I came upon a child of God 
He was walking down the road 
And I asked him, where are you going 
And this he told me 

I’m going on down to Yasgur’s farm 
I’m going to join in a rock ‘n’ roll band 
I’m going to camp out on the land 
And try and get my soul free 

We are stardust 
We are golden 
And we’ve got to get ourselves 
Back to the garden 

Then can I  walk beside you 
I have come here to lose the smog 
And I feel to be a cog 
In something turning 

Well, maybe it is just the time of year 
Or maybe it’s the time of man 
I don’t know who I am 
But life is for learning 

We are stardust 
We are golden 
And we’ve got to get ourselves 
Back to the garden 

By the time we got to Woodstock 
We were half a million strong 
And everywhere there was song 
And celebration 

And I dreamed I saw the bombers 
Riding shotgun in the sky 
And they were turning into butterflies 
Above our nation 

We are stardust 
     million-year-old carbon 
We are golden 
     caught in the devil’s bargain 
And we’ve got to get ourselves 
Back to the garden  

Thank you, patwest, for creating our new meeting place. Now all we need is for everyone to come over here and remember to subscribe.

You can still go back and look at Part 1, but all new comments will have to be put here since Part 1 has been made Read Only.

We have a new poem up, and I'm off to read Paglia's essay. Spent the whole day in Shepherdstown, W.Va. seeing plays, both very good. And a good pizza in between them.

Maryal

disagree with BARBARA that these lines by Toomer:

Meanwhile the men, with vestiges of pomp 
Race memories if kings and caravan

refer to white men. these are the black men with race memories of their heritage: that before they were slaves they were descendants of kings, marching in a modern imitatin of ancient pomp. A similiar theme is echoes in Langston Hughes (The Negro Speaks of Rivers" here:

THE NEGRO SPEAKS OF RIVERS

To hear Langston Hughes read "The Negro Speaks of Rivers, click here:

LANGSTON HUGHES TALKING AND READING

(((Joan K))) You are here! I was beginning to hear echoes. Let's you and me figure out why the title of this new poem is "Jazzonia." I know it's a poem about black musicians playing Jazz, inspired by the lovely woman dancing to their music, but have you ever heard the word "Jazzonia" before? I doubt I'll find it in the OED but will look tomorrow.

And I agree--those are black men (from history--ancestors remembered) in the parade; you can tell by the juju man.

Maryal

The title "Jazzonia" brought to mind the word "sinfonia" which is an overture or a symphonic composition -- an 18th-century kind of word.

I may be way off base (I've been picked off before and I'll be picked off again, no matter how much the Coach screams), but that's my guess and I'm sticking to it.

Hey Kevin...don't know if you're right or not but sure enjoy your comments and esp the way your mind seems to work...

You are ALL so knowledgeable I feel like 'the kid' in the class...all heart, exuberance and good intentions, but not a clue! Will press on!!

Hi JoanK...thank you for the link to listen to Langston Hughes reading his "The Negro Speaks of Rivers". There is something about hearing the background of the poem and it's being spoken by the poet that makes me feel differently about "Jazzonia"...makes me want to think more deeply and with more sincerity when I read it. Wonderful link...I am grateful...Alliemae

Ahhhhh, more folks have found their way to our new home~

Welcome Kevin and thanks for word number two I've never heard of and for your inimitable personality.

Welcome, Alliemae, and I agree. Early on in the discussion we talked a bit about the importance of reading poetry aloud -- and several times over-- and then later aloud. It's the only way to really get the sound out of the words.

And thank you Joan K for the link to "A Negro Speaks of Rivers." It is good to hear a poet read his/her own work.

I'm going to go listen to it again and get that voice in my mind.

Maryal

Well, I'm embarrassed that I never even thought of the connection to Babylonia (Babylon) the city of great wealth and wickedness and that Hughes was playing on that when he named his poem Jazzonia, the city of Jazz (or the area). I see the poem as quite simple. But I do like the woman dancing and lifting her skirt so that the poet wonders if Eve had a "wanton" eye like the girl and if Cleopatra dressed in such "a gown of gold."

Paglia's essay is delightful to read, or it was to me, because it shows me how much she can spin out of a poem.

Another really good idea that she provides is that Hughes's poem and Eliot's "The Waste Land," which set the tone of disillusionment for modernism, were published just one year apart. Whereas Eliot was seeing everything broken into pieces in the period between the two world wars, Hughes was seeing life all around him.

Maryal

Another thing that Paglia does is give us a nice comparison between the Georgia Dusk and the Harlem Dusk implied in Jazzonia.

I missed the comparison to Babylonia too, although not the reference to the history of Africans in Cleopatra and to the descent from Eve.

Poets aren't always good readers, but still there is always something special in hearing a poet read their own work, especially when it's a favorite.

Clearly the river is an important image for LH, appearing in both poems. Does it stand for the flow of history, of life? What about the shining tree? (I've forgotten what Paglia said).

The river appears in BOTH poems? Isn't this the first poem by Langston Hughes (the last one being by Jean Toomer)? OK I'm officially confused (though it's been unofficially a fact of life for a while now).

Also, I'd love to see Paglia squeeze water out of such a slight poem as this. I don't get the Babylonian Captivity allusion. Babylon was frowned upon by an Angry God (wasn't it?), whereas Harlem seems to be smiled upon by a Loving Poet.

As for comparing Eve to Cleopatra and a woman lifting her skirt, that's just old school male point of view stuff -- the sort of thing that drives feminists (sans chauffeurs) off a cliff.

Tree of life or more likely tree of lineage?

Silver--men in Near and Middle east seem to prefer silver for themselves. Gold is for women.

Islamic men would be ashamed to wear a gold wedding band and wear silver ones when they do wear a wedding band.

The 'silver tree' must be important, even critical, as it is followed by an exclamation point.

Rivers flow...shining rivers flow with special waters...

Allusions to women as temptresses, their wiles being necessary, even pleasurable 'evils'--enticing--making it possible to perpetuate 'shining trees and silver rivers of the soul'...

My questions: Why are 'silver' and 'shining' transposed from first verse to the last? Sake of poetry?

Why the exclamation points on both 'shining trees' and 'silver rivers of the soul' in last verse (i.e. reinforcing importance of the 'rivers')?

Is the music the shining, silver rivers of the soul?

O, Allie, what a quote for me to lift from your post:

"Is the music the shining, silver rivers of the soul? "

I just love that description of the music. Certainly Hughes connects the music to life (even if others might think it a little sinful--the reference to Babylon is somewhat lighthearted I think) and certainly life and the soul are nestled near each other.

This poem is really a pleasure to read out loud and it becomes a song in itself.

Paglia guesses that the shining silver tree is both the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (the forbidden one) and the tree upon which Christ was crucified. There's a long tradition in Christianity of connecting them. And the lineage tree can fit with the river tree.

Remember that we are in the time of the Harlem renaissance when many upscale white people were going to Harlem in the evenings to hear the music and see the singer (s).

Kevin--The other poem which Joan K provided a link for in a previous post is Hughes reading "The Negro Speaks of Rivers."

Maryal

Oh, I see Joan's Langston link now (as I back up... can you hear the beep, beep, beep sound?).

Sorry, Joan. Mr. ADD or ADHD (I'd prefer to be XYZ, as he at least has affairs) missed it completely.

Got it. Carry on.

Kevin--I really want one of those beep beep beep sounds for my red Jeep. Are you selling some on eBay perhaps? Seriously, so many times when I was backing up I wondered why they didn't build those beeps into cars.

Thinking about it for a moment, I decided that the world would then be even noisier than it is now plus we wouldn't know whether it was a cement truck or an innocent red Jeep. Maybe different tones?

I'm thinking maybe a silent sensor that only makes noise when it finds an object behind the car. Put "Silent Cal" (we'll name it after Mr. Coolidge from our neighboring state of Vermont) on trucks, too.

In fact, rebuild the rail infrastructure and return the bulk of the transportation duties to trains, eliminating those dangerous 18-wheel behemoths put on the highways by Standard Oil lobbyists long ago.

Meep, Meep,


The Roadrunner

I love it. Now I want the Jeep to meep meep.

I want mine to curse. Then I can write it "bleep, bleep".

Talking cars are already out there, aren't they? Heck, my microwave meeps at me when I leave a cuppa coffee in it.

Used to be I could discover cups of swampy Joe two days later. Ah, the good old days...

After calling and re-calling my local library and getting several versions of the same unacceptable story I finally found the book at another library just a bit further away and they are holding it for me. Will pick it up tomorrow. Now maybe I'll make better sense of these poems...or not! Alliemae

Allie--Hey that's good news about the book, but you've been doing very well on your own, puzzling out the meanings. Don't let Paglia influence you too much. She's just one voice, albeit an educated one.

yes...you read my mind...I decided at the moment I posted that about the book that she'll only just be one more voice...like all the voices in this room and the back and forth discussions that I'm already learning so much from!! group reading is the best!!

I've said I enjoy reading in a group.

Sort of like a 'Pot Luck Gathering' these groups are...

One brings a spagetti dish adorned with a fine sauce brought up through the generations...and another brings garlic bread.

But hey, that sauce is even more delicious when mopped up by the simple garlic bread, eh?

Anyone bring wine?!?

"Anyone bring wine?!? " You got it!

Ohhh would love to get to the stage where a glass of wine would be ambrosia - I have never been this long with lurgy of the burgy - I thought at first it was the prepared chicken stuffed with goat cheese I purchased at Whole Foods and ate Sunday night but since it was so vicious and lasted so long I am wondering if the luncheon I shared on Saturday with a friend who just came back from deep in the Yucatan who said she had just gotten over her bug picked up in her travels that was so bad she finally went to the Doctor and was given antibiotics - well my poetry for the week has been phyzm, pepto, lactaid followed by ginger, crackers and broth as well as tons of enzymes - the geletan on all these capsules has been my protein for the week - hope to join y'all again by tomorrow...

I hear that Ouzo or Anisette are great for GI probs...

Barbara--Sorry to hear of your upset. I hate that kind of illness, used to get it a lot when I was a child and have had a number of occurences as an adult. I'll bet you did catch some sort of strange foreign thing. We just don't have immunity for things that aren't in our area.

Patwest--Would you please put up the next poem?

Maryal

Cuttings by Theodore Roethke is above.

Thank you, o mistress of poem placement.

New Poem people

BARBARA: so sorry for your problem. I seem to get a lot of those, though not as serious as yours.

I love this new poem. Although I admit, not being a gardener I looked at it blankly at first "Oh, those cuttings".

Paglia implies that this is a perfect description of the immigrant experience. Cut from their roots and transplanted to a strange soil, they droop but cling to life (coaxing up water) and finally put out a small green shoot -- the next generation. A brilliant image. Not true for many immigrants, of course, but it has the ring of truth for his family. A friend who works with Vietnamese immigrants tells me the suicide rate among the elderly men is very high.

Paglia, who clearly doesn't like nature, identifies all references to nature as "Romantic" -- but also sees r's nature as threatening. I don't agree with either of these statements. I don't see any of the transcendentalism that Romantic poets ascribe to nature in this poem. Nor any of the mistiness that sometimes accompanies it. Neither do I see these plants as sinister. I see R as a gardener who is used to looking at nature very closely and reporting it accurately, as well as symbolically. What do the rest of you think?

Picky point: having said that he is accurate, maybe you gardeners can tell me why the soil is loam in the first verse and sand in the second?

Stem fur? Is that like peach fuzz or something, only on a stick?

I can see I am going to have to do better than that. It's always great when your post is a discussion-stopper. It happens in polite company, too... you say something and a pregnant pause (third trimester) follows.

It's that or people carry on ignoring completely what you said. Pick your poison. Hemlock or Brussel sprouts.

Again, I'm agog that Paglia could squeeze much out of so slight a poesy. I like Roethke. "The Bat," and, of course, "My Papa's Waltz." Something about a root cellar, too, I think. But I've never seen this cutting. Ever.

It's visual all right. Like Frost's "Nothing Gold Can Stay," we have plant life in its infancy. Young sticks DO have a soft fuzz to them with some plants. Only how can loam be "sugary," I have a right to be left to wonder?

The "pale, tendrilous horn" poking through the "musty sheath" of the earth brings to mind the "egg tooth" used by chicks to break the glossy sheath of their birthplaces.

Yeah...and just as I finally got my Paglia!! I just glanced at the poem on the way in and maybe it's me but it just hit me full-on with rather Freudian interpretations. Better read what Paglia says before I put my rather large foot into my even larger mouth!!

