The Beauty of The Kiss

Hello! Today's we'll be discussing....lip-locking, making out, the smooch, frenching, the peck, snogging, and osculating. In other words, this week's Monday Musing will talk about....

The Kiss.

This might seem an odd topic for a poetry blog, but we'll mostly be looking at the beauty, the oddness, and the overarching questions behind all artistic work about kissing---"why do we kiss?" and "What is in a kiss?". 

Image via Salt Lake Film Society.

Yes, this image is from the movie The Princess Bride.
Yes, now I'm going to hit you with the following quote: 

"Since the invention of the kiss, there have only been five kisses that were rated the most passionate, the most pure. This one left them all behind."

Get on my level. The book and the movie are amazing. You can't go wrong. 

Anyway. Did you know that scientists don't really know exactly why we kiss? Seems kind of strange, since it's something we've done since we were tiny humans. Obviously, all kinds of kisses are a sign of affection and intimacy. And yet,  it's magic. A kiss from your parent or relative, and you're comforted. A kiss from your lover, and you might feel as if your feet will never touch the ground again. Or you feel close, intimate, and attached to that person. So what's in a kiss that makes it so wonderfully human, and so mysterious and magical? When you think about the actual mechanics of the kiss, it's kind of gross---the phrases "swapping saliva" and "sticking your tongue down someone's throat" pretty much sum it up. And yet, we kiss. And artists make art for "The Kiss" and poets and authors write about "The Kiss". This one kiss, to end all kisses---like in The Princess Bride. 

A young woman once asked Coco Chanel, "Where should one use perfume?". She answered "Wherever one wants to be kissed." The Kiss, a thing of sultry beauty. Or, Oscar Wilde's version of The Kiss as a dangerous, wild thing: "A kiss may ruin a human life."

Today, we're going to take a look at "The Kiss" in art and poetry. Try to think about this commonplace thing we humans do, and look at it from all angles. Is it beautiful? What does it mean to you? 

Think about the moments before a kiss---they're just as important as the act itself. How do you feel? We know there are different kinds of kissing---that much is obvious. But do the kisses we give to people in our lives have names? A peck from a parent, a French kiss from a lover, a kiss on the cheek from a friend. What does a kiss say?

Just some food for thought as we begin our journey into The Beauty of The Kiss.

The Artwork of The Kiss

via The Toulouse-Lautrec Foundation.

Toulouse-Lautrec's "In Bed (The Kiss)" and "The Kiss".

via Tumblr.com.

Edvard Munch's "Kiss By The Window" and two versions of "The Kiss".

via The Tate Museum.

Auguste Rodin's "The Kiss" & a close-up of the same sculpture.

via respiro.com

Constantin Brancusi's "The Kiss".

via Wikipedia.com

Gustav Klimt's "The Kiss".

via PabloPicasso.org

Pablo Picasso's "The Kiss".

via wikiart.org

"Lovers (The kiss)" by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner.

via FlavorWire.com

Rik Garrett's "Symbiosis".

The Poetry of a Kiss

The Archipelago of Kisses 

We live in a modern society. Husbands and wives don’t
grow on trees, like in the old days. So where
does one find love? When you’re sixteen it’s easy, 
like being unleashed with a credit card
in a department store of kisses. There’s the first kiss.
The sloppy kiss. The peck.
The sympathy kiss. The backseat smooch. The we
shouldn’t be doing this kiss. The but your lips
taste so good kiss. The bury me in an avalanche of tingles kiss.
The I wish you’d quit smoking kiss.
The I accept your apology, but you make me really mad
sometimes kiss. The I know
your tongue like the back of my hand kiss. As you get
older, kisses become scarce. You’ll be driving
home and see a damaged kiss on the side of the road, 
with its purple thumb out. If you
were younger, you’d pull over, slide open the mouth’s
red door just to see how it fits. Oh where
does one find love? If you rub two glances, you get a smile.
Rub two smiles, you get a warm feeling.
Rub two warm feelings and presto-you have a kiss. 
Now what? Don’t invite the kiss over
and answer the door in your underwear. It’ll get suspicious
and stare at your toes. Don’t water the kiss with whiskey. 
It’ll turn bright pink and explode into a thousand luscious splinters, 
but in the morning it’ll be ashamed and sneak out of
your body without saying good-bye, 
and you’ll remember that kiss forever by all the little cuts it left
on the inside of your mouth. You must
nurture the kiss. Turn out the lights. Notice how it
illuminates the room. Hold it to your chest
and wonder if the sand inside hourglasses comes from a
special beach. Place it on the tongue’s pillow, 
then look up the first recorded kiss in an encyclopedia: beneath
a Babylonian olive tree in 1200 B.C.
But one kiss levitates above all the others. The
intersection of function and desire. The I do kiss.
The I’ll love you through a brick wall kiss. 
Even when I’m dead, I’ll swim through the Earth, 
like a mermaid of the soil, just to be next to your bones.

