What do you think?
Rate this book
Becoming Light: Poems New and Selected
A courageous and enthralling collection of poems by Fear of Flying author Erica Jong celebrating life, art, sex, and womanhoodseven lives,then webecome light . . .Erica Jong’s novels are fearless and passionate. So, too, is her poetry. Though renowned—and sometimes vilified—for her unabashedly sensual fiction, the author considers herself a poet first and foremost. “It was my poetry,” Jong writes, “that kept me sane, that kept me whole, that kept me alive.”Becoming Light contains poems personally selected by Jong from her complete oeuvre of acclaimed published works—poems of love, sex, witches, gods, and demons; word-songs brimming with wit, heart, bitterness, sorrow, and truth. From the earliest poetic musings of a brilliant young artist first trying out her wings to later works born of experience and maturity, unpublished before appearing in this collection, Jong’s pure artistry shines like a beacon as she writes, fearlessly and passionately, about being a woman, about being alive.This ebook features an illustrated biography of Erica Jong including rare photos and never-before-seen documents from the author’s personal collection.
- GenresPoetry
402 pages, Kindle Edition
First published October 1, 1991
10 people are currently reading
295 people want to read
About the author
Erica Jong
117 books866 followersErica 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, six 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, and the New York Times Book Review.
In her groundbreaking first novel, Fear of Flying (which has sold twenty-six million copies 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. 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. Erica’s latest book, Sugar in My Bowl, is an anthology of women writing about sex, has been recently released in paperback.
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.
Her works have appeared all over the world and are as popular in Eastern Europe, Japan, China, and other Asian countries as they have been in the United States and Western Europe. She has lectured, taught and read her work all over the world.
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 2007, 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 US, 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.
In her groundbreaking first novel, Fear of Flying (which has sold twenty-six million copies 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. 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. Erica’s latest book, Sugar in My Bowl, is an anthology of women writing about sex, has been recently released in paperback.
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.
Her works have appeared all over the world and are as popular in Eastern Europe, Japan, China, and other Asian countries as they have been in the United States and Western Europe. She has lectured, taught and read her work all over the world.
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 2007, 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 US, 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.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews
April 30, 2016
People who live by the sea
understand eternity.
They copy the curves of the waves,
their hearts beat with the tides,
& the saltiness of their blood
corresponds with the sea.
They know that the house of flesh
is only a sandcastle
built on the shore,
that skin breaks
under the waves
like sand under the soles
of the first walker on the beach
when the tide recedes.
Each of us walks there once,
watching the bubbles
rise up through the sand
like ascending souls,
tracing the line of the foam,
drawing our index fingers
along the horizon
pointing home.
understand eternity.
They copy the curves of the waves,
their hearts beat with the tides,
& the saltiness of their blood
corresponds with the sea.
They know that the house of flesh
is only a sandcastle
built on the shore,
that skin breaks
under the waves
like sand under the soles
of the first walker on the beach
when the tide recedes.
Each of us walks there once,
watching the bubbles
rise up through the sand
like ascending souls,
tracing the line of the foam,
drawing our index fingers
along the horizon
pointing home.
November 18, 2021
There is an audio version of this title, with Erica Jong reading her own work, available for rent and download in the San Antonio Public Library's system. It's sort of a nice experience -- Jong sounds just like I would have imagined, earthy, funny, predictably egocentric, in the empathic way good teachers always are. But she's very chatty, and the story of her life running behind her poems ultimately detracts from the music she's made. The poems are prosaic just because of delivery.
It was a revelation, then, to look at the whole volume, and to read it off the page (or on my phone, anyway) away from Jong's audio tracks. The audio only covers a small portion of the total poems, and most of those of a single type, short-lined verse aphorisms, tiny portraits of experience:
The skinny line poem doesn't come alive aloud, for the reader is stuck between leaving long pauses and just following the enjambment suggested by the syntax. It needs the negative space left on the page to do its work. This negative space charges up aphoristic endings which otherwise fall flat in audio reading:
I also tried reading along as the audio played, listening to the whole track again a second time this way, and the visual definitely highlighted, or somehow created, spiritual energy to Jong's reading that I had not seen before.
