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Poems of a Penisist
“In the name of / Man, member, / and the holy fluid, / Amen,” begins Mutsuo Takahashi’s epic one-thousand-line erotic fantasy poem, “Ode,” the centerpiece of his groundbreaking collection of queer poetry, Poems of a Penisist. Takahashi’s work, reminiscent of Walt Whitman’s, is a celebration of the male body, treating homosexual desire as something sacred. Stunningly beautiful and passionate, Poems of a Penisist is one of the most important compilations of homoerotic poetry written in the twentieth century.
128 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1975
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About the author
Mutsuo Takahashi
47 books17 followersMutsuo Takahashi (高橋 睦郎) is one of the most prominent and prolific male poets, essayists, and writers of contemporary Japan, with more than three dozen collections of poetry, several works of prose, dozens books of essays, and several major literary prizes to his name. He is especially well known for his open writing about male homoeroticism. He currently lives in the seaside town of Zushi, several kilometers south of Yokohama, Japan.
Translations of five of Takahashi’s poems by Jeffrey Angles.
The PIP (Project for Innovative Poetry) Blog
After a bout of tuberculosis, Takahashi graduated from the Fukuoka University of Education, and in 1962 moved to Tokyo. For many years, he worked at an advertising company, but in the meantime, he wrote a good deal of poetry. His first book to receive national attention was Rose Tree, Fake Lovers (薔薇の木･にせの恋人たち, Bara no ki, nise no koibito-tachi?), an anthology published in 1964 that describes male-male erotic love in bold and direct language. A laudatory review from the critic Jun Etō appeared in the daily newspaper Asahi shimbun with Takahashi’s photograph—an unusual instance of a poet’s photograph included in the paper’s survey of literature.
About the same time, Takahashi sent the collection to the novelist Yukio Mishima who contacted him and offered to use his name to help promote Takahashi’s work. The two shared a close relationship and friendship that lasted until Mishima’s suicide in 1970. Other close friends Takahashi made about this time include Tatsuhiko Shibusawa who translated the Marquis de Sade into Japanese, the surreal poet Chimako Tada who shared Takahashi's interest in classical Greece, the poet Shigeo Washisu who was also interested in the classics and the existential ramifications of homoeroticism. With the latter two writers, Takahashi cooperated to create the literary journal The Symposium (饗宴, Kyōen?) named after Plato’s famous dialogue. This interest in eroticism and existentialism, in turn, is a reflection of a larger existential trend in the literature and culture of Japan during the 1960s and 1970s.
Homoeroticism remained an important them in his poetry written in free verse through the 1970s, including the long poem Ode (頌, Homeuta?), which the publisher Winston Leyland has called “the great gay poem of the 20th century.” Many of these early works have been translated into English by Hiroaki Sato and reprinted in the collection Partings at Dawn: An Anthology of Japanese Gay Literature.
About the same time, Takahashi started writing prose. In 1970, he published Twelve Views from the Distance about his early life and the novella The Sacred Promontory (聖なる岬, Sei naru misaki?) about his own erotic awakening. In 1972, he wrote A Legend of a Holy Place (聖所伝説, Seisho densetsu?), a surrealistic novella inspired by his own experiences during a forty-day trip to New York City in which Donald Richie led him through the gay, underground spots of the city.
In 1974, he released Zen’s Pilgrimage of Virtue (善の遍歴, Zen no henreki?), a homoerotic and often extremely humorous reworking of a legend of Sudhana found in the Buddhist classic Avatamsaka Sutra.
Translations of five of Takahashi’s poems by Jeffrey Angles.
The PIP (Project for Innovative Poetry) Blog
After a bout of tuberculosis, Takahashi graduated from the Fukuoka University of Education, and in 1962 moved to Tokyo. For many years, he worked at an advertising company, but in the meantime, he wrote a good deal of poetry. His first book to receive national attention was Rose Tree, Fake Lovers (薔薇の木･にせの恋人たち, Bara no ki, nise no koibito-tachi?), an anthology published in 1964 that describes male-male erotic love in bold and direct language. A laudatory review from the critic Jun Etō appeared in the daily newspaper Asahi shimbun with Takahashi’s photograph—an unusual instance of a poet’s photograph included in the paper’s survey of literature.
