Touching Fire: Erotic Writings by Women [Hardcover]

Louise Thornton (Author, Editor), Jan Sturtevant (Editor), Amber Coverdale Sumrall (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 1989

This celebration of the erotic--both the emotional and sexual aspects--contains a mixture of prose and poetry written by Margaret Atwood, Alice Munro, Marge Piercy, Tess Gallagher, Maxine Kumin and a number of others.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

As one of the prose poems in here has it--Judith W. Steinbergh's wonderfully yeasty "May Day"--this is both "hot and earthy stew, epicurean soufflé" Touching Fire is a collection of verse and story from authors as diverse as Deena Metzger,Margaret Atwood,Tess Gallagher, Zora Neale Hurston, and more. The introduction takes great pains to insist that this collection is erotic, not pornographic, a distinction that has grown fuzzier over time. The book would still be banned in plenty of places; yet in its joy and celebration, it belongs in a picnic hamper when heading out for the trees with the one you love.

From Publishers Weekly

In an effort to extol contemporary women's diverse sexuality without being pornographic, the editors of this anthology have made sex a drag. The poems, novel excerpts and short fictions cover a wide range of erotic experiences--gay, straight, solitary--enjoyed by protagonists of varied race, age and body type. The sex is oral, genital, rectal, even bestial--a bull, a porpoise and a cat are featured in separate stories. Licking occurs frequently, most often in California; otherwise the writing is mixed in both subject and quality; the best are pieces by Kageyama, Olds, Ginghofer, Laux, Brant, Luria-Sukenick; the worst are amateurish. The whole, meant to celebrate "the inherent and life-affirming place of eros in women's lives," is as satisfying as a series of one-night stands.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 222 pages
• Publisher: Carroll & Graf Pub; 1St Edition edition (November 1989)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0881845272
• ISBN-13: 978-0881845273
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.3 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,590,923 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4.0 out of 5 stars I wish someone could confirm!, September 15, 2005

By 

M. Paczynska - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Touching Fire: Erotic Writings by Women (Hardcover)

I think I bought this book (like the above reviewer) in high school. Then over the years, I lent it out and it's gone. But I believe there to haave been one poem in it entitled "I am horny". Is this the same book? The TOC information is not here. If it is, than this not-well-known poem expresses a feeling that I honestly don't think I've ever seen in print before. Brilliant.

1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A decent erotica collection, November 2, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: Touching Fire: Erotic Writings by Women (Paperback)

On one of those nights as a broke high school senior, I found this book in the nearby bookstore where my friend and I were hanging out for the evening. I think I read most of the book standing by the shelf where I had found it, and even though I didn't have much more money than that, I shelled out the bucks for this book. It was very eye-opening for me... if you think you have a bit of the erotic adventurer in you but are new to erotic writings, you might consider giving this one a try. It runs the range of different scenarios, and there is poetry as well as prose, which sets this collection apart from many other erotic collections of recent years. Give it a try, and see what you think!