I think I would truly love to do a writing workshop with Erica Jong, the wise earth mother goddess of the American middle class. The worst part of the audio edition of her work is just that she leaves out, not only many of her poems, but many types of poems, falsely leaving an impression that that skinny aphorism-verse is her only trick. Jong can write wonderfully atmospheric formal poems of experience, as in "Eveningsong at Bellosguardo:"
Sometimes she gives us concrete wit, visual in nature, reminiscent of e. e. cummings or William Carlos Williams:
There's also the epic "House-Hunting in the Bicentennial Year," a kind of forgiving, middle-class answer to Ginsberg's "Howl:"
Yes, I like this stanza for the cats.
Jong is also poet of reading. I love the longer lines of her "To James Boswell in London," for example:
The raw honesty here is enmeshed by the long lines fraught between form and feeling. And this is just one of many poems on the reading self, which I of course adore. Jong is Boswell, Keats, Neruda. She imbues with Byron, Shelley, Keats, and Mary Wollstonecraft, and Anne Sexton. She mourns and honors all the women poets passed before their time, like Marina Tsvetayeva, Anna Wickham and Sylvia Plath.
By her own admission, Jong's poems are profoundly full of feminine imagery, like roundness, pregnancy, fruits, babies, wombs, caves, menstrual blood, red poppies and bougainvilleas. Etc. But there are also penises that stiffen and soften, by turns. She writes sex well, and shows us how to be a feminist without hating men; in fact, she's is as enthralled as Henry Miller with the "Land of Fuck,"
It was a revelation, then, to look at the whole volume, and to read it off the page (or on my phone, anyway) away from Jong's audio tracks. The audio only covers a small portion of the total poems, and most of those of a single type, short-lined verse aphorisms, tiny portraits of experience:
The old self
like a dybbuk
clutching at my heel.
She wants to come back.
The skinny line poem doesn't come alive aloud, for the reader is stuck between leaving long pauses and just following the enjambment suggested by the syntax. It needs the negative space left on the page to do its work. This negative space charges up aphoristic endings which otherwise fall flat in audio reading:
If only we could all admit
that none of us belongs here,
that all of us are Martians,
and that our bedtimes
are always
too early
or
too late.
I also tried reading along as the audio played, listening to the whole track again a second time this way, and the visual definitely highlighted, or somehow created, spiritual energy to Jong's reading that I had not seen before.
I think I would truly love to do a writing workshop with Erica Jong, the wise earth mother goddess of the American middle class. The worst part of the audio edition of her work is just that she leaves out, not only many of her poems, but many types of poems, falsely leaving an impression that that skinny aphorism-verse is her only trick. Jong can write wonderfully atmospheric formal poems of experience, as in "Eveningsong at Bellosguardo:"
Tonight the unplucked lemons almost gleam.
And with their legs, the crickets harmonize.
The trees are rustling in uncertain hymn,
and unseen birds contribute trembling cries.
When did the summer censor choiring things?
We know the blood is brutal though it sings.
Sometimes she gives us concrete wit, visual in nature, reminiscent of e. e. cummings or William Carlos Williams:
2
O note the two round holes in onion.
There's also the epic "House-Hunting in the Bicentennial Year," a kind of forgiving, middle-class answer to Ginsberg's "Howl:"
America,
we have met your brokers.
They are fiftyish ladies in hairnets,
or fiftyish ladies in blue and silver like mink coats
or flirty fiftyish ladies
getting blonder every winter.
They tout your federal brickwork
& your random hand-pegged floorboards.
Like witches, they advertise your gingerbread houses,
your "high ranches," your split-levels, your Victorians, your widows' walks,
your whaling towns,
instead of wailing walls,
your Yankee New England spunk,
your hospitality, your tax rates,
your school systems,
with or without busing,
your friendly dogs
& philosophical cats.
Yes, I like this stanza for the cats.
Jong is also poet of reading. I love the longer lines of her "To James Boswell in London," for example:
I consort with books while you see men, haunt the shelves
where your London lies buried. Your book once opened,
I become the ghost, a pale phantom who delves...
A man should never live more than he can record
you say; but what if he records more than he lives?
The raw honesty here is enmeshed by the long lines fraught between form and feeling. And this is just one of many poems on the reading self, which I of course adore. Jong is Boswell, Keats, Neruda. She imbues with Byron, Shelley, Keats, and Mary Wollstonecraft, and Anne Sexton. She mourns and honors all the women poets passed before their time, like Marina Tsvetayeva, Anna Wickham and Sylvia Plath.
