Naked Among the Gods

Two nude men wrestling

James Ward

1819

I’ve always been fascinated by how the Ancient Greeks embraced the naked body—especially the male form—not as something shameful, but as something worthy of admiration, celebration, and even reverence. To modern eyes, the sheer number of nude statues and painted vases from the ancient world might seem excessive or erotic (and sometimes, they are), but to the Greeks, nudity wasn’t just about sex. It was about excellence, identity, citizenship, and being fully human.

They didn’t just tolerate public nudity in certain settings—they expected it. Athletes competed fully nude in the Olympic Games, not as a rebellious act, but as a deeply held tradition. The word gymnasium itself comes from the Greek gymnos(γυμνός), meaning “naked.” Young men trained in the nude not just to strengthen their bodies, but to shape their minds and characters. The gymnasium was a civic and educational space where nudity signaled discipline, honesty, and a commitment to becoming the best version of oneself. Nudity wasn’t a distraction—it was part of the lesson.

Kritios Boy

And that reverence for the human form found its most lasting legacy in art. One of the earliest and most striking examples is the Kritios Boy (c. 480 BCE), often seen as the turning point in Greek sculpture. Unlike the stiff, idealized youth of earlier kouros figures, the Kritios Boy is relaxed, confident, and lifelike. There’s no armor, no toga, no fig leaf—just a serene, nude adolescent standing in gentle contrapposto. He feels both real and ideal.

Polykleito’s Doryphoros

Another favorite of mine is Polykleitos’s Doryphoros (Spear Bearer), a statue designed to embody the perfect male proportions. Here again, the nudity isn’t incidental—it’s essential. You can’t demonstrate bodily harmony if the body is covered. Nudity, in this case, is a kind of visual philosophy. Then there’s the Discobolus (Discus Thrower) by Myron, which captures a man’s body in mid-motion, muscles taut, entirely nude, perfectly balanced between tension and grace. His nudity heightens the athletic drama and draws the viewer into that moment of perfection.

Myron’s Discobolus

It wasn’t just in sculpture. The Greeks captured daily life, training scenes, and intimate gatherings on painted pottery, particularly in the red-figure vase tradition. These vases, often used for wine drinking at symposia, show men wrestling, bathing, reclining with lovers, and engaging in philosophical dialogue—always nude or mostly nude. One amphora I saw during a museum visit showed a trainer instructing a youth at the gymnasium, both fully exposed, their nudity treated as entirely normal, even expected. Another vase depicts two young men sharing a kiss in a quiet, domestic scene—tender, not titillating. These glimpses into Greek life are reminders that the naked body wasn’t always about arousal. Sometimes, it was about presence—being fully seen, fully known.

Terracotta Panathenaic prize amphora

Attributed to the Euphiletos Painter

ca. 530 BCE

This attitude feels almost alien in a country like ours. Here in America, nudity is still largely taboo, wrapped up in Puritanical baggage and frequently equated with obscenity or indecency. Even in Vermont, where public nudity is technically legal in most cases (as long as you're not lewd or explicitly sexual), you rarely see anyone baring it all outside of a secluded swim spot or a clothing-optional festival. There’s something quietly telling about that—how the law might allow something, but cultural discomfort still keeps it hidden.

Terracotta skyphos (deep drinking cup)

Attributed to the Theseus Painter

ca. 500 BCE

And yet, I can’t help but wonder: what would it mean if we took a more Ancient Greek view of nudity—not as something to be feared or fetishized, but as something natural, honest, even virtuous?

A few years ago, I attended a gay men’s retreat at Easton Mountain in upstate New York, and it gave me a real-world glimpse of what the Greeks might have understood intuitively. Nudity there wasn’t shocking or scandalous—it was completely natural. The pool was always full of naked bodies, sunlit and unselfconscious. I don’t think I ever saw a bathing suit near it. The sauna and hot tub were clothing-free zones by default, and during some of the workshops—body painting, liberation exercises, guided meditations—nudity was gently encouraged as a way to connect more honestly with ourselves and others. It wasn’t about showing off. It was about showing up. I left feeling more open, more grounded in my body, and more aware of how rare that kind of freedom really is.