About the same time, Takahashi sent the collection to the novelist Yukio Mishima who contacted him and offered to use his name to help promote Takahashi’s work. The two shared a close relationship and friendship that lasted until Mishima’s suicide in 1970. Other close friends Takahashi made about this time include Tatsuhiko Shibusawa who translated the Marquis de Sade into Japanese, the surreal poet Chimako Tada who shared Takahashi's interest in classical Greece, the poet Shigeo Washisu who was also interested in the classics and the existential ramifications of homoeroticism. With the latter two writers, Takahashi cooperated to create the literary journal The Symposium (饗宴, Kyōen?) named after Plato’s famous dialogue. This interest in eroticism and existentialism, in turn, is a reflection of a larger existential trend in the literature and culture of Japan during the 1960s and 1970s.
Homoeroticism remained an important them in his poetry written in free verse through the 1970s, including the long poem Ode (頌, Homeuta?), which the publisher Winston Leyland has called “the great gay poem of the 20th century.” Many of these early works have been translated into English by Hiroaki Sato and reprinted in the collection Partings at Dawn: An Anthology of Japanese Gay Literature.
About the same time, Takahashi started writing prose. In 1970, he published Twelve Views from the Distance about his early life and the novella The Sacred Promontory (聖なる岬, Sei naru misaki?) about his own erotic awakening. In 1972, he wrote A Legend of a Holy Place (聖所伝説, Seisho densetsu?), a surrealistic novella inspired by his own experiences during a forty-day trip to New York City in which Donald Richie led him through the gay, underground spots of the city.
In 1974, he released Zen’s Pilgrimage of Virtue (善の遍歴, Zen no henreki?), a homoerotic and often extremely humorous reworking of a legend of Sudhana found in the Buddhist classic Avatamsaka Sutra.
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
May 19, 2010
These poems by Takahashi are some of the most creative, explicit homoerotic work ever written. The most famous poems, full of the jubilant joy of transgression, were reprinted in Stephen Miller's anthology _Partings at Dawn: An Anthology of Japanese Gay Literature_, but this collection contains many sensitive, sentimental works as well.
May 10, 2021
I have learned so much about myself today.
February 23, 2024
THIS BOOK.
Listen, I needed something a little less the world is ending yesterday, and when I saw this in the stack I knew this was the one and IT WAS.
Okay, so the book starts out with some poems from his first two collections, written in Takahashi's teens and early twenties. Some of them I found intensely charming in a strange way, a few of them I found baffling, and a handful reminded me strongly of Yukio Mishima's Confessions of a Mask in their mixture of homoerotic longing, violence, and Ancient Greek and other Western Classic imagery.
AND THEN WE GET TO THE ODE.
Ode is a thousand-line epic psalm to the male body. Starting with man as a whole, then wandering into some of the modes and forms of the gay community -- the movie house, the bathhouse, before returning to the male form in loving detail, with long sections for the balls, the foreskin, the sperm (just as examples.)
But! We have a thousand lines to do this in! This is no more anatomical description, but metaphor after metaphor, image packed on image packed on scent, idea, sound... It reminded me of Leaves of Grass in in the lists that go on for pages. Embracing an entire spectrum of masculinity from earthy to grisly to stately to tender.
I could go on and on, but it must be experienced to be believed, and I hope this is enough for you to have some idea of whether this book would be for you.
I have never read anything like it.
I loved it.
Listen, I needed something a little less the world is ending yesterday, and when I saw this in the stack I knew this was the one and IT WAS.
Okay, so the book starts out with some poems from his first two collections, written in Takahashi's teens and early twenties. Some of them I found intensely charming in a strange way, a few of them I found baffling, and a handful reminded me strongly of Yukio Mishima's Confessions of a Mask in their mixture of homoerotic longing, violence, and Ancient Greek and other Western Classic imagery.
AND THEN WE GET TO THE ODE.
Ode is a thousand-line epic psalm to the male body. Starting with man as a whole, then wandering into some of the modes and forms of the gay community -- the movie house, the bathhouse, before returning to the male form in loving detail, with long sections for the balls, the foreskin, the sperm (just as examples.)
But! We have a thousand lines to do this in! This is no more anatomical description, but metaphor after metaphor, image packed on image packed on scent, idea, sound... It reminded me of Leaves of Grass in in the lists that go on for pages. Embracing an entire spectrum of masculinity from earthy to grisly to stately to tender.
I could go on and on, but it must be experienced to be believed, and I hope this is enough for you to have some idea of whether this book would be for you.
I have never read anything like it.
I loved it.
July 24, 2009
Apparently difficult to find now. Includes his rapturous ode, probably one of the best poems ever written.
February 8, 2016
A brilliant homoerotic work
July 2, 2025
Promise me your Paradise
And give me a tiny, tiny happiness
A manly lover.
And give me a tiny, tiny happiness
A manly lover.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews