Sappho and Ninon de l’Enclose in the Shades - 18th century anonymous English poem featuring Sappho in a context of lesbian sexuality.
• Epigram on the Court Pucelle (Ben Jonson) - 17th century English poem that visciously satirizes a female intellectual at court as  a “tribade”.
• Epigrams (Martial) - 1st century Roman poet whose satirical epigrams include three describing women who have sex with women.
• Les Fleurs du Mal (Les Lesbiennes) (Charles Baudelaire) - 19th century French collection of poetry originally titled “Les Lesbiennes”, dealing with images of decadent lesbian sexuality.
• Livre des Manières (Étienne de Fougères) - 12th century French poem cataloging various social classes that contains an unusual section describing women who have sex with women in various metaphoric images.
• Monsieur Thing’s Origin or Seignor D---o’s Adventures in Britain - 18th century English pornographic poem about women using dildoes with each other.
• Scenes of Sapphic Love (Paul Verlaine) - 19th century French poem cycle depicting sex between women.
• Songs of Bilitis (Pierre Louÿs) - 19th century French poetry cycle from the voice of a fictitious member of Sappho’s circle. The sexual relations depicted fall in the “decadent” movement.
• Tegernsee ms - 12th century German manuscript that includes a love poem addressed by one nun to another that includes descriptions of erotic activity.
• The Adulteress  - 18th century anonymous English satirical poem about sex between women, notable for the unambiguous use of “Tommy” as slang for a lesbian.
• The Game at Flats: A Song (Nicholas Rowe) - 18th century English satirical song about sex between women. It may be the earliest clear documentation of the slang term “game of flats”.
• The Lesbian Hell (Aleister Crowley) - A 19th century  English poem in the “lesbian decadence” tradition.
• The Sappho-an - 18th century anonymous English satirical poem discussing Sappho and the origin of lesbianism.
• The Toast (William King) - 18th century English satirical poem depicting a oersonal enemy as part of a network of lesbians.
• To Mr. J.D. (T.W.) - 17th century English poem addressed from one man to another, but depicting their two poetic muses as engaging in lesbian sex.
• Tribades or Lesbia (François de Maynard) - 17th century French poem satirizing an unnamed woman as participating in sex with other women.
• Venus’s Reply - 17th century anonymous English poem humorously suggesting that the prevalence of male homosexuality was due to women turning their sexual desires to each other. Notable for use of the slang term “game of flats” and the use of “odd” to imply homosexuality.