It might mean raising a generation less ashamed of their bodies. It might mean allowing ourselves to admire beauty without reducing it to sex. It might mean being more comfortable in our own skin, literally and figuratively. While the Greeks didn’t extend this attitude equally—women were mostly excluded from these public displays of nudity—there’s something liberating in imagining a culture where both women and men could be nude in non-sexualized spaces without fear or judgment.

As a gay man, I think often about how visibility and embodiment intersect. For many of us, our relationship to our bodies has been shaped by shame, secrecy, and desires we were never meant to name. What if we had grown up seeing the male body—our bodies—as something to admire without guilt? What if nudity wasn’t something to hide or automatically sexualize, but something that simply was? Would we be more honest? Kinder to ourselves? More connected to one another? Might we even find ourselves a little closer to the divine—just as the Ancient Greeks did, in their reverence for the human form and their gods?

Nudity in Vermont

I don't think anyone would disagree that Vermont is an interesting state. There are many interesting facts about Vermont. On is that, in Vermont, it's legal to be naked in public, but it's illegal to get naked there. Vermonters can let it all hang out outdoors — provided "it" was already hanging out when they left their home, car or place of employment. The actual shedding of garments al fresco exposes the perpetrator not only to the elements but also to the risk of prosecution for lewd and lascivious conduct. 

Legally, the distinction between garden-variety nude sunbathing and raincoat-clad flashing has much to do with what offends the public's "sense of decency, propriety and morality." That standard was established in 1846, when the Vermont Supreme Court was asked to decide, in State v. Millard, whether one J. Millard of Orleans County was guilty of lewd and lascivious conduct after he repeatedly "exposed his private parts" to several people "with intent to incite in their minds lewd and unchaste desires and inclinations." Prudently, the court determined that Millard wasn't a nudist but a pervert.

The legal threshold for bringing an L&L charge for public nudity, or even the lesser one of disorderly conduct, has evolved over time. In the early 1970s, just as hippies and back-to-the-landers were arriving in the Green Mountain State, the state police asked then-Chittenden County state's attorney Patrick Leahy to weigh in on what Leahy called the "time-honored practice of unclothed swimming, known colloquially as 'skinny-dipping.'" After one overzealous prosecutor sparked public outrage by jailing a man for swimming au naturel in a river, the cops expressed confusion as to the appropriate response to birthday-suit bathers. In response, Leahy penned a somewhat tongue-in-cheek missive to "any law-enforcement officer so lacking in other criminal matters to investigate, so as to have time to investigate this currently popular subject."

"I was originally disinclined to slow the crime-fighting operation of the Chittenden County State's Attorney's Office long enough to issue a memorandum of such minuscule moment," Leahy wrote in his July 7, 1971, memo. But after "researching the issue" — mostly by consulting colleagues and reviewing "old Norman Rockwell paintings thoughtfully resurrected by the ACLU, showing such activities taking place allegedly in Vermont" — Leahy determined that "most Vermonters I've talked to have engaged in such scandalous activity at some time in their life (with the exception of a couple I didn't believe, who claimed to have done so in May in Vermont)."

Ultimately, Leahy advised that while nude bathing was unacceptable in certain public areas — such as Burlington's North Beach, where local ordinance specifically bans it — it was fine on private land out of public view. As for semi-secluded areas, Leahy determined that nudity is acceptable "if no member of the public present is offended, no disorderly conduct has taken place." But if said nakedness doth offend, Leahy advised the cops to ask the skinny-dippers to get dressed or face a ticket.

In later years, that standard for police involvement eroded to the point where the mere public airing of one's privates no longer qualified as a potential violation. Throughout the 1980s and '90s, several parks and beaches around Vermont became hangouts for those who enjoy in-the-buff recreation. One such spot is the Ledges, a clothing-optional swimming hole on Wilmington's Harriman Reservoir. In the late 1990s, as the Ledges grew in popularity, it began attracting unwanted scrutiny, drawing complaints about discarded condoms, sex in the woods and the occasional "bush-whacker," aka public masturbator.