By her own admission, Jong's poems are profoundly full of feminine imagery, like roundness, pregnancy, fruits, babies, wombs, caves, menstrual blood, red poppies and bougainvilleas. Etc. But there are also penises that stiffen and soften, by turns. She writes sex well, and shows us how to be a feminist without hating men; in fact, she's is as enthralled as Henry Miller with the "Land of Fuck,"
carrying bug-eyedOne thinks of William S. Burroughs. Jong contains multitudes. There's even one poem in Italian, which my Italian friend says is cute and witty and shows great facility with the language. I read most of this book on morning walks to school, finding that Jong sets up a dreamy, distant feeling that truly does help with the stress of my job. Maybe it's poetry more generally that does the trick?
exhibitionists
and drooling
adolescent boys with perpetual
hard-ons,
the students of Fuck
go to spill their lives away
and the semen pools
under their luminous chairs.
May 21, 2017
This is a compilation of poems from past collections, so it's not new material from start to finish. Also, it was published several years ago, just as fair warning. Still, for fans of Erica Jong's poetry (of which I'm one), it's a must-buy. Not a book to read in one sitting. I would read one or two poems a day and savor them. An enjoyable read, definitely worth the time and effort I put into it.
August 18, 2016
Besides the witch poems everything is phenomenal and this deserves a five
read-in-2019
January 31, 2023I don't remember if this happened in the book but the explanation of what inspired each poem was off-putting.
September 28, 2007
I went out and got this book because of a record. I was on college radio in 1995, and we got in this record from Vanessa Daou called "Zipless." I'll be honest, the only reason I checked it out is because she's on the cover and she's hot. But in the end, I really liked it. Her husband provides all the jazzy-soul-electro type music, and she sings the songs. The thing is that the songs are all taken from Erica Jong poems. I loved "The Long Tunnel of Wanting You," and that sealed it for me. I was determined to go out and find some Erica Jong poetry.
Despite the fact that Jong is pretty much a feminist, I really do like her work. There's nothing wrong with being a feminist, I just feel that it makes it harder to identify with her work. But I try.
Despite the fact that Jong is pretty much a feminist, I really do like her work. There's nothing wrong with being a feminist, I just feel that it makes it harder to identify with her work. But I try.
August 4, 2012
I love Erica Jong, and this collection of poetry does not disappoint. Jong's poetry is smart, sassy and shocking and are essentially about love: love of poetry, love of men, love of her life as a woman, and love of nature. She's outspoken and direct, she's unashamed, sensual and thought provoking. I've had this collection for over 10 years and still on a rainly afternoon, I will occasionnally pick it up and flip through it. Each time I do, I find something new, something honest, and something funny.
November 19, 2009
After I managed to speak with her on the phone for an essay I was writing during my last English class my senior year at EIU, she sent me a paperback of this book, though I had already owned the hard copy. Each time I read a poem from here, I think of when I first wrote to her about possibly letting me interview her for my college essay and her kindness in reaching out to me. We have remained in contact ever since, and I try to see her each time she is in Chicago for a book tour.
March 14, 2018
I love Erica Jong’s poetry. I’ve read her poems since high school, starting with hard covers of the original editions from the library. I was very pleased to see a Kindle edition of this collection. Unfortunately, there were many distracting typos that were not in the original poems. Jong’s work deserves better editing than this.
June 8, 2011
This book discovered me when i was 16. It informed my life & my poetry & continues to do so. I have a signed copy that i cherish very much. When I met Erica I cried like a baby & thanked her for her work. Corny but true. Buy this book; you will NOT be sorry.
January 31, 2014
"To X. (With Ephemeral Kisses)" was tacked to a wall of mine for quite a long time. It resonates pain from a certain time in my life, losing a dear friend and resenting my love for her all the same. Such a beautiful book of poems that I will never ever let go of.
June 3, 2016
She's an absolutely unique poet. Haunting, original, with a strong classical background, both high and low simultaneously, and yet easily read. I find her poetry to be far superior to her prose. I wish Narcissus, Photographer was included in this collection. I love this collection.
March 7, 2008
One of my favorite poetry books ever. She is able to illicit images and emotions through her words and thoughts. Probably some of the most sultry words in the most classy way...
May 17, 2020
Love her writing, one of my faves. A lot of her poems hit home for me. Huge fan in big way, oxox to Erica Jong!
January 5, 2013
Erica Jong's poetry is gorgeous. I've read many of her novels but it is her poetic side that I adore most of all.
November 9, 2016
A good read
August 17, 2016
Compilation of previous books and overview of all her poetry. Covers several books I didn't have with new poetry to me that was comfortable reading.
Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews