[lit-ideas] Re: Sunday POEM
- From: "Lawrence Helm"<lawrencehelm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: "Lit-Ideas" <Lit-Ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>, wokshevs@xxxxxx
- Date: Tue, 25 Sep 2007 01:51:48 +0000
Walter:
As I wrote my note I was aware that I was being general and mythic and thus
open to misunderstanding and nitpicking, but if that's what you're doing,
you'll have to be more specific. I don't see your point.
Paleoanthropology is one of my subjects -- also genetics as pertains to early
man and the movement of human societies. So I'm somewhat current on the latest
theories about what man was doing through 99% of his prehistory. Matters I
studied in those sciences informed my comments somewhat.
Another of my subjects is Poetry although I'm not current on poets in the last
40 years or so. I read Yevgeny Yevtushenko years ago and don't have any of his
poetry here, but my impression is that he was primarily a political poet. So
what does he have to do with a grand passion? If he wrote something on that, I
don't recall it.
I read Sigmund Freud's Totem and Taboo back in the 40s but don't recall it
vividly.
I read Origin of Species in 1958, but if there was something in it about what
attacks men to women and vice versa I don't recall it.
I have heard Roy Orbison's songs. He was a pitiful fellow who didn't do well
in his relationships as I recall.
I haven't seen Casablanca recently. Perhaps Ilsa and Rick had grand passions
for each. Their passion was rendered unrequited through circumstances. I was
assuming in my previous note "unrequited grand passion" which was the
applicable element in Mike's poem -- as I understood it. So to take something
I said and apply it more broadly isn't an application I'm likely to support,
but more in the nature of a quibble -- which I'm not saying you are doing
inasmuch as I have no idea what you're doing.
I have not read Dennett or Dawkins and probably am not likely to.
I haven't seen Rear Window in ages. Maybe it has something to do with
relationships, but my recollection of it doesn't relate it well to Mike's poem;
which, after all, my comments were exclusively pertaining to.
Lawrence
------------Original Message------------
From: wokshevs@xxxxxx
To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx, "Lawrence Helm" <lawrencehelm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Cc: "Lit-Ideas" <Lit-Ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Mon, Sep-24-2007 12:53 PM
Subject: Re: [lit-ideas] Re: Sunday POEM
I strongly recommend the following texts:
1. *Breaking the spell*, Daniel Dennett
2. *The blind watchmaker*, Richard Dawkins
3. *The origin of species*, Charles Darwin
4. *The extended phenotype*, Richard Dawkins
5. *Casablanca*, film with Humphrey Bogart et al
6. All songs by Roy Orbison (some more than others)
7. *Groundwerk of the Metaphysics of Morals*, Immanuel Kant
8. All poems by Yvengeny Yevtushenko
9. Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms
10. Universal Declaration of the Rights of [Persons]
11. *I think I'm going back* and "The look of love* by Dusty Springfield
12. *Totem and Taboo*, Ziggie Freud
13. *Rear Window*, film by A. Hitchcock
Cheers,
Walter O.
On vacation on the Rock of the Avalon
Quoting Lawrence Helm <lawrencehelm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>:
> Thanks to my misreading of Julie's note, I have found myself thinking about
> Mike's poem all morning.
>
> If we examine the way our species developed, we see that in general, men
> selected women for their beauty and women selected men for their ability to
> take care of them. Perhaps then, the grand passions have typically
> belonged to men rather than women because look there: isn't she beautiful?
> Isn't she perfectly wonderful (meaning beautiful in movement and speech)?
>
> Think of all the grand-passion love poetry written by men. What of the
> objects of their passion? Did any of those women write poetry? No, of
> course not. They were beautiful. They didn't need to.
>
> Now, perhaps our hunter-gatherer ancestors did it better than we do today.
> She's hot and he's hot so they move in together -- don't even bother with
> marriage. And as for a man providing for a woman, well maybe. She can after
> all get a job and provide for herself. But that is a recent development. We
> still have all those hunter-gatherer genes back there trying to guide us and
> bother us. Look, there: she is beautiful, we read in Mike's poem. Okay so
> far, but she doesn't reciprocate. There, Mike had the grand passion and
> poured his heart out to her and she merely used him in some way. She wanted
> something material from him -- not a grand passion -- so in disgust he gave
> it to her and she abandoned him -- like a whore.
>
> I take that as a symbol for certain sorts of relationships. Think of
> Somerset Maugham's Of Human Bondage.
>
> Yes, there are women who have grand passions. Think of the astronaut and her
> diaper. What did that guy look like, by the way? I'll bet he wasn't
> beautiful.
>
> Lawrence
>
>
> ------------Original Message------------
> From: "Lawrence Helm"<lawrencehelm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Date: Mon, Sep-24-2007 9:03 AM
> Subject: Re: [lit-ideas] Re: Sunday POEM
> At the risk of giving Leftists ammunition for several future cheap shots,
> I'll confess that I thought Julie had written, "thanks . . . for sharing your
> guilt with us." And read the poem again very carefully and was just about to
> post an alternate view of what the poem really meant -- guilt was there
> superficially in Cuchulain on the beach slaying his son, OJs gloves -- the
> guilt of getting carried away by passion, but not in the image of the worthy
> woman who can step up like William Blake, and so he hopes and loves, but he
> is betrayed and made a clown for his love is broken . . . and then I read
> Julie's note again. Alas, I need new glasses.
>
> Lawrence
>
>
>
> ------------Original Message------------
> From: "Julie Krueger" <juliereneb@xxxxxxxxx>
> To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Date: Sun, Sep-23-2007 11:31 PM
> Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: Sunday POEM
> Last line packs a punch .... thanks as always for sharing your gift with
> us.
>
> Julie Krueger
>
>
> On 9/23/07, Mike Geary < atlas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Chuchlain should be Cuchulain as every good Irishman knows and Irishwomen
> too.
>
> Mike Geary
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: Mike Geary
> To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Sent: Sunday, September 23, 2007 12:12 PM
> Subject: [lit-ideas] SUNDAY POEM
>
>
> HEARTBREAK MOTEL
>
>
> This is how it happened
> if it did
> I can't remember for sure
> all I know is
> I was sitting at a sidewalk cafe
> trying on OJ's gloves
> when along came this rain
> silver coins sparking on the black streets
> and like out of the strains of "Maria"
> steps this wild woman
> a "Bible black, sloe black, crow black" woman
> steps up like William Blake
> all wall-eyed and says
> (actually, she says "saze"
> except in first person singular)
> "I say," she saze,
> "ain't I done you before?"
> and so it happened
> (again? I can't remember):
> skin like silk sheets
> that she'd never known
> the feel of
> and I feel love
> like Pavarotti's reach,
> but she wants to get paid,
> like Chuchlain on the beach,
> love like
> despair beyond repair,
> or was it more like that day in Calabria
> Feast of the Assumption
> Holy Mary Mother of God
> what have I done?
> Recitar! Vesti la giubba.
> as Eliot might have said.
> She wanted her money.
> Ridi, Pagliaccio,
> sul tuo amore infranto!
> as Eliot surely would have said:
> Shit happens.
> So I paid.
> Love took her hundred dollars and left.
>
>
> Mike Geary
> Memphis
>
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