Though such incidents were rare, in June 2001 the Wilmington Selectboard decided to just say no. In a four-to-one vote, the board enacted the Wilmington Public Indecency Ordinance. It was spearheaded by the aptly named Margaret Frost, a grandmother who owned a cabin on the reservoir and described herself as affronted by the full-frontal nudity on view. According to an October 2002 New Yorker story about the dustup, Frost's cabin was about 200 yards from the nearest full Monty, leading one to suppose she had a fine pair of binoculars for viewing the, um, wildlife. The following year, a citizens' group called Friends of the Ledges drew on support from several nationwide "naturist" groups and rallied enough public support to overturn the ban. Today, the Ledges remains one of the best-known clothing-optional parks in New England.

A more successful effort to strip away the right to bare asses was mounted in Brattleboro in August 2006, after some local residents complained about teens publicly airing their privates downtown. A year later, the town selectboard passed a no-nudity ordinance, which drew international media coverage.

Nevertheless, by the mid-2000s, mass displays of public nakedness were, if not commonplace in Vermont, at least tolerated. Beginning in 1996, the University of Vermont supported its students' annual Naked Bike Ride, held each semester at midnight on the last day of classes. UVM officially sanctioned the rides until November 2011, when then-interim president John Bramley sent out a campus-wide email saying the school would no longer pony up the $17,000 needed to cover barricades, lights, private security guards, campus police and other event costs.

In his message, Bramley cited safety concerns resulting from past rides, including incidences of sexual assault, overconsumption of alcohol and bicycle-related injuries, which presumably included excessive chafing. Despite Bramley's bum steer, the nude ride still happens, with participation contingent on the temperature.

Source: WTF: Why Is Public Nudity Legal in Vermont But Public Disrobing Isn't?

Once You Snap, You Can't Go Back

Monday, I wrote about how Millennials are doing their best to hide their nudity in the locker rooms, but on the flip side, they are all too willing to trade naked selfies with one another, be it through texts, snapchat, or various other ways.  A growing numbers of youngsters are swapping naked selfies.  When I was teaching one of the first things that the computer teacher taught was that once an image is uploaded online, it is there forever. Kids may think they can delete it or that a SnapChat is only there for a few seconds, but once there, someone can always find it if they know where to look.

As a teacher, I heard a lot of students talking when they didn't know I was listening, or didn't care that I was listening. One of the things I heard a lot was that so and so sent a naked selfie on SnapChat or they would talk about other students sending often naked or revealing pictures of themselves in text. It was happening earlier and earlier. I'd heard of this with kids as young as fifth grade.

When these Millennials get to college, they are even freer about sending nude selfies. Take a look on Twitter any day and at all the "Anon" accounts and there are constantly headless pictures of nude or nearly nude guys. I have no doubt that it is the same with women, but I don't particularly want to see that. Anon Twitter accounts will often show their face with these pics for a limited time and then delete them, but the picture is already out there. 

The same is true with webcams. With sites like Chaturbate and Chatroulettle, people do all sorts of things for others to see, often showing their bodies but not their face. I guess this is the big difference, they don't mind showing off to others as long as they don't show their face. Others though don't have a problem showing their face, and even when they don't show their face, most everyone knows their friends SnapChat name, so whether it shows their face or not, their peers know who it is and they are showing off what they are hiding in the locker rooms.

Celebrities and non-celebrities alike often have no problem showing their nude butts, especially men (women it often comes down to their breasts), but butts have become so commonly shared that they are almost not considered nudity anymore. Let's face it, mooning has been a thing for high school and college students for many, many years. It is the penis that is most hidden, and celebrities with particularly large ones will often allow themselves to have very brief frontal nude scenes or they "allow" their own nude selfies to be leaked online. It is always claimed to be an invasion of privacy, but once you take those pictures or videos of yourself, you have to realize that the possibility of it being leaked online is quite high.

The point that I am trying to make is that live and in person Millennials don't want to show off their bodies and they hide behind their towels in the locker room, but these same guys who do the towel dance will send out naked selfies to all their friends later that day. While certainly not everyone, or probably even a majority, send naked selfies, a large number of Millennials do. While SnapChats, tweets, texts, and the like might be contained with just a few people, often those they hide from in the locker room, all you need to do is check out a dating app to see more dick pics than you might ever want to. Granted, dating sites are a different beast than all the others, but it shows that they don't mind showing off the "goods" as long as a face isn't attached or if it will get them laid.