BTW...I got a VERY pleasant surprise when I went to the library to pick up Paglia; but I won't say it as to not put the 'evil eye' on myself until I have 'the goods' in my hands and am at home with them!

Ahhh,..you've brought the wine!! Wonderful!!!

Kevin--Not to worry. Your short comment didn't stop YOU! Heh. I was just waiting until today to post so that I wouldn't shut off any initial responses.

Allie--Me too. The Freudian associations hit me full in the face. Now we will both go read Paglia although I know she won't pass them up.

Theodore Roetke was the son of a greenhouse keeper and those early days smelling the loam and all the other odors associated with growing plants obviously had an impact. He was a careful and slow poet, but a couple of his poems are among my favorites. One of them is a villanelle, an extraordinarily hard French form for anyone writing in English because of its demands.

The villanelle requires the poet to construct two lines which appear in the first three line stanza. They then repeat, according to a set pattern alternating in the next four stanzas. Then in most villanelles (though not all), they come together in the final stanza.

Dylan Thomas' "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night" is a villanelle. So is the following poem by Roethke:

The Waking

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I feel my fate in what I cannot fear. .
I learn by going where I have to go. .


We think by feeling. What is there to know? .
I hear my being dance from ear to ear. .
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow. .


Of those so close beside me, which are you? .
God bless the Ground! I shall walk softly there, .
And learn by going where I have to go. .


Light takes the Tree; but who can tell us how? The lowly worm climbs up a winding stair; .
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow. .


Great Nature has another thing to do.
To you and me, so take the lively air, .
And, lovely, learn by going where to go. .


This shaking keeps me steady. I should know. .
What falls away is always. And is near. .
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow. .
I learn by going where I have to go.


This poem follows the rules for the villanelle. The two lines that repeat throughout the poem are lines one and three in the first stanza. They come together as the last two lines in the final stanza (which has four lines unlike the others).

I think I'll go find "Do Not Go Gentle" so you can see what Thomas did with the poem.

Maryal

Here's a better known villanelle by Dylan Thomas:

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Try reading both villanelles out loud. They are almost hypnotic.

My BIG SURPRISE is home!!

When I went to library yesterday to pick up Paglia I asked the librarian if by any chance they had a copy of Story of Civilization-Vol IV (yes, I'm in Durant group as well) and he said there were seven volumes for sale at...are you ready...$1 apiece!! So I said, "Well, I don't have any cash with me but I'll sign an IOU...IN BLOOD!!" He said not to worry he would put them aside and I could come back with the $7 and pick them up later.

They are home now and they start with Vol IV which is what we are using now...go from IV through X!!

I'm a happy lady!!

p.s. Maryel I'm sure glad I wasn't the only one...off to read Camille now...

Announcement

Everyone, please look up in the heading. Patwest has found another "Cuttings," also by Roethke. So now we have both poems in the heading.

Thank you Patwest.

Oooooh. I like the sprouts breaking out, slippery as fish stuff. Poets crack me up. Only THEY (oh, and naturalists -- as opposed to "naturists") would take the time to plant (heh) an elbow and rest their chin on their cupped hand to watch a seedling spring forth.

Talk about taking time to stop and smell the roses! Poets are the original 60s dudes (flower children, all). Roethke was just ahead of his time.

alliemae, if you are doing the RAW book (Eco), doing the Paglia book (poems), and doing the Durant book (Encyclopedia Britannica-like), you're a better person than I am (not that there was much doubt). Good luck keeping up with it all! Such enthusiasm is wunderbar (German for "Hersheys With Almonds-like").

Another of my favorite poems is a villenelle (I think) although she varies the last line: Elizabeth Bishop's "One Art".--"The art of losing isn't hard to master".

Scroll down to see the poem.

ONE ART

I read this to my daughter once and she said she didn't understand it. She's too young. Anyone our age understands it perfectly.

Joan K--I love that Eliz. Bishop poem and you're right. If you live long enough, you will surely have lost some things. One keeps practicing. And it never gets easy, does it?

Kevin--I really like this, your comment, "Only THEY (oh, and naturalists -- as opposed to "naturists") would take the time to plant (heh) an elbow and rest their chin on their cupped hand to watch a seedling spring forth." A little bit of prose poetry there. We get a wonderful image with the chin on the cupped hand.

I think I'll find a villanelle that I'm especially fond of about a grandmother and a kitchen and . . . .

But I can't remember the title or the author. Hard to google without much information.

I'll try anyway.

You crack me up!! How's that for 'literary'?

No, Kevin...wunderbar is German for Dove Dark Chocolate bar!

Also...I don't give all of them the same attention. I am loving Eco because I like to read about memory and also like his writing and interviews. I'm determined to learn to appreciate poetry more, ergo Paglia...and history is one of my all time favorites and since I wasted the 11 volumes of SOC I had decades ago, I guess I'm working out some karma.

Alliemae: your enthusiam impresses me, too. I'm in all three as well, as well as Rembrandt's Eyes, and some days I feel overwhelmed. But if I dropped one, which one would I drop? SOC is addictive: it's the first Seniornet I found and I've been in it for two years. I'm the one that told Ginny about Rembrandt's Eyes: I loved it when I read it, and have been dying to discuss it with someone. And there's no way I'd leave this discussion, which is great: Paglia or no. Maybe Eco will have to go. Or maybe I should drop the six other sites I'm in. Decisions, decisions!!

Hi Joan...re: "But if I dropped one, which one would I drop?"

EXACTLY!!! Alliemae

Hang in there, people. I have about too many errands to run today and I am getting a late start (overslept) but when I get home I will read the Paglia essay on the first Cuttings poem above and post some comments (or steal something from Paglia--actually I have her permission to post short quotes) here.

Maryal

Joan K--I think it was you who wanted to know how we had "loam" in the first line and then a "sand crumb" in the sixth.

I wanted to know too (not a gardener) so I checked the OED and found the following definition for "loam"

A soil of great fertility composed chiefly of clay and sand with an admixture of decomposed vegetable matter. It is called clay loam or sandy loam according as the clay or sand preponderates.

OK, loam, especially the kind Roethke's father seems to have used in his greenhouse, has sand in it as well as decomposed vegetable matter.

Paglia's commentary on this poem is interesting. She finds romanticism in the poem but also anxietry, appropriate to the time period since the twentieth century has been called the Age of Anxiety (and no wonder). Makes me wonder what this new century will be called. But she notes "his love of nature is in the Romantic main line."

After discussing how delicate this nub of growth is and how the sand crumb would be to it like a boulder and remarking on the sexual nuance of the word "poke," Paglia goes on with:

"Cuttings" captures the uncertainty yet compulsive drive of the vital principle and its subset, the sex urge, operating impersonally in physical space. The poem shows life as a gamble, search, and act of hope--a risk from conception on. Male sexualtiy specifically is portayed as isolated and tentative as it makes its incremental way towarad exposure and assertion. Everything, no matter how minute, has its drama. . . .

I really like that last observation, "Everything, no matter how minute, has its drama."

Paglia also comments on the many monosyllables in the poem, offering "sticks," "slips," "loam," "stem," "nub," "crumb," "sheath," and "horn."

"Sometimes a nub of growth is just a nub of growth."

Doesn't Paglia read her Freud?

Joan, thanks for One Art. I had no idea someone had written a poem about my life...my goodness, what a poem. Too moved to say more...

Deems, you said in #42, "I think I'll find a villanelle that I'm especially fond of about a grandmother and a kitchen and..."

Did you ever find this one?

After reading The Waking (post #36) and Do Not Go Gentle (post #37), which I have always known and loved but didn't know it was a villanelle (not having known about villanelles), I am 'hooked' on villanelles!

Can't thank you and JoanK enough for introducing me to this 'whole new world'...

One more poem but it is a sestina, not a villanelle.

Different rules. In this form, you have to pick six words that will fall at the end of lines (according to a pattern that I leave it to you to figure out). It's a difficult form because it is hard to find six words that will bear this much repeating.

In this poem, by Elizabeth Bishop, the six words are house, grandmother, child, stove, almanac, tears.

Sestina

September rain falls on the house.
In the failing light, the old grandmother
sits in the kichen with the child
beside the Little Marvel Stove,
reading the jokes from the almanac,
laughing and talking to hide her tears.

She thinks that her equinoctial tears
and the rain that beats on the roof of the house
were both foretold by the almanac,
but only known to a grandmother.
The iron kettle sings on the stove.
She cuts some bread and says to the child,

It's time for tea now; but the child
is watching the teakettle's small hard tears
dance like mad on the hot black stove,
the way the rain must dance on the house.
Tidying up, the old grandmother
hangs up the clever almanac

on its string. Birdlike, the almanac
hovers half open above the child,
hovers above the old grandmother
and her teacup full of dark brown tears.
She shivers and says she thinks the house
feels chilly, and puts more wood in the stove.

It was to be, says the Marvel Stove.
I know what I know. says the almanac.
With crayons the child draws a rigid house
and a winding pathway. Then the child
puts in a man with buttons like tears
and shows it proudly to the grandmother.

But secretly, while the grandmother
busies herself about the stove,
the little moons fall down like tears
from between the pages of the almanac
into the flower bed the child
has carefully placed in the front of the house.

Time to plant tears, says the almanac.
The grandmother sings to the marvelous stove
and the child draws another inscrutable house.

The rules for a sestina dictate that all six end words come together in the last three line stanza.

When I teach this poem, my students often have to reminded of what an almanac is--the kind that used to be omnipresent in kitchens in Maine, usually hung by a string through that pre-puched hole in the corner. But I don't have to worry about that here!

Almanacs are cool. You never know when you'll need to know the gestation period of a certain farm animal or the date when the moon reaches apogee.

P.S. To silence a dripping faucet: Tie a piece of string to the faucet. The water will flow silently down the string.

Kevin--Speaking of string. A few years ago there was a great leaking in my office (caused by backed up leaves in the drain outside) and one of my students helped me by channeling the water into three wastebaskets by the means of using string afixed to the ceiling tiles at strategic points. Thank heaven the building has now been renovated. No more floods in my office, but every time we get the heavy rain associated with hurricanes, the bottom floor gets water. That's OK though; the classrooms live there.

how amazing...I never knew there were different types of poems with their own structures and names except, perhaps, for Haiku...so much to learn...so little time...

Maryal =-you teach in a Universe City? And it leaks like THAT? Where oh where are the alum checks made out to Ms. Alma Mater?

Sestinas drive me brazil nuts. They're so artificial and hard to pull off. They attract the "formula crowd" among poets. You know who they are -- the poets wearing white lab coats and scribbling equations.

I exaggerate but I have a poetic license so there.

"Sestinas drive me brazil nuts. They're so artificial and hard to pull off. They attract the "formula crowd" among poets. You know who they are -- the poets wearing white lab coats and scribbling equations".

I see you point, but I wouldn't put Elizabeth Bihop in that category. I really liked the sestina above. "One Art" (granted, a villenelle, not a sestina) was written after a very close friend of hers died. When Bishop died, they found 17 drafts of it in her papers. And yet the effect is so simple and effortless.

Note: I doubt the Naval Academy gets many checks made out to "Ms Alma Mater".

Yes, Elizabeth Bishop is a Queen on the chessboard of poets. I even plunked down hardearned cash for a collection of her work once, and everyone knows poetry books cost double what regular books do.

Naval Academy? I was just talking about that over in the Queen Loana topic. Only it was the Navel Academy, where the cadets take a hint and gather lint.

It's always a shock to think of ole Adam and Eve traipsing around naked. Seeing them, your eyes are immediately (and quite naturally) drawn to... their lack of a belly button.

Button, button, whose got the button?

I always figured it fell behind the fig leaf, but that was after the




fall.

Sigh. do you suppose that was a Freudian slip.

Joan K is correct about the Naval Academy and I saw the pun, Kevin. On another discussion. At first I suspected a pun only because it was you. There have been in the past and likely will be in the future, a number of mids who have spelled Naval Navel--ONCE mind you, just once.

Joan K--I love "One Art." Did I thank you for giving us the link? I meant to.

Allie--I'm trying at the moment to learn more about the history of Iran and the dropping of the atom bomb over Hiroshima. There really isn't enough time, is there? One more form that we talked about quite a bit at the beginning--the sonnet: fourteen lines and squarish in form. Usually iambic pentameter. Rhyme scheme varies. Paglia includes quite a few sonnets in the first half of her book, so you can look them up.

Here's my plan, folks. We will continue with the next two Roethke poems, then the Lowell poem, "Man and Wife," then Plath's "Daddy. "

And just about then, I have to be back at work so I will leave the remainder of the poems to you. We've read almost all of the book. Not bad, I'd say.

Maryal

DEEMS: you are abandoning us just as we leave the poets I'm familiar with for new territory. In the first 33 poems, I was familiar with all but one of the poets. in the las ten poems. I only know one of the poets (Snyder). I hope Paglia, and Kenneth will see us through.

Note: I assume you know Hershey's "Hiroshima", the story of four people in Hiroshima at the time of the bomb. Hard to read, but fascinating.

Paglia and Kenneth? A law firm?

Now I feel like a disserter(!) OK, I'll rethink things. Maybe. Who's Kenneth?

"What's the frequency, Kenneth?"

I'd rather not remember.

Anyway, you do what you have to do, Maryal. I'll be fading soon, too. It'll be Joan, her hat, and her straitjacket against the whole poesified planet!

Hi...you probably have the following link but it looks like a fairly complete History of Persia and Iran. If you are doing modern Iran please check out Mossadeq...very interesting politically.

http://www.parstimes.com/Iran_history.html

I did some Iranian/Persian studies when I did my bachelors in Near and Middle Eastern Languages and Cultures at UPenn, and pre-Islamic Iran is also VERY interesting and so is Persian poetry and other Persian literatures in translation.

Thanks for the info on the poetry...think I may study a lot more about poetry and read more poems even after this course is over. I am really enjoying this course and feel really fortunate to be in a group where so many knowledgeable people are populating this screen.

JoanK I'm pretty certain that I told you how much I enjoyed your contribution(s), especially One Art but if not...consider it done now!

Alliemae

Just in reading Root Cellar once I was deeply moved by the empathy this poet seems to sincerely feel with the bits and bobs and trappings of plants and things of planting!

I have felt this way just a couple of times in my life that I can remember; I will only relate one of them:

Once when I passed a feed and grain store right smack in the middle of the Kensington neighborhood here in Philly I was transported back to our small farm in Mass which we had to leave abruptly due to my mom's serious illness and which I didn't realize I had been missing through the years until I got the full impact of the smell of that small garage. I just stood there, transfixed, my memories and olfactory sense intertwined in that moment of the realness of life.

Alliemae

Thanks, Ginny. I've just started a new book, Shockwave just out. Told from multiple points of view, people on the ground, the tailgunner in the Enola Gay, people at the test site in N. Mexico.

I don't know enough yet to ask questions!

Allie--I know exactly what you mean about smell. I think I can still smell the garage where my father parked his car in Chicago. (You had to rent them.) I used to go with him sometimes to pick the car up--or take it back.

"I decided that it was not wisdom that enabled {poets} to write their poetry, but a kind of instinct or inspiration, such as you find in seers and prophets who deliver all their sublime messages without knowing in the least what they mean." (Socrates 469 BC-399BC)

Using 'fooling people' as an analogy:

I think that this quotation from Socrates applies to some of the poets some of the time but not all of the poets all of the time!

Here again in Root Cellar", we have the theme of clinging to life, even under the worst of conditions. But of course, the feel is quite different.If Paglia thought TR was a romantic about nature, think again.

She does manage to find sex everywhere. PatH and I had a game: to see if we could guess where she would find it next. But I give up: I just don't have her imagination (or want it)!

The most recent Roethke poem illustrates, again, the way an opening line can draw one into a poem:

" Nothing would sleep in that cellar, dank as a ditch,"

If you don't read any longer, you might think that this would be some kind of beginning of a horror story. A person for unknown reasons confined to a cellar and unable to sleep BUT NO,

it turns out to be yet more plant life. This time bulbs at first.

We need a gardener. Doesn't it make sense to keep bulbs in a cellar? Would one expect them to burst down there? I really feel at a disadvantage not knowing anything about growing things. My knowledge stops with plants that grow inside and even there, I confine myself to African Violets, philodendron, and whatever that lily is that almost no one can kill. I have two of those, dark green leaves and a pretty white cone shaped flower.

But real gardening involving greenhouses and bulbs and stakes I've only seen. I have a zillion allergies that I use for an excuse but mostly I think I'm just not interested.

But I do admire this poem.

And it's hard for me not to think of sex when you get the words "lolling obscenely"--??

I haven't yet read the accompanying essay, but will do so.

I like the Root Cellar, especially the last line...it tells the complete story....Even the dirt kept breathing a small breathe...everything in the root cellar was trying to survive and live despite the darkness and lack of air.....Root Cellars were used hundreds of years ago to keep things like fruit and vegatables, and meats also around to be used as that was a source of refrigeration...I guess root cellars were in some house thats why we see many old houses with dirt floors in their cellars...And probably if the dirt or anything else in that root cellar took a BIG breathe - they would be out of luck and gone from lack of light and air.

Good morning, Morning Glory! and thank you for your comment. I'm so glad that you quoted that last line, " Even the dirt kept breathing a small breath."

Since we know that the dirt itself doesn't literally breathe, the line surprises us--and yet seems true, given the preceding line that have explained just how rich with plant life that root cellar is.

And yes, all this survival is going on despite the lack of light, a very important element is the life cycle.

All of a sudden I thought of those fish that live so far down in oceans that they are blind. There is no reason for sight and so, over eons, they lost the ability to see.

Maryal

I’m just back, and feeling like I have missed too much. But I’ll try to work back in to everything. "Root Cellar" is a good start—it has such a powerful punch. Smells are strong evokers of memory, and this poem is ripe with them. I get a strong feeling for the suspended yet pulsing life present, onion shoots wriggling out, etc, and the wet dirt smell overall. I’m not sure where I ran into root cellars, we never had any anywhere I lived, but the poem definitely brings back memories.

Welcome back, Pat H--Sorry to hear about the fish attack in Hawaii, but so glad to see you again. And please do stay with us. So many seem to have gone on vacation. We have just a few poems left, and we need you.

I too get reminded of a root cellar I've never had when I read this poem. Maybe because onions have sprouted in my (old) refrigerator, and various other things seem to have grown without being asked to.

and you are certainly right about smell. I really wish that burning leaves was not now forbidden--or that once every fall, we could have a pile of leaves burning somewhere for everyone to smell. There is nothing that takes us back like smell.

I still react when some young man has on Old Spice after shave. It was the choice of the first man I ever loved.

Maryal

Is it time for a new poem? I really like the next one!!

Been out of pocket for two weeks - a couple of thoughts about the Root Cellar - I am reminded of Gaston Bachelard's description of space - the attic represents pattern and framework and the cellar says, irrationality - others it seems to me relate cellars with fear and coupled as mates are attics and memory.

I've several of Bachelard's books - fascinating stuff... but what comes to mind is my mother chanting out in a low register as she helped us on with our PJs and she was on her way to tickle us --

The skeleton left the cellar forty years ago
and carried itself like a pile of dishes
Up one flight
from the cellar to the kitchen,
from the kitchen to the bedroom,
from the bedroom to the attic,
Right past your nose it did not stopped...[at which point she flicked our nose]
Father went up the stairs
mother went after him
and here is the baby all ready for bed -
tickle, tickle, tickle.

In real life root cellars are so damp that shelves were built away from the walls and platforms were laid on the ground before anything was placed in them - there was a chimney of sorts on top to let out the hot air - so again the dank root cellar seems to represent what we consider the fears of our life and yet, within those fears we store what sustains us through the slack season with no growth.

Barbara! It is good to see you again and back in good health, Ihope. It sounds like you had quite a time of it. Alas.

OK, I will ask patwest to put up the next Roethke poem, "The Visitant."

Whistle up that poem, please, patwest.

Maryal

Barbara: what a lovely, interesting post. Your mother's song is quite unusual. Did it scare you?

I love this "so again the dank root cellar seems to represent what we consider the fears of our life and yet, within those fears we store what sustains us through the slack season with no growth. "

Yes. Within the root cellar also are the roots growing for the next year. Pat and I were saying that this is what is going on under our feet all the time. So if it is scary, then every step we take should be scary, because that is what we are stepping on below the surface.

Just as I say we are ready to move on, we find more to talk about.

There is a little of this feeling in "Cuttings", too. Although it is about regeneration, whish should be hopeful, the rankness is there—the shoot is pale and tendrilous, and emerges from a musty sheath.

The Visitant is a wonderful poem. How many of you saw her a his muse, rather than his sexual fantasy? (Have I gotten to the point where I see more sex than Paglia? I'd better watch out!!).

So many beautiful images: asking the tree, and the ripples answering, the woman as a fish (this was a little confusing. I saw her at first as a mermaid. But I like the ambiguity), and on and on.

For R. everything is alive. In Cuttings, the sticks drank and swelled, in The Root Cellar the earth took shallow breaths, in The Visitant we hear the voice of the ripples and feel the pulse of a stone. I find this vision of a living world very moving.

Just a quicky till later - my Mom was supposed to be scaring us or at least make us so concerned about what awful thing would happen that she could sneak up to the tickling - but after once or twice we got into it and felt the foreboding in her voice as if we were wide eyed but we knew what was next and after all, this was our mother who couldn't even manage to tickle us enough to say to her, stop.

Joan K--There's a difference between a muse and a sexual fantasy (goddess)? Just kidding. I know what you mean. After reading the poem several times (I've never seen this one before) I still half expect the tree the poet is waiting under to become her, the nymph, the muse, whoever. And every time she is a fish who is coming over the water.

That's OK; I guess Roethke has the logic of the dream going on here since in the last stanza he wakes up.

Barbara--Good to see you are still here with us. I read your description of all those herbal healing remedies and acupuncture and I was concerned. Sounds like they are working--or your system is recovering.

Pat H--Please tell us about the fish in Hawaii. I want to know what to look out for should I ever get there.

Maryal

Maryal, you shouldn’t get me started on snorkeling, unless you have a lot of free time. Before I left, JoanK described it very well as entering a different, alien world, and immersing yourself in it.

The mechanics aren’t too bad. Snorkel Bob’s (snorkelbob.com) will rent you the gear you need. They have many locations, and you can rent at one and return at another. They have masks with prescription lenses, important to people as nearsighted as I am. If something isn’t right, you bring it back and they give you a different size or whatever. The mask and snorkel take some getting used to, but work well. You don’t have to be a skilled swimmer (I am not) but should feel comfortable in water over your head.

So you wade out in the ocean, and when the water is knee high you flop down on your face, and find you are in the midst of a school of little bright yellow fish with black stripes (Hawaiian sergeants). You paddle on a way, and find you are over coral growing on the rocks. All sorts of brilliantly colored fish flit around, chase each other, hide in the rocks and come out again. Sometimes they swim right up to you, or even bite you (that was more funny than painful). The gentle crunching you hear is parrotfish eating the coral. Cleaner wrasses, small, bright yellow in front and glowing blue-purple in back, nibble the algae off bigger fish. If you are lucky, a huge turtle swims by you (I got lucky twice). Eventually, you realize you are getting cold and you had better go in before you forget which way is land.

Other parts of the vacation were good, too, but it wouldn’t have mattered. The snorkeling was enough. Here are 3 websites. The first is a great aquarium on Maui. In their picture tour, #s 13, 20, 22, 23, & 28 are most like what I was looking at. The other 2 sites are fish identification pictures. None of them really do justice to what I saw.

http://www.mauioceancenter.com/

http://www.coralreefnetwork.com/stender/fishes/endemic.htm

http://www.reef.org/webres/gallery/haw/gallery4.htm

A good fish identification book helps. I used "Hawaii’s Fishes" by John P. Hoover, available from amazon.com (but Snorkel Bob’s gives you a starter identification card). By the end of the vacation, I could identify 3 or 4 dozen fish.

Pat H--O thank you for that description. I have been snorkling but not in Hawaii and you make it sound like something which I must not miss, biting fish or no. And it is another world. The first time I went snorkling--with a mask and a tube, borrowed, no instructions, I was at a student's house for a cookout in Puerto Rico. The kids told me about a coral reef not far out and I got in the water and went where directed.

And the other world opened. It wasn't a particularly wonderful site but I had never seen so many fish before in their natural habitat and I overstayed my call to dinner. I don't know how long I was in there, but when I finally got out, it was with reluctance.

OK--the poem: I'm still trying to make sense of the tree/fish image.

First the poet seems to be waiting right by a tree that is over the water, the wind having changed, and he hears that voice saying "Stay" Is that the nymph/muse or the tree?

I now see that the nymph/muse is moving "like a fish" and therefore not a fish. And then there's all that bit about the skirts (modest nymph) "not touching a leaf." HUH?

