Love Comes First is Erica Jong’s long-awaited return to her poetic roots!
Here is Erica Jong’s first book of all-new poems in more than a decade. Known and beloved for Fear of Flying and her many other books of fiction, nonfiction and poetry, Jong expounds on the most eternal, universal topic of all: love. Using brilliant imagery and intense metaphorical insights to paint vivid pictures of love, and all that comes with it—the heights of elation, the depths of sorrow—she covers every inch of the spectrum with her vibrant and insightful words. Perfect for wedding showers, lovers of all ages, and Valentine’s Day, Jong’s trademark trailblazing style and remarkable ability to bridge the gap between literary and popular poetry makes Love Comes First an instant classic. Discover— or discover yet again—the brilliance of Erica Jong.
Revered and reviled for her smart, sexy novels about the power of women, including her imaginative tribute to the first woman poet, Sappho’s Leap (2003), Jong returns to poetry after a long hiatus. Expansive in her prose, she is pithy in her plumy poems, each word a gleaming drop of water, each line concise yet voluptuous. Her tone is teasing as she asks quintessential questions: “As for love— / why is it never enough / to save us?” Jong is funny, knowing, and mischievous as she critiques Edith Wharton and Henry James and turns the word risotto into a love spell. She offers a cycle of lyrics to Aphrodite and muses over the mysteries of sleep and death. She is warrior brave in piercing poems about what it means to be Jewish and in poems about our reckless destruction of the living earth. Jong is feline: curled up and purring on one page, leaping on another, claws and fangs bared. Sensual, wise, and gracefully artistic, she knows of what she writes. “To live is to be / uncertain. / Certainty comes / at the end.” --Donna Seaman
About the Author
Erica Jong is the author of nineteen books of poetry, fiction, and memoir, including Fear of Flying, which has more than 18 million copies in print worldwide. Her most recent essays have appeared in The New York Times Book Review, and she is a frequent guest on television talk shows. Currently working on a novel featuring Isadora Wing—the heroine of Fear of Flying—as a woman of a certain age, Erica and her lawyer husband live in New York City and Connecticut. Her daughter, Molly Jong-Fast, is also an author.
Erica Jong left a Ph.D. program at Columbia to write her ground-breaking novel Fear of Flying, published in 1973. Jong is the author of numerous award-winning books of poetry and novels including Fanny, How to Save YourOwn Life, Parachutes and Kisses, Any Woman’s Blues, and the forthcoming Sappho’s Leap. She is also the author of the memoir Fear of Fifty. She lives in New York City and Connecticut.
ERICA JONG (Bio used www.ericajong.com) Erica Jong--novelist, poet, and essayist--has consistently used her craft to help provide women with a powerful and rational voice in forging a feminist consciousness. She has published 21 books, including eight novels, seven volumes of poetry, six books of non-fiction and numerous articles in magazines and newspapers such as The New York Times, The Sunday Times of London, Elle, Vogue, The New York Times Book Review and The Wall Street Journal. In her groundbreaking first novel, Fear of Flying (20 million in print around the world in more than forty languages), she introduced Isadora Wing, who also plays a central part in three subsequent novels--How to Save Your Own Life, Parachutes and Kisses, and Any Woman's Blues. In her three historical novels--Fanny, Shylock's Daughter, and Sappho's Leap--she demonstrates her mastery of eighteenth-century British literature, the verses of Shakespeare, and ancient Greek lyric, respectively. Erica's latest book, a memoir of her life as a writer, Seducing the Demon: Writing for My Life, came out in March 2006. It was a national bestseller in the US and many other countries. A graduate of Barnard College and Columbia University's Graduate Faculties where she received her M.A. in 18th Century English Literature, Erica Jong also attended Columbia's graduate writing program where she studied poetry with Stanley Kunitz and Mark Strand. In 2008, continuing her long-standing relationship with the university, a large collection of Erica's archival material was acquired by Columbia University's Rare Book & Manuscript Library, where it will be available to graduate and undergraduate students. Ms. Jong plans to teach master classes at Columbia and also advise the Rare Book Library on the acquisition of other women writers' archives.
Calling herself "a defrocked academic," Ms. Jong has partly returned to her roots as a scholar. She has taught at Ben Gurion University in Israel, Bennington College in the U.S., Breadloaf Writers' Conference in Vermont and many other distinguished writing programs and universities. She loves to teach and lecture, though her skill in these areas has sometimes crowded her writing projects. "As long as I am communicating the gift of literature, I'm happy," Jong says. A poet at heart, Ms. Jong believes that words can save the world.
Known for her commitment to women's rights, authors' rights and free expression, Ms. Jong is a frequent lecturer in the U.S. and abroad. She served as president of The Authors' Guild from 1991 to 1993 and still serves on the Board. She established a program for young writers at her alma mater, Barnard College. The Erica Mann Jong Writing Center at Barnard teaches students the art of peer tutoring and editing. Erica Jong was honored with the United Nations Award for Excellence in Literature. She has also received Poetry magazine's Bess Hokin Prize, also won by W.S. Merwin and Sylvia Plath. In France, she received the Deauville Award for Literary Excellence and in Italy, she received the Sigmund Freud Award for Literature. The City University of New York awarded Ms. Jong an honorary PhD at the College of Staten Island. In June 2009, Erica won the first Fernanda Pivano Prize for Literature in Italy.
Currently Ms. Jong is working on a novel featuring "a woman of a certain age." Its working title is secret. Fear of Flying is in preparation as a BBC mini-series. Her first anthology, Sugar In My Bowl: Real Women Write About Real Sex, will be published on June 14th, 2011. Erica Jong lives in New York City and Weston, CT with her husband, attorney Ken Burrows, and standard poodle, Belinda Barkowitz. Her daughter, Molly Jong-Fast, is also a writer.
"Sometimes the poem,doesn't want to come,it hides like a playful cat who has run under the house and lurks among slugs roots and spider's eyes - left so long out in the sun that it is dank with the breath of a troll king" from the poem Poetry Cat my favorite one
Let me start off by saying I hate her famous book,Fear for Flying, its so gross.
Luckilly, she has matured into a much better person.
I read her book Shylock's daughter many years ago for a book festival in high school and it was really special. I currently read her blog on Huffpo and saw her in New York at the Y, and thought she was pretty fantastic.
This is like reading a fairytale,she weaves the words together like a multicolored scarf.
Its like little slices of her life stuffed into poetry. She deals with every thing in her poems,Italy,nature, annoyances of technology, her very unique view as god as a woman and even alchoholism. You can see where's she been and what kind of person she is ,a very warm,funny energetic,who is too brave and wild for her own good.If you are depressed about the economy on anything else, please read this, it will make you feel like a brand new person.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
I love Erica Jong's poetry and I'm sure that Love Comes First is a delightful book. However, the kindle version of this is "First Comes Love" by Whitney Lyles. The sample version is the same. Don't buy the kindle version!
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
I was disappointed that the book was so dark, It did not lift my spirits and the title is a long way from how you would feel having spent time reading it. I purchased the book for inspiration in preparation for giving a speech at a happy event - an event that love was coming first at and I was forced to put the book down as I getting nothing from it.
To add insult to injury the copy sent on by Amazon.com was defectively bound.
Bottom drawer stuff.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
