Love Songs for a Certain Age

By Frank Cebulski

These erotic and passionate love songs, Frank Cebulski’s eighth book of poetry, have deep echoes in the enduring myth of Eros and Psyche, as so wonderfully told in The Golden Ass of Lucius Apuleius (second century CE), the main classical source for their story, where Apuleius also recounts his own metamorphoses, first into an ass and then his miraculous retransformation by the Goddess Isis into human form again. These poems therefore speak profoundly of the transformative power of love and erotic passion in its many guises. Each song, in fact, relates actual events of love and love making and the magic of sexual encounters where the physical touches and enflames the psyche.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Sep 27, 2018
• ISBN: 9781546260080

Frank Cebulski

Frank Cebulski is a San Francisco poet, translator, and art and book reviewer. His books of poetry are: "Corm" (Berkeley: Oyez, 1974), "Mediterranean Sonnets" (Berkeley: North Atlantic Books, 1988), "Concrete Visual Shaped" (Berkeley: Light-Gravity Press, 2006), "Only Emotion Endures" (AuthorHouse, 2009), "The Fifth World" (AuthorHouse, 2010), "Lonely Nights & Wild Women" (AuthorHouse, 2011), "Love Songs for a Certain Age" (AuthorHouse, 2017), and "The Triumph of Death at Pisa and Premonitions," He is founder and owner of Light-Gravity Press, where he published various broadsides of his concrete, visual and shaped poems. He has translated poems from Latin and French, including "Eros Raving" (AuthorHouse, 2016) a translation of a complete book of poems by Denis Roche. He studied physics and English at the University of Colorado, Boulder, and British and American literature at the universities of Cincinnati, California at Berkeley, and Kings College, London. He was Bancroft Fellow at the University of California, Berkeley, and Fulbright Lecturer to France at the University of Metz. He was for thirty years contributing editor for "Artweek" and has written art criticism for "Art in America," "Sculpture,"and Examiner.com. He was the first Director of Technical and Professional Writing at San Francisco State University. To learn more about him and his poetry, visit his website at www.cebulski.net.

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© 2018 Frank Cebulski. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Cover image and drawings of nudes ©2015 Louis Romero, courtesy of Estate of Louis Romero. All rights reserved.

Back cover image ©2018 Frank Cebulski. All rights reserved.

Published by AuthorHouse 09/24/2018

ISBN: 978-1-5462-6010-3 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5462-6009-7 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-5462-6008-0 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018910991

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Acknowledgements

Thanks to all my friends, past and present, living and dead, who have supported and encouraged my poetry, my art, and my art and literary criticism: my wife Julie Peterson, my sons Caedmon, Tristan, and Whitman Cebulski, Bonnie Bogue, Chris Brown, Daniel Caput, Marc Chénetier, Robert Duncan, Judith Dunham, Janie Ellison, Dennis Evans, Greg Evans, Helmut Fischer, Tom Foolery, Wallace Fowlie, Richard Grossinger, Robert Hawley, Seamus Heaney, Sam and Jo Hernandez, Jess, Hubert Juin, Bette Kirby, Frank Kirby, Andrzej Kopcewicz, David and Devin Krause, Marie and Jerzy Kuncewicz, Tom Marioni, Ken McKellar, Judy Martin Meyer, Thomas K. Meyer, Olga Membrive-Husson, Czeslaw Milosz, David Prior, Roland Reiss, Denis Roche, Celia Russo, Pete Sabin, Frank Sampson, Marta Sienicka, Daniel Strong, Jan Szczepanski, Laurie Urbscheit-Duesing, who was the first to publish one of my poems, Shane and Sally Weare, Reed and Karen Winbourn, and David Wyatt, who first wrote about my poetry.

The introductory poem in this collection, Prelude, The Liability of Images: Our Eros and Psyche, was first published as Sonnet LXXVIII in my Mediterranean Sonnets (North Atlantic Books, 1988), where I dedicated it to Robert Duncan. The last poem, Envoi, my translation of Copa Surica, Syrian Innkeeper, is a valediction to this collection of love poems, which I originally translated in 2002. This