Maryal

Haven't gotten too far into this poem except for REALLY enjoying it's feel...it's rhythm...it's music, swaying...a soul's dance...

But I thought on second reading that the voice saying "Stay..." was possibly his own inner voice (the man who stopped under the tree) because right after that he asked the tree's permission to sit there...

Alliemae

Oh dear my twentyfirst century jaded look at how men conjure up the perfect woman is coloring my reading of this poem...it just reminds me of a little boy dreaming the Christmas Angle would join him as he dozes under the Christmas tree - like the backlite Venessa Redgrave, with hair flying full, sweeping in on Lanselot in the movie Camelot. Do not know of too many authors whose creative intention started off with a visit from one or more of the daughters of Zeus and Mnemosyne...ah so...

Deems thanks for your concern - still working at getting better - I know, anything that is not what we are used to hearing sounds concerning - but western medicine has only recently stuck its nose into China while all these years the Chinese have not been dying like locusts - having treated myself with herbs for the past 15 years it was not too much of a leap to choose eastern medicine. My success with herbs using a M.D. Doctor who treats with herbs has been wonderful - I used to have allergy infections and every February bronchial pneumonia since I was a kid - using an Herbal regime I have had pneumonia once in 15 years - my younger sister [Dean for Continuing and Professional Studies] has been using a Chinese Doctor now for over 20 years and she was treated for Cancer - she was told to get a hysterictimy by a western Doctor since eastern medicine is non-invasive - however, all her treatment was with her Chinese Doctor and so, the ticket as I see it is, do you have faith in something different than what we have been given to understand is the religion of the day, which in the US is medical science. And, hehehe I am not a creationist...

I wondered if this fair young lady could be a SIREN. You remember the sirens who lured (or tried to lure) Odysseus to his ruin? Those lovely women who sang and sang so many mariners to their deaths?

Thinking along these lines, another poem came to me. Here is Margaret Atwood's poem:

Siren Song

This is the one song everyone
would like to learn: the song
that is irresistable:
the song that forces men
to leap overboard in squadrons
even though they see the beached skulls
the song nobody knows
because anyone who has heard it
is dead, and the others can't remember
Shall I tell you the secret
and if I do, will you get me
out of this bird suit?
I don't enjoy it here
squatting on this island
looking picturesque and mythical
with these two feathery maniacs,
I don't enjoy singing
this trio, fatal and valuable.
I will tell the secret to you,
to you, only to you.
Come closer. This song
is a cry for help: Help me!
Only you, only you can,
you are unique


At last. Alas
it is a boring song
but it works every time.


Now THAT my friends, is seduction raised to an art! And then the surprise ending, the true voice of the seductress!

Do you think Roethke's woman might be, at least in part, a siren? Isn't the poet's attachment to his or her art at least part because of seduction?

Maryal, feeling philosphical in the heat.

Maryal: I think you're right.

Somehow R. rouses the incipient naturalist in me. I keep trying to figure out what kind of body of water this is. Paglia says"mountain lake", presumably because he calls the siren a "mountain girl". The willow would have to make it fresh water, wouldn't it -- they don't grow next to an ocean, do they? But then what is the crab doing there? Don't they need salt water?

In spite of the crab, I'll go with a lake or river.

I love the ambiguities in this poem. Almost nothing is certain. The female figure is either a muse, a romantic dream, or a seductress of some sort.

She glides, unearthly, over the water, the wind in her hair. What is she?

Then we cut to the next morning. The poet is disoriented; he doesn’t even recognize the tree at first (staring at A tree). This fits very well with a post-romantic fog—where am I, what happened? But it also fits with creative inspiration. A tremendous idea has struck you, then you come back to earth. You are disoriented. It’s not clear whether the idea remains, but presumably it is this poem.

Obviously everyone is off somewhere on vacation, maybe at the beach, being seduced by their own waterspirits (as I certainly was in Hawai’i). But I can’t leave this poem without talking about the intensity of experience it provides me. I can’t completely figure out why it has such a strong effect. In the first 8 lines I have the feeling that all nature is conspiring to lead the poet into the experience to come. It’s all very quiet, but we hear the whisper: "Stay. Stay by the slip-ooze. Stay." The quiet, triply repeated "stay" kind of hammers into you, and the odd term slip-ooze, appropriate in sound, adds to the understated effect. The only answer we get is a ripple. He waits, alert. Then she comes, moonlit, wind-driven, but silent. It’s overwhelming. Then the bewilderment and bright harshness of the morning. The gentle, rhythmical language is compelling and seductive.

My reaction is more visceral than rational, and I have to give Rothke credit for making me feel it.

That’s about what I can say about this poem. I look forward to the next one.

Pat H--I'm here but mostly trying to figure out where to put all the plays I need to teach next semester (this semester). I liked what you said about almost not recognizing the TREE after the experience. Maybe the poetic ecstasy/dream he has had has blocked the ability, temporarily, to see reality and not think that it will become something else, part of something else, more. . . .

I'm not finding quite the words I need, but I do agree with your comment and it's way better phrased than I can come up with this morning.

Maryal

Fall is coming, and Maryal has to revert to her other identity as English teacher. Who wants to go on on our own? Who is ready to call it quits?

I will go on if anyone else will. I am still getting a lot out of this.

I think that the rest of the book can be finished if you both are here.

Do the folks who don't have the book need notes for this one? Paglia's essay contains a good deal of information about the Lowell family and its prominence in New England.

We do need to know that "Miltown" was a popular tranquilizer. I am imagining something along the lines of xanax.

It's also important to know that Lowell was hospitalized more than once--have to check for the name of the hospital and that he was an alcoholic.

It's also important, for poetry in America, that he began to write "confessional" or "private" poetry. The poets who followed him moved in a direction completely opposite to the "impersonal" poetry of T.S. Eliot. Lowell's earlier poems were not confessional.

I'll have to go read Paglia's essay--I only skimmed it, and see if she says anything about "Life Studies," which I think was the volume that marked Lowell's turn to confessional poetry.

Maryal

I have read the poem and must re-read it for the fourth time but will give in and read what Paglia has to say as I suspect that this poem is filled with meaning and I don't want to miss any of it. Also, looking forward to reading more about Lowell.

Alliemae

Allie--Me too. Now that I have (I hope) successfully installed antispyware, I have a little time to read Paglia's essay.

Keep in mind that the poem is autobiographical. Lowell had several wives. I believe the wife in question in this poem is number 2, but will have to check.

Back later.

We have Plath up. now, but that doesn't mean we can't still talk about Lowell. Deems has to go and do her paying job (I guess our enthusiasm doesn't buy the groceries), but let's see if we can continue without her. If it's the blind leading the blind, at least we'll all go over the cliff together.

We are getting into poets that I don't know at all. Lowell and Plath (who I gather was very influenced by Lowell) both had severe mental illnesses, and they share the pain of their lives with us. How do you react to this?

Do you agree that "Man and Wife" is a love poem (as Paglia says)? What is he saying about their relationship?

called simply SLVIA is excellent. she's ot a raving lunatic, just loaded with conflicts as aren't we all. . . . Claire

I have never read Daddy, by Plath. I don't know how I missed it but it is-- what? Profound and very penetrating. I read it thru twice and then went to see how Paglia dissected it. What a wonderful sentence. "the poem itself seems to be having a nervous breakdown." Do you know how much later it was, after writing this, she committed suicide?

Lordk, what a tortured soul. She sounds so vindictive and venemous. Was she abused as a young child? How difficult it must be to have such profound anger (one letter away from Danger) within your soul. It saddens me, this poem.

Andy--Paglia wrote her best poetry is a white heat in several months before she killed herself. It was published postumously. I remember a longish article in LIFE magazine about her after she died.

Her husband, Ted Hughes, had a second wife who also committed suicide, but she killed their child as well. He certainly didn't have much luck. Ted Hughes was poet laureate of England until his death which wasn't that long ago.

Plath had tried at least once before (referred to in the poem) to kill herself. I think she was in college at the time.

~Maryal, who is grateful that Joan K is willing to take over to finish the book--if there is time.

Deems, I know just what you mean...I am attempting to install AOL 9.0 so I can take advantage of their free anti-virus programs, my Norton Corporate Edition getting ready to run out of the contract soon.

I have the world's slowest browser...this may take all day!!

Well folks, after reading the hints and reading Paglia about Man and Wife I enjoyed the poem...thought it had merit.

I am avoiding Daddy...I tried but the poem was very upsetting for me to read. I think it is filled with many layers, some of which I don't want to explore.

Alliemae

ALLIEMAE: I understand completely. I am struggling to find something to say about Daddy, but it is so emotional, it seems to short-circuit my analytic brain.

Paglia says "The energies aroused by "Daddy" ultimately become self-devouring. The poem is so extreme that nothing can be built upon it". That's the way I feel in trying to discuss it.

A couple of comments: Paglia here as elsewhere seems to use "feminist" as synonymous with hating men and blaming all your problems on them. There are some feminists that feel that way, but they are a minority. I (and I think most feminists) simply feel that women are the equals of men, and should have the same opportunities to fulfill their potential. Some even recognize that gender stereotypes injure men as well as women, in cutting them of from emotional expression.

A stance of "everything that's wrong with my life is due to men" is like this poem -- it leaves you with nowhere to go.

I don't mean to belittle the cruel and crippling effects of an abusive childhood and abusive marriage. Those of us in the Wally Lamb discussion met many victims of these and shared their pain. The most heartening thing was to see how many of these women were able to pick themselves up, take responsibility for their lives and move on. And some were able to recognize that their abusers were "some men", not "all men".

Tragically, Plath was not able to do that. so her poem must stand as a voice for all similar victims who cannot speak for themselves.

Plath's childhood wasn't abusive, but her father did die when she was a child. I can see how some of the language would lead a reader to believe there was abuse--shoe, etc.

Her father was German and he did speak English with an accent. He wasn't a Nazi though; however, Plath uses the language of Nazism--her father becomes Gestapo like. She feels like a Jew, in fact she thinks she might be a Jew. Paglia comments on how extraordinary this comparison is since Plath was a blue-eyed blond and about as far from even being mistaken for a Jew as she could be. Of course the language is only figurative.

The rage at the father (in the poem) seems to be directed at his disertion as well as his Germanic and stiff ways. She never could pronoun German words to his satisfaction. She makes him sound like quite a task master. But he also left her when he died. This affection for him shows in her statement that she tried to get back to him when she was 20 (she tried to die in order to be dead like him).

I have never liked this poem, have never liked Plath for that matter because of the incredible violence and imagery in her poems, but I now understand this poem better than I ever have thanks to Paglia's analysis. Isn't this essay Paglia's longest?

Maryal

and I was lucky enough to have a good relationship with my father, admired respected loved him and missed him horribly when he died. I was twenty six at that time.

JOAN I'm the second kind of feminist believing that we are all human even if we have different capacities and that these must be considered. good point

I wrote a poem about Daddy too only you don't realize it until the last line called Mr. Wonderful. It's on my page I think, although may not be accessible. after all this stuff IS PERSONAL.

I felt very sorry for Path in her not being able to feel secure and happy in her relationship with her father, whatever it was that kept them apart. I sensed SHAME in her poem, shame that she could not love him as she felt she should, and an anxious search for reasons to support it.. . . . Claire

Joan, I know where you're coming from. I consider myself a 'feminist' and know many, many men who also consider themselves as 'feminist'...my favorite feminist button says: "Feminists are people who believe that women are people too."

Also, most of the feminists I know are mainly 'humanists'...

Alliemae

I have never cared much for Sylvia Plath. (I admit I haven’t given her much of a chance; I’ve only read a few of her poems plus "The Bell Jar".) But I was impressed by this poem. Such a vivid outpouring of loss, hate, frustrated love, and pain—a lifetime of grievances and unsatisfied longing in 3 pages. The odd 5 line stanzas and the fact that almost all the rhymes rhyme with "you" kind of rush you along and overwhelm you. The emotion is so extreme that I can hardly relate to it, but I see the quality of the poem, which I hadn’t before with Plath.

Paglia says the poem is so extreme that nothing can be built on it, and JoanK feels it short circuits her analytic brain. I have a similar reaction; it’s hard for me to find much to say except "whew!".

In "Daddy", Plath says every woman adores a Fascist. In "Man and Wife" we see the opposite. Lowell’s wife is either attracted by his vulnerability or is willing to put up with it. She has spent the 12 years of their marriage repeatedly helping him pull back from madness. It sounds pretty grim, but nonetheless this poem is a love story. There is affection in his reminiscence. The couple is worn out by the struggle, but he still holds her hand all night for comfort, and her tirade is loving as well as merciless.