I think that nudity is probably less an issue for gay men than straight men, but it is more of a body conscious issue with gay men.  However, the SnapChat and texting phenomenon that I heard so much about as a teacher was with guys and girls (mostly guys) sending out pictures of themselves to both genders. It was a joke, at least that's the way they saw it. Of course, like the celebrities who have their pictures leaked, there are always people who are proud of their goods and have no problem sending out dick pics. I had one incident when I was a teacher of a kid whipping out his penis to a girl in class. From what I was told, for a small guy he was quite large and quite proud of his size. In another such incident, the guy claimed that he'd been scratching his balls when it just flopped out when he removed his hand. Both instances were ridiculous, but the point is they had something they wanted to show. 

Not all guys are that brazen. Many, if they can get away with it, will post dick pics online anonymously to get a response and see how they measure up. Without the more free nudity in locker rooms, guys don't necessarily know the vast array of penis sizes. Even when there was more nudity, I don't think many understood the difference between growers and showers, because that is a secret you only find out with an erect penis. It is one of the advantages to being a gay man, we get to see the penis at all stages from flaccid to erect.

I have a feeling that the selfie is here to stay. With all things people will get more and more extreme with the selfie and the headless nude shot will become ever more common, while the towel dance will continue in the locker rooms. Privacy it seems is something that is only desired in live interaction, but behind a camera, privacy means very little as long as you can hide your face.

Locker Rooms

Early in my blog, I did a post called "Naked Male Camaraderie," which has been the most popular post on this blog. A friend recently shared a New York Times titled "Men’s Locker Room Designers Take Pity on Naked Millennials." One of the things I talked about in my previously mentioned blog post was that guys these days don't like being naked in front of each other, which was part of this NYT article. In the article, it states:

But gyms are still unable to provide the one thing younger men in particular seem to really want: a way for them to shower and change without actually being nude.

Each day, thousands upon thousands of men in locker rooms nationwide struggle to put on their underwear while still covered chastely in shower towels, like horrible breathless arthropods molting into something tender-skinned. They writhe, still moist, into fresh clothes.

If you've been in a locker room recently, you know how sad and true this is. When I was in grad school, I used to frequent the gym there. In the locker room they had the gang showers (which was supposedly a major gay hook up area), three private showers, and a sauna. I never saw anyone use the group showers unless they kept a swimsuit on and most guys kept a towel on in the sauna, the only exception being Asian guys. Except for the swimmers who'd shower in their swim trunks the guys who wore speedos tended not to have a problem with being fully nude. So with the exception of swimmers wearing speedos and Asian guys in the sauna, most other guys did the towel dance. 

According to the NYT article, this is because:

Showering after gym class in high school became virtually extinct in the ’90s. And if Manhattan’s high-end gyms weren’t riddled with ab-laden models or Europeans (or both), there would be few heterosexuals under 40 who have spent any naked time with other men.

A generation ago, when most schools mandated showers, a teacher would typically monitor students and hand out towels, making sure that proper hygiene was observed. In schools with pools, students were sometimes required to swim naked, and teachers would conduct inspections for cleanliness that schools today would not dare allow, whether because of greater respect for children or greater fear of lawsuits.

In a striking measure of changed sensibilities in school and society, showering after physical education class, once an almost military ritual, has become virtually extinct. This is beginning to change, especially with athletes in schools, as health officials are increasingly warning that not showering after gym class leads to MRSA infections, the potentially deadly staphylococcus infection that is resistant to most antibiotics. The Center for Disease Control (CDC) has practical advice on preventing staph infections. Showering right after exercise is at the top of the list. 

If showering can help prevent a deadly disease from spreading to school children, why aren't more schools making showers mandatory? There are several reasons, which seem as varied as insecurities about body image, heightened sexual awareness, and a lack of time in a busy school schedule. The lack of showers in schools leads to a shyness about bodies that is virtually nonexistent in older generations. Old men seem to have no problem walking around locker rooms naked but young men do.

