Eros

A joyful, uninhibited and tasteful celebration of heterosexual love and the human body, this portfolio weds photographs by Helmut Newton, Edward Weston, Annie Leibovitz, Imogen Cunningham, Manuel Alvaro Bravo, Robert Mapplethorpe, Greg Gorman, Brassai, Man Ray and others to erotic prose and poetry selections. Earthy snippets from Henry Miller, Sallie Tisdale, D.H. Lawrence, Erica Jong, Frank Harris and Jeanette Winterson tie sexual delight to love, spiritual rapture, curiosity and exploration of self and other. Walt Whitman's incantatory lyric ""This is the female form"" seems perfectly juxtaposed with Barbara Brodnick's buxom Nude 1. Although the pictures have a certain sameness, there are dozens of strong, complex compositions in a variety of settings, and the poetry selections, ranging from Robert Graves and Muriel Rukeyser to Ezra Pound's translation of an ancient Egyptian ode, are marvelous. Lahr coedited Love: A Celebration in Art and Literature; Ferrer is a freelance picture editor. BOMC selection. (Dec.)