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Bill Wolak

From Sensuality to Erotic Trance

Yet Another Unpredictable Encounter

“What is sensuality? It is the moving of those different bodies towards each other, in the pursuit

of pleasure. Sensuality is desire, but desire beyond the crude and instantaneous event of what we

might describe as drive, stimulation, reflex response. Sensuality is indefinite, lingering, persistent

desire. It is anguish and delight, want and anticipation, attraction and seduction, rapture and

strategy. Sensuality is to feel your erotic emotion and to play with it: to desire and to make

yourself desirable. Sensuality is to transform the urges of the body into language—be it poetry,

letters, rituals, garments, presents or gestures.”


—Giulia Sissa, Sex and Sensuality in the Ancient World

A Certain Amorous Urgency

Since another’s feelings are always involved, desire is intrinsically undercut by uncertainty. To

achieve reciprocity in sensuality, it is necessary to overcome that uncertainty with clear, honest,

respectful communication. But desiring is never enough. We strive, as Giulia Sissia reminds us

above, to be desired as well. Only intimacy provides the trust and inspiration to be more

comprehensive, more attentive, and more experimental in sensuality. Therefore, one path that

opens the body to pleasure is language. Whether it’s a letter, a note, an email, a text, or a muffled

moan, talking dirty is tantalizing.

Alert As Silence

Sensuality is an art. Every part of the body becomes capable of providing pleasure, since

every part of the body has its own erogenous possibilities. Such stimulation can be offered by

touch, massage, pressure points, breath, fingernails, elbows, eyelashes, tongue, and teeth. All the

senses are involved as well as the intellect and memory. In fact, as the Kama Sutra recommends,

a lover must be a cultivated person who understands such diverse subjects as poetry, painting,

music, dancing, perfume, magic, architecture, make up, jewelry, clothing, cooking, gymnastics,

and all the other sixty-four arts. Therefore, sensuality deepens and transforms the body’s

perceptions the more we refine and develop our appreciation for erotology.


Irresistible As Kaleidoscopic Perfume

The photographs selected here represent the play of sensual longing. They explore

different types of sensual excitement and inspiration. The models are wearing masks and

blindfolds which emphasize the mystery, ambiguity, inscrutability, and the remoteness latent in

the desired object. The images are provocative. Through a sultry, ecstatic sensuality, they attempt

to create the context between the desired and desirer that might arouse an erotic trance.

Similarly, I have explored the play of sensual longing in many of my poems. For

example, the following poem entitled “Surrender” evokes a situation that highlights explicit

sensuality:


Surrender wherever you hide

your perfume’s secret kisses.


Surrender the smoothness

of your willing flesh

like a mirror aching for light.


Surrender until your aroused body

welcomes someone else’s whims

with the helplessness

of a rainbow’s fever.


Surrender to whatever gathers you closer

slides inside, and thrusts deeper

until the flashing pink uproar

of your tingling flesh moans,

whispers, and begs for more.


Surrender to that seductive

thwack and sting

that only serves

to sharpen the senses.


Whenever your bewildered

nakedness resists, surrender.


Wherever your slapped skin

feels startled and recoils, surrender.

Surrender until your fear

vanishes through the rug burns

on your knees.


Surrender to the unanticipated

pleasures beyond the boundaries

of your smile.


Flawless As a Wildflower's Offer

There exists a surprise, some unanticipated pleasure, revealed as a consequence of desire.

Sometimes it is kinky or shocking or celebratory, other times quite mundane. The drumbeat of

repetition in the poem generated by the word surrender attempts to lull the reader into a state of

extreme voluptuousness. Likewise, the imagery triggers a deliriously passionate mood.

Another of my poems that foregrounds ecstatic sensuality is entitled “Delila:”


When her flesh demands

more than tenderness,

Delila’s eyes remain

patient as the dawn.

With her wrists

tied to her heels

and rope looped

around her tucked knees

tighter than a secret,

her skin tingles

like goosebumps

after sunburn.

Submissive as silk,

Delila’s body stings

from the knots’ tiny kisses

and yearns for the touch

that will excite her flesh

beyond arousal.


The Slow Arousal of Uncertain Softness

Both of these are ekphrastic poems, or poems written in response to some kind of

artwork, in this case two paintings I first viewed at the Seattle Erotic Art Festival a few years

back, and the titles of my poems are derived from those of the original paintings.

Like the photographs in this selection, both “Surrender” and “Delia” evoke an intense

erotic mood of heightened sensuality. In both the poems and the photographs, similar images

appear. Sensuality with all its variations complications and uncertainties can be observed in the

voluptuous eroticism of the different models, in their poses, their gestures, what they are wearing

or not wearing, or what they have donned as ornaments or other titillating accoutrements. Above

all, their sensuality is enticing, alluring, and, I hope, inviting.


Eager As the Welcome of Lightning

Bio:

Bill Wolak is a poet, collage artist, and photographer who has published his eighteenth book of

poetry entitled All the Wind’s Unfinished Kisses with Ekstasis Editions.  His collages and

photographs have appeared recently in the 2024 Dirty Show in Detroit, the 2024 Rochester

Erotic Arts Festival, the 2020 International Festival of Erotic Arts (Chile), the 2020 Seattle

Erotic Art Festival, the 2018 Montreal Erotic Art Festival, and Naked in New Hope 2018. He

was a featured artist in the book Best of Erotic Art (London, 2022).

The Afterimage of Abandon
Quick As the Firefly's Sparkling
Evanescent as the Slightest Touch of Mist
Between a Whisper and a Moan
Indispensable Apprehension
The Bewilderment of Temptation
The Smoothness That Draws You Closer
Dazzled by Desperate Silk
With a Mirror's Sudden Intimacy
The Whirlpool's Hesitation
A Deepening Delirium
The Beckoning of Unanticipated Astonishment
At the Threshold of Tingling

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