Paglia makes a point of the heavy weight of Lowell’s New England heritage. The thing that really drives it home to me is that after 12 years of marriage they are still sleeping on something he thinks of as "Mother’s bed". That’s a lot of unresolved baggage.

Good point, PAT. Lowell and Plath have such different heritages, yet they both seemed weighed down by them. Lowell and wife in his mother's bed (ugh, can you imagine!) -- he undoubtedly feeling how his weakness has let the family line down. Plath identifying the domination of the men in her life with her German heritage -- reforming both her father and husband as Nazis and German as an obscene language imprisoning her.

DEEMS: I agree --Plath does not simply hate her father, she is fascinated by him too --wanting to join him, refashioning her husband in his image, saying "

Every woman adores a Fascist, 
The boot in the face, the brute 
Brute heart of a brute like you. 

AS Paglia says, this is hardly a feminist statement. Plath finally tears herself away from him, but it seems that the only way she can do so is to kill herself.

It would be interesting to know what her husband was really like. As Pat pointed out, two of his wives killed themselves. Either he was really attracted to women with severe problems or he was really hard to live with.

Some really uncharitable thoughts:

I'm not a psychologist, but it seems to me that one of the by-products of mental illness is complete self absorption. Presumably the pain is so great that it's victims can't see beyond it. If I was a nicer person, I would understand and sympathize with this self absorption. But I have to admit, that it really annoyed me in reading The Bell Jar, and again in this poem. It seems to me that Plath can't bear to think that anyone else suffered more than she does, so she makes herself a victim of the Holocaust. How's that for a mean thought.

hehehe to the wicked witch of the west - hahahaha - these confessional poems are hard to read and at first read I became angry that this poem, as others of its genre are chosen to represent poetry at a certain time in history until I realize they give a voice to many who have never had a voice because their situation was/is socially taboo - what I find is these poems force us to look inside ourselves at any unresolved pain.

I am not so sure that mental illness is complete self absorption - some folks have horrendous things happen that they have no ability to sort out on their own - the pain is so great along with the chaos of what the issues represent in a world that speaks about behavior having a good and bad, love and evil that they either get help or they become addicted to some compulsive obsession in an effort to push down the chaos of feelings.

To suggest that Plath had the right or, was in her right mind to write this poem I think is like suggesting no writer has the right to write about their intimate experiences that express their emotions unless, they write about the emotions that elevate the spirit...

Some folks have experienced life on terms they have no words to express their rage and having an author like Plath helps them express therefore make real their own experiences.

Didn't read Paglia on this one - I simply shook my head up and down and after reading it the second time and said...ah so...there is worded rage...

Joan K--I read The Bell Jar (Plath's only novel and very autobiographical) too, years ago. I liked it better than any of her poems but I remember the self-absorption and the dwelling on pain. It made enough of an impression on me though that I even remember where I was when I read it. I think I started it not too long after she died.

The mother's bed--ah yes, a lot of baggage, Pat H, a lot. The Lowell family was prominent in New England and family is important there--to this day people in a settled community remember family connections that go way back.

Lowell lived in--or had a summer home in, maybe--Castine Maine. When my children were young, my parents lived in Castine and there were all manner of stories about Lowell sightings. He was an extraordinarily shy man (or maybe it was just that he was famous at the time) and he used to wait until the church service began to sneak in and sit in the back row. He also left early. If I'm remembering correctly, he was an Episcopalian.

Barbara--You and I were posting at the same time. I appreciate your comment ".ah so...there is worded rage... " What a good description of "Daddy."

I agree, Barbara, it's a perfct description.

BARBARA: I like that description, too.

I never meant to suggest that self absorption was mental illness -- rather that the pain of mental illness causes self-absorption (as do other kinds of pain). Neither did I ever mean to suggest that Plath has no right to her pain, or should only write about uplifting things. Only that she is appropriating other peoples pain to herself, to make herself more pitiable.

Thank you for pointing out that pain needs a voice and that these poets (Lowell and Plath) provide it. You are quite right. And I had forgotten the social climate that made it unacceptable to be mentally ill. Perhaps only by framing her pain in terms of a pain that everyone could understand (the Holocaust) could she reach those who had never experienced mental illness.

Oh Joan hope you didn't think I was saying something to make you feel like you had to explain - I just thought I could bring another side of the coin to the discussion - if you hadn't shared your thoughts we may never have furthered the ideas that this poem could affect...

since when is the expression of pain a moral issue. It hurts and poetry is often a private outlet for that. no one writing like this probably expects to be read by others but Plath became famous. self absorption per se isn't a sin either especially when you are in dire pain. It's OK to be in dire happiness? Claire

Actually, Plath did intend to publish, and had published. It's no coincidence that she married a poet. She had all sorts of ambitions as a writer. This poem was among the published after her death.

JoanK- How can one who is self-absorbed see or feel anything that is not of "their own" introspection?
I know many people who are painfully self absorbed and it's difficult, if not impossible for them to look beyond their own thoughts, ideations or pain. It matters not that others are around, in their "space" -- only that they are- the one that is attended to and considered.
Perhaps that is what I'm trying to say also- it sounds similiar, doesn't it? They need a voice. God! That makes so much more sense with this poem- -- don't we all need a voice?

Especially when one feels that no one heeds, listens or considers anothers' pain?
This poem has become personal for me and perhaps it is unwise to attempt to dissect it in an impersonal forum. I almost understand where she is coming from and what she is saying. It gives the reader (me) the feeling that I must protect her thoughts. I, honestly was exposed to Plath way too young in my life.

of an emotional explosion which happens to have a poetic form is a defence against feeling. . . everyone here is very well defended. . . . Claire

Intellectualization of an emotional explosion is not necessarily a defense against it—it is sometimes the only way to come to terms with it. By analyzing one’s pain, trying to figure out what exactly is going on inside, one can often learn to face it better. Of course this is pretty hard to do when you’re really hurting.

Plath herself is doing some of this. The poem at first seems like a harsh animal howl of pain, but also, as Paglia points out, Plath uses a number of very sophisticated techniques to refine and shape the poem, to express her meaning more exactly, subtly and richly, and to turn her own experience into an allegory of the modern world of her time.

of any kind is said to be a SUBLIMATION of otherwise difficult emotions. psych. 101 UCLA. . . . As an artist I'm doing it too. Some of us do it better than others. . . . Claire

Yes, exactly right.

Sublimation is one thing; discipline and study are another. Plath worked hard at her poetry however much emotion it carries. And it is that hard work, in addition to the content of the poem, that we are looking at.

PatH--You mentioned that she takes a troubled (at least from her point of view) relationship with her father and extends it to coincide with the violent history of WWII and I agree. Her father was German, but he had no connection to Nazism. He was a naturalized American who lived here for years. The grey toe in the poem is probably something Plath actually remembered. Her father was a diabetic and his circulation was bad. The idea of a grey toe makes me tremble.

When Plath refers to perhaps being a gypsy, with her pack of Tarot cards, she may have been, as Paglia suggests, thinking of how darkly she tanned. There are photographs of her as a baby in a biography I read and she was already tan. Perhaps she thought there might even be some Gypsy in her blood. Gypsies were also exterminated in the death camps.

Maryal

What reactions do you have to the final stanza? Paglia's reading seems on target to me, but I wouldn't have thought of it without her.

Since Otto Plath died of gangrene starting in the infected foot, the "grey toe" probably looked much worse than that before the end. Ugh! Nowdays, he might be saved by antibiotics.

or more aptly "I'm through" "it is that hard work, in addition to the content of the poem, that we are looking at."

sweezing blood from a turnip is frustrating. structure one oh one, disciplime? where is the art in that.

I agree that Paglia’s analysis of the last stanza (or maybe 2)is so complete and convincing that I don’t think I could add a thing. Indeed, I would not have thought of it for myself.

The suffering of the mentally ill eats up the people around them, too. Can you imagine the strain of being Robert Lowell’s wife and leading him through repeated crises, even though she probably loved and admired him? And Sylvia Plath, in her desperation, did exactly the same thing to her children that she couldn’t forgive her father for doing to her—deprived them of a parent at an early age. (I think that if I had been in her position—singlehandedly raising 2 small children while struggling with manic depression—suicide would have seemed a pretty good option to me too.)

Yes we do look at those who suffer emotionally or who have mental illness differently than say a Cancer victim - all illness is as much a burden on the family as it is on the victim isn't it...I keep thinking if this amount of rage is coming from this women I bet a great amount of the rage is she had unfinished business with her father and he died before she could work it out with him...we also know that suicide is the ultimate control and so my guess is this women had control issues and her father did not meet her picture of what she thinks a father 'should' be - I always put 'should' in parenthesis since I was taught early in life there is no such thing as 'should' or 'can't'...

I do not think there were Nazis in WWI were there - wasn't that about the Kaiser and after loosing Hitler adopted the view of creating the Third Reich with the Nazi party...

GINNY: you're shy? Then I wish everyone was shy like you -- you lead us all!!

Sorry, did I type WW I? There should be another I; typo,third or fourth one today (the others at work, sigh). Have not yet adjusted to getting up at five-dark-thirty. Yeep.

Ginny--Only on alternate mornings. The other ones I sleep in till around 8. Tomorrow I don't teach. Tuesday and Thursday are good days for me. But I do have to force myself to get to bed (night person here) so that my system won't go totally out of whack.

Come Friday, five-dark-thirty again. Sigh.

DEEMS: I can't believe the commute you have! It would reduce me to a gibbering mess. How do you do it?

I notice that Lowell lived a fairly long life. Does anyone know whether he continued to have to go in and out of hospitals throughout?

When we were reading Wallace Stevens, I mentioned that I was always surprised to find poets leading calm middle-class lives. I was thinking of poets like Shelley, Coleridge, Plath, many others who suffer from depression. I wonder what fraction of poets do so? And is there a connection between pain and being able to express the deepest emotions.

Poetry captures all of the facets of human experience. After time spent sharing the pain of two tortured individuals, the next poem captures a very different mood.

JoanK--The good news about the commute is 1) I love driving 2)It's against rush. Usually it takes me less than fifty minutes to get to work.

The next poem will be going up soon.

Wonder where Jan is? And Jonathan? And Bern? And Barb? And Andy? And, lots of other people missing.

Maryal

hmmm interesting - never thought but I bet you are on to something Joan - pain and being able to express the deepest emotions - if for no reason than to feel so bad what the heck, I may just as well risk saying what is in my heart -- but you are right - the opposite - the exaltation of joy seldom bring on poetry that stays with us - in fact most poets in the state of exaltation write about their association with their God...

DEEMS: 50 minutes. Who'd have guessed. My standard suburb-to-center-city commute took much longer than that.

We are now entering unfamiliar territory for me. The first 33 poems, I knew most of the poets: in these last 10, I know almost none.

Frank O'Hara sounds like the opposite of the shy Lowell. From the poem and the biography O'Hara sounds like one of those people who knew everybody and had his finger in every artistic pie in New York.

I really needed Paglia to make sense of this poem: it's like a bunch of camera shots of people in motion. But it leaves me with a sense of a person who lives his life always with a changing cast of others against a background of movies, plays, and dance.

Paglia tells us that he and his friends were the only ones who took Hollywood seriously as culture. In graduate school, my major professor (in Sociology) was a student of popular culture, and I remember the disdain with which the subject was greeted by some academics who (almost literally) stuck up their noses at studying something so common!! I've noticed Paglia is defensive about her love of popular culture: she may identify with O'Hara in this.

Here is a link to other poems by Frank O'Hara and at the top of the page a short bio...

Thanks for the brief bio, Barbara. Not just everyone dies by being run over by a dune buggy! What a way to go.

OK, Deems, what does this line mean (from Lines for the Fortune Cookie) "You think your life is like Pirandello, but it's really like O'Neill".

Yikes, is this from another poem by O'Hara?

I'll give you my best guess--to be a character in one of Pirandello's plays, one would have an unpredictable, existentially insecure existence. But if you were in an O'Neill play, you are going to suffer, suffer, suffer, either because you are addicted to something (laudanum, alcohol) or because you are the family member of such a person. I'd rather be in a Pirandello play myself.

aha - that's it - Yambo thinks he lives his life as if in a play by O'Neill and wants the answers to create meaning - what he can't accept is he has actually been living in Pirandello's play...

For those who missed The Mysterious Flame of Queen Leona discussion, we've been trying for a month to figure out what is going on. I think BARBARA has got it-- by George, she's got it!

