Erica Jong's Poem

For My Husband

You sleep in the darkness,
you with the back I love
& the gift of sleeping
through my noisy nights of poetry.
I have taken other men into my thoughts
since I met you.
I have loved parts of them.
But only you
sleep on through the darkness
like a mountain where my house is planted,
like a rock on which my temple stands,
like a great dictionary holding every word--
even some
I have never spoken.
You breathe.
The pages of your dreams are riffled
by the winds of my writing.
The pillow creases your cheek
as I cover pages.
Element in which I swim
or fly,
silent muse, backbone, companion--
it is unfashionable
to confess to marriage--
yet I feel no bondage
in this air we share.

Erica Jong’s poem, “For My Husband” just as her many other works, is lustful and provocative. However, most of her poems often controversial look at where women have been, where they are now, and where they are going as they approach the new millennium.
There were many critics about Jong's work. Many people did not feel at ease with her boldness. But there is no denying her serious intent. Jong reviews in “Fear of Fifty”, what she has fought for in her life is “the double vision that sees good and evil as flip sides of the same human coin, the integration of body and brain, sensuality and spirituality, honeyed voluptuousness and philosophical rigor - theses are the things most endangered today." Over the course of a career, Jong has sought not only to entertain, but to illuminate the needs, desires, and rights of women (while at the same time maintaining a healthy affection for men). "I'm always asked in seminars to stand for contemporary womanhood," she told the “Washington Post”. We can be sure that she does it with wit, candor, exuberance, and gusto.