In March 2015, Men's Health had an article about locker room etiquette called "Are You the Gym Locker Room A**hole?" in which they outline their do's and don't's of locker room etiquette. Here's the problem with this article, they asked a woman about male locker room etiquette. What does a woman know about men's locker rooms? (No offense to the women who read this blog.) Two of the things she warns against are nudity and conversations in the locker rooms. Really? According to her, men should not be nude in the locker room nor should men talk to one another. I find that utterly ridiculous.

Nudity in America is so puritanical that it's nearly nonexistent. The NYT article makes some interesting observations about what gyms are doing to attract more members. The main thing is providing more privacy. Men are afraid to see each other naked. They are afraid they won't measure up, whether that is with whether they are a shower or a grower or whether they are just insecure about the way their body looks as a whole. Men need not fear being naked in front of one another.

#FreeTheBacon

Gratuitous female nudity is pretty much expected in films and TV shows these days, and haven't we all had enough of that. Kevin Bacon's apparently has had enough of it. Bacon thinks it's time to give male actors a chance to #FreeTheBacon. (And by bacon, he means, "your wiener, your balls and your butt.”) And what better way to campaign for more male nudity than with a super serious (mock) PSA. 

"In so many films and TV shows, we see gratuitous female nudity, and it's not OK ... Well, it's OK, but it's not fair to actresses and it's not fair to actors because we want to be naked too," he says to the camera. "Gentlemen, it's time to free the bacon." Because, after all, it boils down to one thing, and Bacon hits the nail right on the head: "This is an issue of gender equality."

Even though Bacon wasn't being serious, he makes a good point. The problem is we all know the real reasons why men don't go full frontal.  Many, but not enough, will show their butt, but few will show their penis.  Kevin Bacon went full frontal in Wild Things, but most full frontal nudity in movies is in independent films or gay films.  Let's face it though, most men are growers not showers.  Very rarely do you see an actor going full frontal when he has a small penis, most of the time, the actor is well endowed.  The movie industry is also a male dominated industry and straight men don't care about seeing another man's penis, or at least they don’t admit to it.

Most often when men see another man's penis, it is in porn, and we all know those are porn penises, not real life.  Male porn actors are in porn because they want to show off what they have. (I know there are other reasons too, but they wouldn't do it if they didn't want to be an exhibitionist.) Porn gives me an unreal expectation about what a normal sized penis is.  On average, a flaccid penis is on average 3.6” long, while a erect penis is 5.2” long.  When it comes to circumference, a flaccid penis is about 3.7” around, and the erect penis is on average 4.6” around.  But if you compared that to porn, the flaccid penis, if you ever see it, looks to be around 4-5” long while erect penis is 7-9” long.

When Lenny Kravitz had a wardrobe malfunction the other day in Sweden, he did nothing to help show the average size penis, but yet did continue the stereotype that black men are nicely hung. (Truth is I'd have to say that myth is largely true from my experiences, just saying.) by the way, I happen to like Lenny’s pubic piercing. It's pretty hot. (NSFW link)

But my point is, men shouldn't be so ashamed to show their penis.  Of course there is a time and place for everything, but as I said the other day about the show “Hunting Season,” male nudity is common in intimate settings.  Men need to quit doing the towel dance in locker rooms and be proud of what they have, big or small.  We need to see male nudity normalized in films, and quite frankly, we have gratuitous female nudity, and we need more gratuitous male nudity.

Moment of Zen: College Football

The college football season begins today.  I can't wait to see how my team does this year.  We didn't win a game last year, but we have a new coach this year.

Reasons to Survive November

Reasons to Survive November

November like a train wreck—
as if a locomotive made of cold
had hurtled out of Canada
and crashed into a million trees,
flaming the leaves, setting the woods on fire.

The sky is a thick, cold gauze—
but there's a soup special at the Waffle House downtown,
and the Jack Parsons show is up at the museum,
full of luminous red barns.

—Or maybe I'll visit beautiful Donna,
the kickboxing queen from Santa Fe,
and roll around in her foldout bed.

I know there are some people out there
who think I am supposed to end up
                in a room by myself

with a gun and a bottle full of hate,
a locked door and my slack mouth open
          like a disconnected phone.

