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Loveroot
The poet-novelist's third collection, consists of verse messages of love, fear, anxiety, and longing to fellow writers living and dead, to the outside world, and to herself
- GenresPoetry
128 pages, Paperback
First published May 1, 1975
2 people are currently reading
71 people want to read
About the author
Erica Jong
118 books862 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.
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
February 10, 2016
I have mixed feelings about this collection of poems by Erica Jong. I have somehow collected a number of her books on my shelves over the years but this is the first of her writings that I've ever read through so far. The title of the collection is a nod to a Walt Whitman poem but Jong's poems here vary in themes. Some serve as shout-outs to her favorite writers -- Neruda (she describes Neruda as "a poet of lemons, a poet of lemony light"), Whitman, Keats, Collette, Sylvia Plath.
She writes of nature -- one poem even being an elegy to a beluga whale she read about that died while in captivity at Coney Island in 1974.
She also examines relationships (as poets often do) -- mother-daughter / familial / romantic. The romantic themes do sometimes verge on the highly sexual. She also gets into just the general experience of being a woman. If you're squeamish, I warn you now -- there are multiple references to the menstrual cycle, noticeable enough that even I got to where even I as a woman was like OKAAAY now, next topic LOL
Some of the poems had really lovely lines in them while others I just found more on the meh side. Either way, there was something to Jong's writing that I did like so, having now sampled some of her poetry, I am curious to see how some of her novels compare.
A few of my favorite snippets from this collection:
"Exhiles" : "Birth is the start of loneliness, and loneliness is the start of poetry: that seems a crude reduction of it all, but truth is often crude."
"Letter To Myselves": "You can be hurt because you care too much, because your ribs swing out like shutters & your heart glows like a night light."
"You Whom I Hoped To Reach By Writing": "My strange vocation is to be paid for my nightmares."
"Chant For An Ambivalent Lady At Implantation" (the clunky titles poets come up with sometimes!): "All his hands on your body cascading, all his hands of water making water music on your marble breasts"
"Spring X 2": "I lay down with you in imagination and ran away from you in life / The whole park was pink & green & we rode in a yellow taxi drenched with rain & my glasses were fogged with spring rain & wanting you till I ran away."
She writes of nature -- one poem even being an elegy to a beluga whale she read about that died while in captivity at Coney Island in 1974.
She also examines relationships (as poets often do) -- mother-daughter / familial / romantic. The romantic themes do sometimes verge on the highly sexual. She also gets into just the general experience of being a woman. If you're squeamish, I warn you now -- there are multiple references to the menstrual cycle, noticeable enough that even I got to where even I as a woman was like OKAAAY now, next topic LOL
Some of the poems had really lovely lines in them while others I just found more on the meh side. Either way, there was something to Jong's writing that I did like so, having now sampled some of her poetry, I am curious to see how some of her novels compare.
A few of my favorite snippets from this collection:
"Exhiles" : "Birth is the start of loneliness, and loneliness is the start of poetry: that seems a crude reduction of it all, but truth is often crude."
"Letter To Myselves": "You can be hurt because you care too much, because your ribs swing out like shutters & your heart glows like a night light."
"You Whom I Hoped To Reach By Writing": "My strange vocation is to be paid for my nightmares."
"Chant For An Ambivalent Lady At Implantation" (the clunky titles poets come up with sometimes!): "All his hands on your body cascading, all his hands of water making water music on your marble breasts"
"Spring X 2": "I lay down with you in imagination and ran away from you in life / The whole park was pink & green & we rode in a yellow taxi drenched with rain & my glasses were fogged with spring rain & wanting you till I ran away."
May 10, 2008
Loveroot is not so great. Again, if had more control over the rating system, I'd go with something more like 2.6. This book works about half of the time.
August 17, 2016
What I look for in poetry is something that is accessible and speaks to me personally. This collection is accessible but didn't touch me personally.
May 28, 2019
Jong's poetry is visceral and base and beautiful.
April 30, 2024
There's something about Erica Jong's writing that makes me pause. An elusive quality lingers through her poetry. It pulls me in while simultaneously keeps me at arms length, never fully coming into contact with the subjects of her poetry. We circle it with delicious curiosity and then it's over. I fell in love with her poetry when I was a freshman in college after reading Fear of Flying, then out of love as a senior, and now I am just curious. Beautiful and curious.
November 13, 2025
I licked my fingers after finishing this collection of deliciously raw poems
July 20, 2014
I thought that Erica Jong had a wonderful command of sound in this book. Every poem was elegant, flowing, and beautifully crafted. Why the two star rating then? Because I had serious issues with some of the content. I thought she used the "f-bomb" and the "c-word" with far too high a frequency. I don't need to see either one even once in a book, much less both, over and over. I was also very uncomfortable with the entire middle section, "In the Penile Colony", which contained overtly sexual poems of all sorts. I generally dislike sexual imagery unless I can detect a purpose, which I did not feel. I found these poems neither arousing nor deeply meaningful. The third section, "Hungering" was the best, and I thought "Tapestry, with Unicorn" was the best poem in the whole book. I would recommend this book for anyone who enjoys (or at least doesn't mind) poetry with lots of sexually explicit imagery, as the poems were very well written with a good sense of flow and sound.
October 30, 2010
Erica Jong's brilliant book of poems was a life-raft for me during a very dark time. Her words are so beautiful, I wanted to BE them. I wanted to live inside the pages of this book and soak it in. Beautiful. Strong. Empowering. Understanding. This is a book that has my heart.
February 24, 2008
for EVERY woman- especially if you like a blood red hardback that fits in your purse.
Read
April 3, 2013So I loved the first section, and then the rest was meh.
Read
January 23, 2016Funny, moving, delightful, life-changing.
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews