Of the world’s ancient poetry, that of classical India was the most
vividly erotic uninhibited, tender, sad, and joyous by turns. The poems
sound as if they might have been written yesterday, although the period
covered ranges from roughly 200 CE until about the eleventh century.
"The Cane Groves
is a brilliant selection of refined, provocative, shivery-lovely poems.
It has a generous bibliography and an astute introduction that
illuminates both poetics and scholarship with its insights into wealth
of nature imagery, the implicit watershed consciousness, and a sense of
the Wild as Tryst. What a gem of a book! It’s the best gathering of
Indian short poems yet.” Gary Snyder
"A teacher of Sanskrit at the
Naropa Institute in Colorado, Schelling judiciously selects from a
wealth of secular and courtly poems on sex and provides translations (no
originals) he assures us are literal. The first section draws from the
vernacular erotic poems in the Sattasai (or 'Seven Hundred Poems')
collected by King Hala in the second century, and are full of rural
imagery of sex by rivers and in fields, with attention to positions. The
second section of poems from the Sanskrit includes more women's voices,
and a more sophisticated sensibility, but follows the same
self-contained lyric style, with candid phrases (itchy wombs and 'tits
sagging'). Though few of these outdoorsy romances come with names of
poets attached, Schelling provides an appendix on what we do know about
some of them, and also adds a most useful annotated bibliography."—Kirkus Review
90 pages. Paperback.