But I hate those people back
from the core of my donkey soul
and the hatred makes me strong
and my survival is their failure,

and my happiness would kill them
so I shove joy like a knife
into my own heart over and over

and I force myself toward pleasure,
and I love this November life
where I run like a train
deeper and deeper
into the land of my enemies.

"Reasons to Survive November," Tony Hoagland, from What Narcissism Means to Me (Graywolf Press).

 

The Ancient Olympics

When I took my first history class in college, I did a research project on the Ancient Olympics. I had always been fascinated with the thought of athletes competing in the nude, but I also was in by the Summer Olympics that year, which were being held in Atlanta. My family and I actually went to the Olympics that year since it was close by and had a great time. I was thinking today about doing another history post and I was thinking about all the conversation we have been having about circumcision, and the idea of the Ancient Olympics came to me.

One of the things I learned during that research project on the Ancient Olympics is that men were not allowed to compete if they were circumcised, which meant that during that time Greek Jews were not allowed to compete in the Ancient Olympics. I also learned that in order to protect their penis during wrestling matches and other contact sports, the men would tie a string around the tip of their foreskin enclosing their glans, thus keeping them safe. The kynodesme was tied tightly around the part of the foreskin that extended beyond the glans. The kynodesme could then either be attached to a waist band to expose the scrotum, or tied to the base of the penis so that the penis appeared to curl upwards.

The ancient Olympics were rather different from the modern Games. There were fewer events, and only free men who spoke Greek could compete, instead of athletes from any country. Also, the games were always held at Olympia instead of moving around to different sites every time.

Like our Olympics, though, winning athletes were heroes who put their home towns on the map. One young Athenian nobleman defended his political reputation by mentioning how he entered seven chariots in the Olympic chariot-race. This high number of entries made both the aristocrat and Athens look very wealthy and powerful.

There are numerous myths about how the Olympics began. One myth says that the guardians of the infant god Zeus held the first footrace, or that Zeus himself started the Games to celebrate his victory over his father Cronus for control of the world. Another tradition states that after the Greek hero Pelops won a chariot race against King Oenomaus to marry Oenomaus's daughter Hippodamia, he established the Games.

Athletic games also were an important part of many religious festivals from early on in ancient Greek culture. In the Iliad, the famous warrior Achilles holds games as part of the funeral services for his best friend Patroclus. The events in them include a chariot race, a footrace, a discus match, boxing and wrestling.

The footrace was the sole event for the first 13 Olympiads. Over time, the Greeks added longer footraces, and separate events. The pentathlon and wrestling events were the first new sports to be added, in the 18th Olympiad.

Click on any of the event names to see a description of a particular sport:

• Boxing
  
• Equestrian events
  • Chariot racing
    
  • Riding
• Pankration
  
• Pentathlon
  • Discus
    
  • Javelin
    
  • Jump
    
  • Running
    
  • Wrestling
• Running
  
• Wrestling

The victorious olive branch. The Ancient Olympic Games didn’t have any medals or prizes. Winners of the competitions won olive wreaths, branches, as well as woolen ribbons. The victors returned home as heroes – and got showered with gifts by their fellow citizens.
Here are two videos the History Channel did about the Ancient Olympics. Too bad, they have them wearing modesty pouches.

By the way, for those interested, here is an explanation of women’s role in the Ancient Olympics:
Married women were banned at the Ancient Olympics on the penalty of death. The laws dictated that any adult married woman caught entering the Olympic grounds would be hurled to her death from a cliff! Maidens, however, could watch (probably to encourage gettin’ it on later). But this didn’t mean that the women were left out: they had their own games, which took place during Heraea, a festival worshipping the goddess Hera. The sport? Running – on a track that is 1/6th shorter than the length of a man’s track on the account that a woman’s stride is 1/6th shorter than that of a man’s! The female victors at the Heraea Games actually got better prizes: in addition to olive wreaths, they also got meat from an ox slaughtered for the patron deity on behalf of all participants! Overall, young girls in Ancient Greece weren’t encouraged to be athletes – with a notable exception of Spartan girls. The Spartans believed that athletic women would breed strong warriors, so they trained girls alongside boys in sports. In Sparta, girls also competed in the nude or wearing skimpy outfits, and boys were allowed to watch.
Another side note, Spartan marriage rituals are quite fascinating, if any one is interested I will do a straight post about Spartan sexuality and the marriage rituals. It will have some about gay sex, these were the Spartans after all.