Wow! I needed all the help Paglia could give me on this one. When I read the poem, I got the flavor of flamboyant activity, but I didn’t have any notion of what it was about and caught almost none of the references. It turns out it’s an elaborate in-joke, directed at the New York art scene/gay scene/Hollywood pop culture scene/O’Hara’s personal friends. If you were one of the intended audience, it must have seemed stunningly clever. For the rest of us, it’s a question of whether we are willing to put in the effort to appreciate it. For myself, I am glad enough to have Paglia explain most of the references and tell me what it means, so that I can try, at least briefly, to put myself in the mindset of such a group.

I agree. I need footnotes or Paglia's help to get this one. Here's what I imagined it was about:

We are on the campus of a universidad in a Spanish speaking country and somewhere someone is playing a guitar. Two of the participants begin a mad dance and a third, Violet calls out from an adobe window to demand her mink back as well as reminding everyone that she is from Boston.

Later, the poet and Violet (and the others?) share peanut paste and onions and the talk is of the death of ballet and Hollywood and Violet, always the first to cry, breaks down.

Reading Paglia I discover all sorts of injokes.

Bringing me to the question of whether a poem that needs this many footnotes to be understood can survive for another fifty years?

It certainly does have energy though.

Paglia defines "plotz" as to burst and collapse in amazement. I thought it meant to laze around in a relaxed way. What do you think it means?

This was one poem that I didn't care what it meant or what was the message - I just love it - the rhythm the words - so far, of all the poems in the book, it is the one I would like to commit to memory - oh and I love the metaphor he used for nuns -- nuns, those arch campaign-managers

PAT: my Jewish husband and friends use plotz the way you did -- at the end of a long day, you plotz with exhaustion. But the Yiddish dictionary uses it the way Paglia does: to burst or explode. Scroll down to the "P"s:

YIDDISH PHRASES

Pat we were posting at the same time - I think the definition you found would fit as a beautiful mystery where as I do not think there is much mystery in lazing around Jane and I plotz! what a mysteriosabelle! mysteriosabelle - Mystérios a belle which says [a] to or has [according to if it is Italian or French] and [belle] which means beautiful in both languages.

Now [plotz] is also a Yiddish expression that I looked up and it means -- plotz (verb) fall down dead right now.

But there is also [plotz bacillus] the bacteria agent of agent of typhus fever. Isn't New York the home of Typhus Mary?

hehehehe we are all posting simultaneously - Joan you also are telling us of the Jewish connection...

Here’s my take on the poem, much of it cribbed from Paglia.

At first I thought the "campo" was an open area they were dancing in, but Paglia says no, it is a movie screen.

The poet and his friend Jane are either watching a movie or thinking about the movies they have seen. The fandango is their swirling thoughts, as we see a panorama of different bits of Hollywood.

Then Violet appears, another member of their madcap crowd. But she is also from Boston, representing O’Hara’s repressive youth, and this brings them down to earth. They sadly reminisce together, talking about the decline of the art-forms they love.

This totally fails to account for the title of the poem or the many Hispanic references in it. Perhaps the music of the Mexican guitar sets off their musing, and flavors the background of it. And of course there is a considerable Hispanic flavor to Los Angeles.

Pat [campo] in Spanish does mean field - I think she must mean it as a reference or metaphor to the movie screen as an open field of ideas, stories, images etc.

You're right, Barbara, that's good, isn't it. And the music really sweeps you away.

Neither of my Spanish dictionaries lists movie screen as a meaning for campo, but one of them says it can be the background of a painting—as well as field, of course. Perhaps they are listening to the guitar in an open space, and their imagination peoples the field (or background) with the pictures.

Does everyone remember the amusing song this refers to?

"Take back your mink.

Take back your poils.

What made you think

That I was one of those goils?"

Our next poem is up. Amusingly, Frank O'Hara, who was a figure in the New York art scene, gave his poem an Hispanic flavor. Now we have Paul Blackburn who, according to the biographical notes in the back of Paglia, worked in Provence and Spain, translating Spanish poetry, and gives us pure New York.

But not the New York art scene, rather the New York I knew!! I traveled that subway from Manhattan to Brooklyn and back for two years, and I hated every minute of it. So I find this poem rouses strong emotions in me. I impose all the dreary, worn out faces I remember from those subway rides on the characters in this poem.

People who rode the subway at off hours (as this clearly was) seem especially dreary. I can't even work up any feminist annoyance at them. The seaters are aroused from there stupor by the sight of a sexy woman "Stirring dull roots with Spring rain" (a quote from TS Eliot, Paglia tells us, a), but as soon as they leave the subway, they will sink into their stupor again. The only alternative is to be the man with the New York Times, imprisoned in the hectic world of the newspaper, and unable to see the real world.

The poet gives us several parallels to their journey. Paglia points out that the Eliot quote is based on the Canterbury Tales, the voyage of a group of Pilgrims. And the line in the poem " Over the tunnel and through the bridge to DeKalb Avenue we go" is a takeoff on "Over the river and through the trees To grandmothers house we go". Two trips with purpose and fellowship, underscoring the lack of purpose and fellowship of this group.

This poem is really depressing me. I think I'll stop.

Paglia sees the woman as having sexual power, but she is just as dead as the others, staring at a meaningless sign, with no awareness of life. The poem shows her as little more than the collection of body parts the men see her as. Traveling at that hour with "no bra" and sexy clothing, she may well be a prostitute going home after an all nighter, tired and with nothing to look forward to

New York Times book reviews have the unfortunate habit of printing the name of the reviewer in bold type and the author in much smaller type. I’m always getting caught by that. That isn’t Paglia’s new book, it’s Paglia’s review of a book by Michael Schmidt. It’s a good review. Some reviewers mostly show off their own knowledge and say little about the book, but Paglia says in detail what is in the book and what is good or bad about it, so you can make a good guess as to whether you would like to read it.

Who is the woman in the poem? JoanK suggests she might be a prostitute. If so, she is a classy one, dressed in the latest style, tanned, with a model’s stance. Or is she simply a fashionable woman?

Is she trying to provoke the response from her fellow-passengers, or is she merely enduring it?

Is she standing to produce a better effect, or to avoid possible over-friendliness from her fellow passengers?

Ginny, I'll be back in the Rembrant as soon as I get caught up, but it's my experience that it's pretty hard to catch you out on something.

My prostitute idea won't fly: maybe a high class call girl. Or maybe just a very sexy woman. But I was reacting to Paglia's suggestion that the poem shows the power of women. She wasn't described as one who was enjoying any kind of power that was meaningful to her.

One thing I've learned is that having power to make others think or do something doesn't translate into power over your own life. I have known women who had the kind of attractiveness that made men stop what they're doing and pant every time they walked by. Not being in that category, I was surprised to find that they often have very difficult lives. Men are attracted to them for all the wrong reasons, and they often wind up in terrible relationships. They aren't taken seriously professionally. And forget about having friends.

These posts are so interesting! I've only been on a NYC subway once and then accompanied by someone. All I remember are the many, many flights of stairs you must go down (or up) and hoping that no earthquake would occur and let all of the top of the thing come down on our heads. I don't know how folks are using the NY subways now with this terrorist threat hanging over us.

Back to the poem. I don't think the woman was doing anything or trying to 'be' anything for anyone. I think the poem shows merely what the writer has assigned not only to the other riders from his point of view but on the woman herself. Any of what he says might be true or not true.

I like this poem. I think the poet is courageous, albeit fairly (or unfairly) presumptuous.

Add: Being from Philadelphia and a frequent subway and 'el' rider when I was still working, I noticed that the subways in NYC had a tone of 'mind thine own business' (my Dad's 12th commandment!) to them. Everyone sat or stood in their own little space, not looking at each other or around in case the glance might be misinterpreted which could have been a dangerous thing. In Philly, on the other hand, people look at one another, smile or frown, say hello or 'grunt' but seem to be usually aware of the others in the cars.

Maybe that explains the title of this poem: oh how quickly some minds go on flights of fancy after just a quick 'once-over'...

ALLIEMAE "Everyone sat or stood in their own little space, not looking at each other or around in case the glance might be misinterpreted which could have been a dangerous thing".

One of my most vivid memories of the two years I lived in New York is the day the subway train I was on broke down and was stuck for three hours in the tunnel. No one said a word! Everyone read, or stared at the sign over the door for three hours. When I finally got home, I swore that if that ever happened again I would pipe up and say "Anyone know some good songs we can sing?"

I like the way this poem uses numbers:

  

 1 teen-age hood  
 1 lesbian  
 1 envious housewife  
 4 men over fifty 

It reminds me of the way the Japanese poet Issa uses them in his haiku:

In a large room 
one man, 
one fly. 

I ceased participating in this group because, although the opinions on the poetry are revealing, there is very little revealed about Paglia's analyses. But I couldn't resist setting out my own subway poem.



NEW YORK

If I entwined my hair with flashing light,
Inscribed my forehead bright with fire red
Diagrams of curves and clouds to bring to sight
The cavorting shapes moving in my head;
If I dyed my ears blue, drew a banana on my nose,
Placed between my lips a round glass eye,
Hung each armpit with a yellow rose,
Strung glass bells inside my thigh
To titillate my genitals and tinkle
On arousal, wound ribbons out of gold
Around my calves to curl and crinkle
As I strolled into the subway crowd, bold
In all my manic glory, perhaps a face or two
Might glance my way, dismiss this clown
And return to puzzle out the clue
For ten across, maybe six down

We don’t need to change Carl Sandburg much to get a poem about subways (at least the elevated).

The El comes

on little round feet.

It sits looking

over traffic and city

on sturdy haunches

and then chugs on.

On the New York subway, no one looks at anyone else because that’s asking for trouble. On the Boston T, no one pays attention to anyone else either, but it seems to be for a different reason. They are all simply off in their own private worlds, and aren’t interested in noticing others. I bet most of them wouldn’t look at the woman in the poem, either.

JAN: I hadn't finished laughing yet from the time you posted that in Poetry. Now you've set me off again!!

PAT: GREAT AND SUPERGREAT. Carl Sandburg, move over.

Me, too, Ginny, but I was trying to change Sandburg's poem as little as possible.

The next poem is now up -- another New York poem. Paglia is here doing for New York what she did for London earlier in the book: posting a number of poems that show the city from different points of view.

The Mexican Guitar was not clearly set in New York (or anywhere real) but it was full of references to the characters in O'Hara's New York circle and to scenes of entertainment followed by depression presumably typical of the glitzy New York life he led.

The we are back among us "prols" riding the subway in The Once Over.

Now, with May Swenson, we see a third view of the city: one that made my breath stop every time I saw it. Paglia compares this poem to Wordsworth's from Westminster bridge. A view that shows the moving, beating heart of the city.

What do you think of this view? Does her device of comparing everything she sees to moving shoes work for you? Those of you who know New York which of these views of the city speak to you?

(smile) "Anyone know some good songs we can sing?"

Joan...I fear for your safety!!! Puh-lease!! Would this be where 'discretion is the better part of valor (or bravado?) comes in??? (smile)

Oh I remember the enchantment of the El in Philly. We came to Philly when I was nine...and that ride was such an adventure. I can still hear that screeching and clanking as the El rounded the York and Dauphin station!! Thanks for the memories!!

I can only say that I LOVE this poem! It includes all of my favorite things...tugboats, cargo ships on the Delaware River, looking up at an airplane going over the high and dipping peaks of the bridge as a child and wondering if they would make it, the gulls with their wild squawking cries...and people...all kinds of people. Haven't read Paglia on it yet but for what the poem has given me, just didn't want to interrupt my own warm and wonderful thoughts.

Once again, I see why I am 'the art appreciater' and 'an artist is an artist!'

I am forever fascinated with how some people can have such a knack for expressing themselves through words and your poem brought to the fore once again this fascination!

Well done, Jan...I'd love to see Paglia sink her teeth into this one (metaphorically speaking, of course!!)

Pat...Pat...Pat...how extremely clever! I almost fell out of the computer chair (not a good thing for a recent bilateral knee replacement, oseoporosis of the hip and spine lady!)...but oh, how I enjoyed that one!

And now I really want to tell ALL of you what a pleasure this poetry experience with all of us has been.

Until now, I was a Longfellow, Whittier woman!! They said what they meant and they meant what they said and I loved both the rhythm of their metered poetry and the fact that I learned them at my father's knee.

I feel I have grown, at least a little, in this short period of our time together and hope with all my heart that we will have another book of poetry and analysis one day soon as another 'ongoing book'.

