erotic verse

Genre of poetry which is about or inspired by sexual love. Erotic verse is present in each literary period, and may concern serious and heartfelt love as well as more lighthearted or shocking sexual subjects. Erotic verse was popular in classical (both Greek and Roman) literature and in medieval poetry (see courtly love). The metaphysical poets, including the English poets John Donne and Andrew Marvell, continued writing erotic verse and the English late seventeenth-century poet the Earl of Rochester wrote more explicitly sexual works. Modern authors, including the US Walt Whitman and the English John Betjeman, have also written erotic verse.