Moment of Zen: The Olympics

Moment of Zen: Ten Joys of Summer

Sleeping In...

I will try to do another post later today, but right now I am going back to sleep.  TTYL.

"Afternoon" by Philip Gladstone

Ah! Sun-flower

BY WILLIAM BLAKE

Ah Sun-flower! weary of time,

Who countest the steps of the Sun:

Seeking after that sweet golden clime

Where the traveller's journey is done;

Where the Youth pined away with desire,

And the pale Virgin shrouded in snow

Arise from their graves and aspire

Where my Sun-flower wishes to go.

"Ah Sunflower" is a poem written by the English poet William Blake. It was published as part of his collection Songs of Experience in 1794. Ed Sanders of The Fugs set the poem to music and recorded it on The Fugs First Album in 1965. For the passing of the 2nd millennium British composer Jonathan Doveset the text of "Ah, Sunflower" and two other poems by Blake ("Invocation" and "The Narrow Bud Opens Her Beauties To The Sun") in his piece "The Passing of the Year" (2000), a song cycle for double chorus and piano. In 2002 the Canadian sisters Kate and Anna McGarrigle wanted to record Ed Sanders' setting in French; they asked Philippe Tatartcheff to translate the poem, only to find the words no longer scanned with the tune. So they composed a new tune which accommodated both languages. That appeared the following year on their album La vache qui pleure in both English and French recordings. (From Wikipedia)

"Male Nudes with Sunflowers" by Sheri Larsen

While reading Where the Heart Beats by Kay Larson (see my post Where the Heart Beats), I came across an interesting passage about Allen Ginsberg, who was a longtime fan of William Blake.  In his Harlem apartment in 1948, Ginsberg was masturbating while reciting the above poem, but "the poem's elusive heart was not revealing itself."  Then he heard a voice, which he believed was either Blake or God from the "Ancient of Days" intoning their words and revealing the meaning of these words.  According to Larson, Ginsberg saw the solidity of the world seem to flicker and go transparent. In an interview in 1995, Ginsberg stated, "And I was living (in 1948) in Harlem, East Harlem, New York, on the sixth floor of a tenement. There was a lot of theology books around, in an apartment that I had rented from a theology student-friend, so I was reading a lot of Plato's Phaedrus, St John of the Cross...and (William) Blake. And I had the sudden... reading "The Sick Rose" and "The Sunflower", I had the odd sensation of hearing Blake's voice outside of my own body, a voice really not too much unlike my own when my voice is centered in my sternum, maybe a latent projection of my own physiology, but, in any case, a surprise, maybe a hallucination, you can call it, hearing it in the room, Blake reciting it, or some very ancient voice of the Ancient of Days reciting, "Ah Sunflower..." So there was some earthen-deep quality that moved me, and then I looked out the window and it seemed like the heavens were endless, or the sky was endless, I should say."   The vision continued to unfold over the next few days.  The poem awakened a deeper "real universe," a cosmic consciousness for Ginsberg, which he saw everywhere he looked.  Though he tried to invoke the experience again, he was never able to do so. (Probably because he did not have the correct sequence of drugs or alcohol again, but who knows.)  The point is that the poem revealed something to Ginsberg.  Something that we may never fully understand.


The experience my have inspired a later poem by Ginsberg published in 1955. The Ginsberg poem, “Sunflower Sutra” brings to light a very important and universal issue. Although it was written in the 1950’s it is still comparable to the here and now. When Ginsberg wrote this poem, it was the time of conservatives, consumerism, and strong morals. Ginsberg did not relate to such a culture and instead expressed himself through his poems, which blatantly rejected such outlooks on life. “Sunflower Sutra” is about the death of the inner beauty and spirit in one’s soul in relation to the destruction of nature and the realization that it is never too late to bring such creativity and beauty back to life. Ginsberg describes the fall of a mighty the sunflower. Once a bright yellow beacon of life, it now is “broken like a battered crown.” Having been covered by the dirt and grime of industry, by human “ingenuity,” this sunflower is really representing a demise in humanity. Rather than choosing nature as a prime example for life, choosing the “perfect beauty of a sunflower,” we have chosen industry and technology, and have forgotten that we are flowers. Ginsberg berates the dust and grime which have rained down from the locomotives onto “my sunflower O my soul” and wonders “when did you forget you were a flower?” This poem really is not about a flower, but the tragedy of losing one’s inner beauty, the vivacity and brightness which makes one shine.