Thanks and see you all again somewhere here in SeniorNet Space.

ALLIEMAE: WHOA. Where are you going? We have more poems to read, and we need you. We'll be here for awhile.

I think we have all grown a little -- I know I have. And your enthusiasm has helped.

In "The Story of Civilization, Robby posted an article from today's NY Times describing an exhibit on how people from the East view the West. To the question why the West is democratic and the East often despotic, Sorour Kasmai, an Iranian writer responded: "I think democracy exists in the West because the West has had the novel. And despotism reigns in the East because the East has had poetry. The novel develops the democratic imagination because it offers various paths, various destinies, while poetry is despotic."

HOW THE EAST VIEWS THE WEST

What do you think?

Hi there...and hi All...Not going anywhere...just making a start to leave the party as it begins to be over...you know how you do!!

Anyway, will be here till the poetry stops, but without the help of Paglia as she was a loan from library and had to be returned. Very popular book it seems. So will read the poems that are left, glean what I can and lean on y'all for the rest of the excitement!!

Alliemae

Great! Next up: The Splash Heard Round the World. Should be up tomorrow.

The next poem is up: "Old Pond" by Gary Snyder.

This poem needs an explanation which is longer than the poem, since it’s based on traditions unfamiliar to most of us.

Gary Snyder is a “beat” poet who incorporates Eastern tradition in his poems. I associate Gary Snyder with China, since he has translated Chinese poetry, and I’m familiar with his anthology “Mountains and Rivers without End” which is based on a Chinese scroll painting. He wished to duplicate in his poems the feeling of the painting of a traveler going from mountain to river to woods to mountain and on and on.

This poem has this feel. But more obviously draws on the culture of Japan. It is based on a poem by 17th century Japanese poet Matsao Basho. Basho holds the place in Japanese poetry that Shakespeare holds in the West. Writing a generation after Shakespeare, he took what was a drinking party game and developed the Haiku, a poetic form which allowed Japanese poetry to beak away from it’s imitation of Chinese poetry and form a tradition of its own which still flourishes after 400 years.

In addition to being a poet, Basho was a Zen Buddhist monk, and all of his poetry must be read within the Zen mystic tradition. The poem that Snyder is using here is this:

The old pond A frog jumps in Splash.

This poem is as opaque to most Western readers as a Zen koan (those riddle questions like “What is the sound of one hand clapping” that drive Westerners crazy). Indeed, it is used in the same way. The story surrounding this poem (probably untrue) is that when Basho wrote it, he immediately achieved “enlightenment”, the state that all mystics are seeking (I suspect it was the “splash” that did it)..

(I can hear Kevin and Jonathan now saying Joan has finally flipped her lid. I’m not making this stuff up – you can find it in any book on haiku, for example Blythe’s History of Haiku).

Gary Snyder would have expected his readers to know this background when they read the poem. He is squarely within the Japanese tradition in writing a poem which incorporates another poet’s work. What might be looked down on in the West is considered a mark of respect in the East. Japanese poetry is full of haiku that are variations of Basho's.

Having said all that, does Snyder’s poem speak to us distinctly unenlightened Westerners? What do you think? What about the material between the “Pond” and the “Splash”? What does inserting material into the middle of Basho’s haiku add?

I really like this poem, and I liked it even more after reading JoanK’s explanation. To me, it has a tremendous feeling of peace. The first part is a kind of descent, both in space and significance, from the grand mountain top down through the trees, to the tiny bird, its call coming down from a tree trunk. The bird itself is probably going down the trunk (nuthatches are about the only bird that does this).

So we are spiraling downward and inward to focus on a single spot—the lake—and the smallest, most insignificant creature of all—the poet, a "naked bug". He is probably tired and empty after a day of scrambling.

Then, into the shock of icy cold water, with the peace broken by

Splash!

The material Snyder inserts into Basho’s haiku makes it much more specific, hence more approachable to a Westerner. The poem definitely speaks to me as a description of a mystical experience, probably not as broad as Basho’s, but easier to understand.

When I started reading Paglia’s comments, they just got in the way, so I didn’t read more until I had worked out and written down what I thought of the poem. Her comments are too fussy. The point of the poem is its economy and spare simplicity, which she doesn’t seem to appreciate.

Great comments, Pat!! I missed the feeling of everything going down to the lake.

Even the nuthatch. "Down from the trees". great. As you said, the nuthatch is the only bird that goes down tree trunks.

JoanK..."he took what was a drinking party game..." now who woulda thunk it!!!

Joan, I must tell you that I enjoy reading your postings as much if not more than some of the books and poems we read...and I really appreciate that you gave us that background.

PatH, you know...I got a feeling of peace too...it felt to me like being in the Maine woods when all the tourists are on the Rte 1 Coastal Line...so incredibly peaceful. But then we got to the 'Five Lake's Basin's...' and I wondered what/where the location of this poem might be...

For this 'large picture' Saggitarius, being here and learning to seek out or be pointed in the direction of details and take the time to appreciate them is such a treat...maybe it was inevitable, since my Moon is in Pisces...

Alliemae

ALLIEMAE: why, thank you. I enjoy your posts too.

"..."he took what was a drinking party game..." now who woulda thunk it!!! "

Who woulda thunk it is right.. I wonder if the Japanese are the only culture to make writing poetry into a drinking party game.

Hey! Is anyone out there? I'm going to leave this poem up for a few more days to see if anyone comes back after Labor Day, and then move on.

If anyone wants to read more haiku and Basho, I can't recommend too highly Robert Hass, ed. "The Essential Haiku: Poems of Basho, Buson, and Issa."

Well folks...here I am back again. Would you believe I had completely forgotten about the poetry since I started Latin and Greek both at the same time (foolish woman!).

I'm glad to see Old Pond is still up. Has anyone figured out or at least mused what the meaning of "a naked bug with a white body and brown hair dives in the water," might mean? Oh...just reread previous posts...PatH says the poet...hmmm well, he could have long hair...this is a lovely and unhurried sort of very intricate poem, isn't it?

Alliemae

ALLIEMAE: great your back. I started Latin 200 so am a bit buried also. I'm leaving this poem up for awhile to see if any of our wandering fellow poets come back.

Yes, I think the white bug must be the poet. After his journey in the mountains, he dives in the water, and "Splash!". I don't think I'll look at that word the same way again.

The next poem deals with people caught in a tornado. I'm having trouble dealing with it: it makes the suffering in New Orleans too real for me. Should I skip it,or put it up?

Alliemae—I’m filled with awe at you tackling both Latin and Greek. I’d love to know both of them. I’ll be interested to know if they interfere with each other. I was tempted by the Greek, but decided to review my Spanish instead.

I would be curious to know what you made of the phrase

"down from the treetrunks

up through time."

For me, that was the hardest bit of the poem.

Hmmm...""down from the treetrunks

up through time."

my immediate response was the sap from the trees down and into the earth...and the sap of life coming up from the earth (as in clay?)...kind of like the circle of life, unending and not particularly personal...and even tho 'Splash!' life goes on...

just a guess...Alliemae

HEY, MAL: glad you dropped by. Come back when you're settled.

I hated to take Gary Snyder down, we had such a good time with him, but decided we'd better move on. I just plain skipped the poem "The Tornado" -- after watching so much about New Orleans, the poem made it all too real and immediate for me (which probably means it's a good poem). Between that and the fact that in 20 minutes it will be 9/11, I've had enough of stress.

What do you think of this one? I am guessing it is supposed to be shaped like a TV set with rabbit-ear antenna. It is a "found" poem: he didn't make up the sentences, but heard them (I assume on TV). I watched more TV in the last week than I have in years, so my head is jangling around just like this poem.

I've watched more TV than you have, JoanK because this prose poem has sentences that I recognize as having come from "The Newlywed Game"--the one about which vegetable most resembles. . . . and the one from "The Dating Game" (not sure about the exact title, but there were three bachelors or bachelorettes behind a curtain with the contestant asking them questions.)

Then there are the sentences that come from either crime shows or perhaps news shows. The temperature one about WABC degrees could very well be on the radio instead of TV since the weather is so often given on radio.

What I notice is that silliness quoted from game shows--and silly gameshows at that (daytime game shows as opposed to Jeopardy which, while no intellectuals paradise is at least mildly interesting)--and the real life crime details are intermixed along with daily information, such as the temperature.

I am never sure that poems made up of prose paragraphs are really poems mainly because I've never read one I've fallen in love with, but I like this one more than most.

Maryal

Thanks, MARYAL.To me, the poem reflects a kind of "mental clutter". I can almost see those slender salamander scars criss-crossing my brain, getting more and more, deeper and deeper. I want to go take a bath of the inside of my skull.

What do the rest of you think?

Personaly, I think it resembles something of my thought processes. Helter-skelter as they are.

Here is the next poem. It is short, and maybe not profound, but I like it. We all, as we go through life, whatever else we create, we create our faces. So that at the end of the day, we are wearing the life we've lived -- our makeup.

When I was a teenager, I hated make-up. this was before the days of hypo-allergenic makeup, and I didn't realize that I was allergic to the smell. I just knew that when I wore it, I felt nauseous all the time. But my friends said "Oh, you have to wear make-up, or you'll never catch a man".

Practically the first thing I said to my future husband when we got engaged was "Do you care if I stop wearing makeup?" He said "Of course not!" That was the last day I ever wore make-up.

(That was 50 years ago, and he still thinks I'm sexy. Eat your heart out, Estee Lauder!!)

Is this about makeup or lifestyle? Defiance or resignation? Unvarnished truth or simple honesty? No matter. It's a fine bit of poetry.

He everybody. It's good to see the devotees of poesy still so active with Paglia's book. I've been mostly out of town since dropping out sight end of July. Had a wonderful summer. Missed you all terribly.

Jonathan

JONATHAN: Hey, we missed you, too!!! But I'm glad you had a wonderful summer.

I thought I knew what it was abut, but now that you ask the question, I guess I don't. What do you think?

JONATHAN: HEY, WE MISSED YOU TOO!!! But I'm glad you had a wonderful summer.

I thought I knew what it was abut, but now that you ask the question, I guess I don't. What do you think?

Welcome back, Jonathan. We have missed you too.

I think this poem has to do with the wonders of not wearing makeup, or maybe the truth of where some things that look like makeup (the flushed cheeks from drinking) are really not.

I'll bet that Paglia has more to say than I just did.

Paglia gives the word "makeup" a double meaning: cosmetics, and one's constitution--what one consists of, or is "made up" of, one's essence. That makes it a sort of self-antonym.

So what the poem is saying is: instead of the facade of makeup, I’m wearing my real self, and it’s a brash, gutsy self, too.

Welcome back, Jonathan. I'm sorry you missed the discussion of "Old Pond".

Pat H--Yes, what you see is what you get and furthermore I'm pointing it out in this poem!

Camille Paglia is at her very best here, her prose made up in her most provocative and seductively linguistic, tendentious finery. But somehow I sense Rochelle Kraut's discomfort at seeing her new-found freedom from makeup turned into the war jaws of Paglia's makeover. I can hear a sensational difference in listening to the reading of the poem by both poet and commentator. Both might sound true, no doubt, but would they part in peace?

Camille, you've murdered my lines.

Fight the good fight, Rochelle.

RK: I don't see why that capitalized 'I' should be seen as pugnacious.

CP: Well, it shouldn't be left looking simply cosmetic like that, looking only for identity. Better we should make it look assertive.

RK: Assertive is fine with me. That's credible. But isn't 'tough, blunt, and pugnacious', a bit of a stretch. It makes me look unnatural.

CP: Oh, for heavens sake, Rochelle, come on side.

RK: Thanks. I don't feel up to it. I didn't withdraw from one war to engage in another.

CP: Pull yourself together. I know you're tired, but...

RK: You're confusing me, Camille. Am I really trading glowing charm and bashfulness for truculence and braggodocia?...Curtain

I came back to such a backlog of work, I don't know how much time I will find to enjoy my Paglia book. Thanks for the friendly welcome back. Long live SeniorNet.

Jonathan

JONATHAN: I can see why we missed you. That was great!

Would you tear apart my analysis of "Old Pond" (I've got my boxing gloves on).

THE SPLASH HEARD ROUND THE WORLD

Hi Everybody...missed you all and the poetry too!

Was trying to pull off two languages at once. Have sorted it out...now only doing Latin 101 so hopefully will have time to participate in my reading groups again.

This new poem...sounds like a very bad Monday morning to me...and I like it...short, sweet, but filled with the truths of many...

