Heavenly Sex is a book of poems about varieties of love, sacred and profane, particularly as experienced by a young man who has recently lost his mother. It is, at the same time, as noted by Robert Bly, a celebration of one of the more unusual father-son relationships. In one poem the son observes his distraught father as he seeks to win the affections of a beautiful new companion. Claiming to quote scripture, the father says, "A woman's breasts are the Ten Commandments, the two tablets of God's law. One for what God allows ...
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Heavenly Sex is a book of poems about varieties of love, sacred and profane, particularly as experienced by a young man who has recently lost his mother. It is, at the same time, as noted by Robert Bly, a celebration of one of the more unusual father-son relationships. In one poem the son observes his distraught father as he seeks to win the affections of a beautiful new companion. Claiming to quote scripture, the father says, "A woman's breasts are the Ten Commandments, the two tablets of God's law. One for what God allows, one for what He doesn't." "The way we make love," he goes on, "is the way God will be with us." A self-taught Russian immigrant, drawing on a variety of ancient mystical doctrines, the father emerges as the book's central figure. As critic William Minor observed, Sward presents "abstruse or complex concerns in a manner that is refreshingly straightforward, even simple" at the same time he manages to tell a story, "providing a continuous narrative thread, yet remaining totally lyrical at the same time." Heavenly Sex is, in addition, a book about family and offers vivid demonstrations of the ways in which one's parents, grandparents, and one's children, live on inside one. Part II is made up of a selection of Sward's, until recently, out-of-print animal poems, "Uncle Dog: the Poet at 9," "Scarlet the Parrot" and others. "Report from the Front," the final section, is more political and satirical in tone, as illustrated by "Fellatio Pinocchio, 1950s-1960s" and the tour de force, "45 Poets Named Robert."
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