Sunflower Sutra

I walked on the banks of the tincan banana dock and

sat down under the huge shade of a Southern

Pacific locomotive to look at the sunset over the

box house hills and cry.

Jack Kerouac sat beside me on a busted rusty iron

pole, companion, we thought the same thoughts

of the soul, bleak and blue and sad-eyed,

surrounded by the gnarled steel roots of trees of

machinery.

The oily water on the river mirrored the red sky, sun

sank on top of final Frisco peaks, no fish in that

stream, no hermit in those mounts, just ourselves

rheumy-eyed and hungover like old bums

on the riverbank, tired and wily.

Look at the Sunflower, he said, there was a dead gray

shadow against the sky, big as a man, sitting

dry on top of a pile of ancient sawdust--

--I rushed up enchanted--it was my first sunflower,

memories of Blake--my visions--Harlem

and Hells of the Eastern rivers, bridges clanking Joes

Greasy Sandwiches, dead baby carriages, black

treadless tires forgotten and unretreaded, the

poem of the riverbank, condoms & pots, steel

knives, nothing stainless, only the dank muck

and the razor-sharp artifacts passing into the

past--

and the gray Sunflower poised against the sunset,

crackly bleak and dusty with the smut and smog

and smoke of olden locomotives in its eye--

corolla of bleary spikes pushed down and broken like

a battered crown, seeds fallen out of its face,

soon-to-be-toothless mouth of sunny air, sunrays

obliterated on its hairy head like a dried

wire spiderweb,

leaves stuck out like arms out of the stem, gestures

from the sawdust root, broke pieces of plaster

fallen out of the black twigs, a dead fly in its ear,

Unholy battered old thing you were, my sunflower O

my soul, I loved you then!

The grime was no man's grime but death and human

locomotives,

all that dress of dust, that veil of darkened railroad

skin, that smog of cheek, that eyelid of black

mis'ry, that sooty hand or phallus or protuberance

of artificial worse-than-dirt--industrial--

modern--all that civilization spotting your

crazy golden crown--

and those blear thoughts of death and dusty loveless

eyes and ends and withered roots below, in the

home-pile of sand and sawdust, rubber dollar

bills, skin of machinery, the guts and innards

of the weeping coughing car, the empty lonely

tincans with their rusty tongues alack, what

more could I name, the smoked ashes of some

cock cigar, the cunts of wheelbarrows and the

milky breasts of cars, wornout asses out of chairs

& sphincters of dynamos--all these

entangled in your mummied roots--and you there

standing before me in the sunset, all your glory

in your form!

A perfect beauty of a sunflower! a perfect excellent

lovely sunflower existence! a sweet natural eye

to the new hip moon, woke up alive and excited

grasping in the sunset shadow sunrise golden

monthly breeze!

How many flies buzzed round you innocent of your

grime, while you cursed the heavens of the

railroad and your flower soul?

Poor dead flower? when did you forget you were a

flower? when did you look at your skin and

decide you were an impotent dirty old locomotive?

the ghost of a locomotive? the specter and

shade of a once powerful mad American locomotive?

You were never no locomotive, Sunflower, you were a

sunflower!

And you Locomotive, you are a locomotive, forget me

not!

So I grabbed up the skeleton thick sunflower and stuck

it at my side like a scepter,

and deliver my sermon to my soul, and Jack's soul

too, and anyone who'll listen,

--We're not our skin of grime, we're not our dread

bleak dusty imageless locomotive, we're all

beautiful golden sunflowers inside, we're blessed

by our own seed & golden hairy naked

accomplishment-bodies growing into mad black

formal sunflowers in the sunset, spied on by our

eyes under the shadow of the mad locomotive

riverbank sunset Frisco hilly tincan evening

sitdown vision.

Allen Ginsberg
Berkeley, 1955