Alliemae

That's a wonderful analysis, Joan. I'm with you all the way on that. Your post on Old Pond, with its comments on Chinese and Japanese poetry forms only whets ones appetite to learn more. You're asking too much of me in hoping that I might engage in a duel with haikus as weapons. Enlightenment is as far away as ever, even after being up all night doing six takes at the old pond with a cooperative bullfrog. Same pond where my pals and I used to skinny dip. We were practically wallowing in mud. Never gave enlightenment a thought. Just kept on splashing nevertheless. Completely mindless. What fun. What a heaven.

Jonathan

Great. Maybe we can all meet at the pond after this is over (but NO skinny dipping) and splash!

Great to see you back, Allie. Sorry Greek didn't work out. But I think you'll really like the Latin.

A new poem today and I think I'll have to wait until Monday so I can go to the library and read Paglia's remarks...maybe it will even be available and I can take it home with me.

This poem hit me in the gut...soooo very heavy...I'll be interested in all of your comments and also Paglia's...poor, dear Wanda...

Alliemae

I'm likely to be in the minority, but I appreciate this poem. For me it's composed of voices, some from the outside world, others most likely from wanda herself.

If you read the poem outloud and really HEAR it, it has the best effect. The poem has numerous examples of Black dialect as well as shades of it.

Much of the poem is composed of attacks on Wanda, her weight, her ready made family, her lacking a sense of humor.

In a strange way it reminds me of A.A. Milne's poem:

What is the matter with Mary Jane?
She's crying with all her might and main,
And she won't eat her dinner - rice pudding again -
What is the matter with Mary Jane?

What is the matter with Mary Jane?
I've promised her dolls and a daisy-chain,
And a book about animals - all in vain -
What is the matter with Mary Jane?

What is the matter with Mary Jane?
She's perfectly well, and she hasn't a pain;
But, look at her, now she's beginning again! -
What is the matter with Mary Jane?

What is the matter with Mary Jane?
I've promised her sweets and a ride in the train,
And I've begged her to stop for a bit and explain -
What is the matter with Mary Jane?

What is the matter with Mary Jane?
She's perfectly well and she hasn't a pain,
And it's lovely rice pudding for dinner again!
What is the matter with Mary Jane?

I loved this poem and its accompanying illustration of a little girl in a high chair kicking off her shoe because I knew the first time I heard it exactly what was wrong with Mary Jane. I think most children do.

As for Wanda--she's hearing a lot of negative comments addressed to her--and she's made a poem from them.

You're definitely not in the minority. I like this poem too. I like the way (as Paglia says) Wanda emerges as a positive person starting out as a blank in the middle of all those negative comments

A Black poor single parent, too fat, even her feet are too big, at the end of the poem she is still standing, and you want to cheer!!

When I worked at HUD, I helped a lot of women like Wanda "move out of that hell hole" and I'm proud of it.

Someone else loves Milne as much as I do!! I happen to love rice pudding, but I still understood that poem instantly.

I'm also not the only one who loves both poetry and detective stories. Coleman's biography in the back of the book lists as one of her literary influences Anne Perry. Unless there is another Anne Perry that I don't know about, she is a detective story writer who in real life is a convicted murderess. She writes murder mysteries about Victorian England. I can't imagine what the influence is, except that she always emphasizes the hypocrisy of the rich living off the poor.

I loved this poem...but I still think it's very heavy and a very REAL depiction of many souls today...

I don't know why I had this response. But I live in a rather large city and worked with many young, single mothers, many of color, and know what they go through, have gone through and will continue to go through...and how much I always wished they could KNOW how valuable they are. Wanda is just the sort of person I would want to support and nurture, yet always wanting to wait and not infringe on her privacy or overstep her personal boundaries, for she seems to be just becoming aware of them and sounds like she will soon own them. She has pride amidst all of that and it's what is keeping her going...that, and she is definitely beyond a survivor'...and I pray she will go on to be CHAMP!

I had written a post yesterday or the day before but alas it has 'gone missing' as my pc (or AOL) was really acting up this weekend!! Essentially it was that I also like this poem, in fact I think it's one of those 'necessary' poems for our times.

And at the same time I find it quite heavy. I have seen a lot of women in this position and it's always really touch and go if they stay 'on top' of it. There is a lot said in this poem that reflects one of the greatest sociological problems of our times...there are a lot of 'Wanda's' out there. And I believe that we, as a society, are as duty bound to find a way to support them out of their situation as we are to spend billions on wars. Well, that's as 'political' as I'll get.

Peace...Alliemae

p.s. just as I checked this post to see if I needed to make any corrections (I do it best when it is in 'post print') what do I see but my 'lost post' #227!! I had checked to see if it was posted when I came on and hadn't seen it!! Well, too late to delete it and I don't really want to delete this one...

Nor should you. You are absolutely right. After I had helped some women like Wanda find decent housing, one said that that was the first time her children had ever gone out to play. In the place where they used to live, it was just too dangerous.

Some of the stories can break your heart.

First of all, JoanK, so you know cuz you saw it too...ayup!!

Now...for Woodstock...

Sometimes, oh, how I wish we were back at that very special time. For a while I hated some of the things that came out of that era as they really made for such a painful journey in our little family and so many other families...

But just reading this again without the music...just the words...it truly brought tears to my eyes. When will we, I wonder, ever get back to that period of innocence and celebration of life...and hope. This poem seems even so much more important to me in these days...

Peace...Alliemae

ALLIEMAE: were you at Woodstock? I was home changing diapers. I've always felt I missed the sixties -- I was living in Israel at first, and then came home and started having babies. But I've always felt that I missed something that would have been very important to me.

It seems strange to end with Woodstock. That seems so far away now. Is there no poetry that speaks to where we are now? Wanda Coleman knows where she is -- do we?

Alas...no, I wasn't at Woodstock and was also at home changing babies and working and loving every minute of the music of the '60's and '70's as I still do.

I'm not wild about creepy, crawly critter type things so don't go on camping trips if I don't have to...especially massive ones!!

I sure wish I had had the opportunity to go to Israel though. After I started to learn some middle eastern and central asian and turkic languages and cultures I always wanted to go to Jeruselem...just to see all the many different people represented there.

Last poem...sounds sad, doesn't it?

Alliemae

Yes, it does. Speak up, everybody. We're at the end of a journey, here. What have we done? What have we learned?

I'm one of you as well. Raising kids when I would like to have been marching. But I married young and had things turned out differently could have been one of those protesting. I was definitely on the antiwar side as well as civil rights. I had to talk myself out of becoming a freedom rider (remember those idealist white kids who went down south to help people register to vote)--told self that I had two babies and that they wouldn't make it well in the world without a mother. So I stayed home, was appointed to the Open Housing Commission in our town and got into the integration effort on that level.

Also boycotted grapes--remember Cesar Chavez? Worked at the Catholic Charities headquarters after Chicago burned when MLK was assassinated.

Memorized the words to many many folk songs, this one among them.

Like you, Alliemae, I still get chills when I hear "Woodstock." And "Blowing in the Wind" and "Where Have All the Flowers Gone?" And so many more.

I was and was not at the same time, part of the sixties. I was in an activist church but I was also home with children. What a time it was.

As for what we have been doing during this discussion, I think we've been reading poems, agreeing and disagreeing with each other and with Camille Paglia.

I'm thinking of using her book with freshmen next semester? Any input? Will they understand her essays? The hardcover is in line with what regular paperback poetry textbooks cost.

Maryal

I didn't quite miss the sixties. Before I went to Israel, I was active in Brooklyn CORE. We did shake things up a bit.

Cesar Chavez was one of my heroes. I actually got to meet him shortly before he died. He was still boycotting grapes -- I promised him I wouldn't eat them, and I didn't, for years. I think I'm the only one who remembered.

No, that's not true. Social activism is alive and well in the person of my niece (Pat H's daughter. I'll let her tell you about it).

I don't know if your freshmen will "get" Paglia or not. I feel her last selections were on the whole a bit of a letdown. What do you all think?

Good point, Joan K, about the last section of the book. But I don't think the poems at the end would be a problem because the semester's content is split between the novel (I do four) and poetry with poetry getting less time, at least in my sections. I doubt we would get beyond the moderns.

I feel sort of like Anne of Green Gables having found all of you 'kindred spirits'!!

Maryel, re: "Where Have All the Flowers Gone?" Here's another one: "Whose Garden Was This?" an old John Denver hit...the pure and simple truth of it and therefore still brings tears to my eyes! JoanK, I was always a more silent activist...writing letters and singing and cooking for the more active activists!! Even was a member of the Anna Crusis Women's Choir: Singing for Social Change. And I created our 'Rap' number for the concert we did at a Habitat for Humanity site! Well, guess there are still a lot of reasons to get these knees and back going again!!!

And on a lighter note...does anyone remember Melanie's "I've Got a Brand New Pair of Roller Skates"?????

I don't know how I'll fare without you all...it's been a glorious ride!

Love, Alliemae

"I don't know how I'll fare without you all...it's been a glorious ride! "

Don't worry. We'll find another great book to read together. Meanwhile, back to Middlemarch.

In case anyone is interested:

Whose Garden Was This

Whose garden was this
It must have been lovely
Did it have flowers
I've seen pictures of flowers
And I'd love to have smelled one

Whose river was this
You say it ran freely
Blue was its colour
And I've seen blue in some pictures
And I'd love to have been there

Tell me again, I need to know
The forest had trees, the meadows were green
The oceans were blue
And birds really flew
Can you swear that it's true

Whose grey sky was this
Or was it a blue one
You say they were breezes
I've heard records of breezes
And I'd love to have felt one

Tell me again, I need to know
The forest had trees, the meadows were green
The oceans were blue
And birds really flew
Can you swear that it's true

Whose garden was this
It must have been lovely
Did it have flowers
I've seen pictures of flowers
And I'd love to have smelled one

Tell me again, I need to know
Tell me again, I need to know
Tell me again, I need to know

Words and Music by Tom Paxton

...and when sung by John Denver, need I say more...it can be found on his album "Spirit"

and yes, JoanK...back to Middlemarch!!

That's an amazing song. Thanks.

OK, I’m probably the only person in the country of my generation who does not actually know the music to this song. But I find it very moving. The assumptions of the 60s were touchingly innocent. "We see what’s wrong with the world, and we are not like that. If we only assert who we are, that will make it better." Mitchell herself knows better. The most moving part of the poem is the insertions in the last repeat of the refrain:

We are stardust

million year old carbon

We are golden

Caught in the devil’s bargain

And we’ve got to get ourselves

Back to the garden

Allimae--That's a remarkable song. I am a science fiction fan, and that is a nutshell summary of a lot of books that take forever to say the same thing. I do know the music to "Where Have All the Flowers Gone?" I've always found it moving.

Ah, another 'kindred spirit'...what a swell discussion this was...and, at the end...we finally got a few poems I could 'grok'...

Alliemae

JoanK isn’t the only social activist in our family. Our mother had a hidden streak of it which she never got much chance to do anything with. I was the lazy one, who didn’t do anything, but my daughter Cathy made up for it. In college in Oregon she helped organize a strike to get better conditions for strawberry pickers. Her goal was 10 cents more a quart and somewhere to go to the bathroom on the job. My (unspoken) goal was that she neither get arrested nor beaten up—both possible if not very likely. I got my goal, and the workers got part of the 10 cents. I don’t know about the bathrooms.

Later, in Oakland, while working to get better conditions for janitors, it occurred to her that she would be much more effective if she were a lawyer, so she went back to school, became a lawyer, and now, in Boston, is still trying to get workers fair treatment.

This has been a terrific discussion. Thank you, Deems, for leading it. I learned a lot about how to read a poem. And thanks, JoanK, for filling in at the end. I needed something to make me take the modern poets more seriously. And thanks to all my fellow readers, who made the discussions so lively.

And thanks to all of you wonderful participants. A double thanks to those of you who stuck with me to the end. And triple thanks to Maryal for doing such a tremendous job of leading us.

I learned a tremendous amount in this discussion, perhaps more than I have in almost all of the discussions at Seniornet (and that's saying a lot). I often got very irritated with Paglia, as you know, but this kind of discussion, both Paglia's organization of the book, Maryal's organization of the course, the strength of the leader and participants, and, of course, the poems made for such a fertile experience, it would have been impossible not to learn and grow. I'm really sad to see it come to an end.

I will ask that this discussion be made read only.

This discussion is being archived and is now Read Only.

Thanks to all who participated in this very lively discussion. We've been here all summer, and then Joan K kindly took over when I had to return to my day job.

It was fun.