-Jeffrey McDaniel, from his collection Splinter Factory.

The Kiss

She pressed her lips to mind.

               --a typo.

How many years I must have yearned

for someone's lips against mind.

Pheromones, newly born, were floating

between us. There was hardly any air.

She kissed me again, reaching that place

that sends messages to toes and fingertips,

then all the way to something like home.

Some music was playing on its own.

Nothing like a woman who knows

to kiss the right thing at the right time,

then kisses the things she's missed.

How had I ever settled for less?

I was thinking this is intelligence,

this is the wisest tongue

since the Oracle got into a Greek's ear,

speaking sense. It's the Good,

defining itself. I was out of my mind.

She was in. We married as soon as we could.

-Stephen Dunn, 1939

from Things I Didn't Know I Loved

"in the jonquil garden in Kadikoy Istanbul I kissed Marika

fresh almonds on her breath

I was seventeen

my heart on a swing touched the sky"

-Nazim Hikmet (Click here for the rest of the poem!)

What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why (Sonnet XLIII)

What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why,

I have forgotten, and what arms have lain

Under my head till morning; but the rain

Is full of ghosts tonight, that tap and sigh

Upon the glass and listen for reply,

And in my heart there stirs a quiet pain

For unremembered las that not again

Will turn to me at midnight with a cry.

Thus in winter stands the lonely tree,

Nor knows what birds have vanished one by one,

Yet knows its boughs more silent than before:

I cannot say what loves have come and gone,

I only know that summer sang in me

A little while, that in me sings no more.

-Edna St. Vincent Millay

since feeling is first

since feeling is first

who pays any attention

to the syntax of things

will never wholly kiss you;

wholly to be a fool

while Spring is in the world



my blood approves,

and kisses are a better fate

than wisdom

lady i swear by all flowers. Don't cry

—the best gesture of my brain is less than

your eyelids' flutter which says



we are for each other: then

laugh, leaning back in my arms

for life's not a paragraph



And death i think is no parenthesis



-e.e. cummings 

In Conclusion...

I'm not really sure I have the answers to my own questions, but I know that I'd like someone to ask them to me. So, here I am, asking them to you. What's in a kiss? Why do we kiss? I have had my fair share of kisses in my day, and all I can say is this: every kiss I have ever had, bad or good or in-between, reminds me I am alive. Can it be that simple? Maybe. Maybe not. That's for you to decide in this week's prompt:

Your Prompt:

Write a poem answering any of the questions I asked in this post. Here's a convenient list, just in case you don't feel like scrolling up and down:

1. What's in a kiss?

2. Why do we kiss?

3. Is kissing beautiful?

4. What does kissing mean to you?

5. How do you feel in the moments before a kiss?

6. What names do we give to different kinds of kisses?

7. What does a kiss say?

8. And here are two more: What was the best kiss you ever had? Why?

9. And another: Do you believe in "The Kiss"---the one, true kiss? Have you had one?

10. And one, last question: Has the meaning of kissing changed over time?

Try free-writing on one or two (or all of them, if you like) of these questions and see what imagery you come up with. Maybe you'll answer them with something you didn't know you had inside your mind. 

As always, feel free to share your poems in the comment section below this post. You can also email them to us at floodmark.editoral@gmail.com to submit them to our Featured Friday posts or magazine.

I hope you found all of this as fascinating and as inspirational as I do! Until next time.