Not exactly verse to recite to thy new born child, I fear!!
Reminds me when my son was born in an "alternative birth center" with record
player et al, I thought we could play my favorite jazz folks of the time:
Jules Hemphill, David Murray, Sam Rivers, the Chicago Art Ensemble. Most of
it was totally out of synch with my wife's breathing - or the desire to keep
the focus on the breathing through the pain on into the delivery.
Ironically it was Vivaldi who stole the day. Indeed if you pair "Vivaldi"
with "childbirth" as keywords on Google, you get a slew of such testaments
in praise of the sounds of V and delivery.
I also suspect that was the last time my son listened to Vivaldi!
Stephen V
Blog: http://stephenvincent.durationpress.com
> On 30/8/05 9:14 AM, "Mark Weiss" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
>> Example?
>>
>> At 06:46 PM 8/29/2005, you wrote:
>>> On 30/8/05 8:29 AM, "Mark Weiss" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Hey, men do this too.
>>>
>>> Er - yes (what's your point?) One example I was thinking of, but didn't
>>> mention, was Catullus' parody of Cicero. But as a technique it can certainly
>>> be inflected to feminist purposes.
>
> I guess the easist examples to reach for are my own (and I could be talking
> about something quite different from Annie). It's been a long time since
> I've done this kind of thing. But when I was writing about childbirth &c,
> while crashing head on into what a role and stereotype and misogyny really
> meant, I used and distorted a lot of devices I pinched from traditional
> religious poetry, including as I recall gestures towards George Herbert, in
> order to give humble and banal tasks like washing nappies or caring for
> babies the kind of attentiveness I felt they deserved. This was in a
> context where persons were saying I was written off as a poet because I had
> had babies and would now be swamped forever in the stink of domesticity...
> obviously, in certain minds, the reverse of the literary or the
> experientially significant, being anerotic and boring. I wished to record
> having babies as an aesthetic experience. Part of the sequence Domestic Art
> below - it dates from around 1995, when Josh was born -
>
> Cheers
>
> A
>
>
> you open and shut like wavelidded oceans you squall your greed you offer
> your treasures
> humbly I unravel your absolute languages
>
> you sprang from love like a new god unstable and charged as weather
> a tyrant of toilsome needs I bend low and serve you
> now I feel my funeral its alleluias
> arching under my flat pulse
> holding your hard skull a helpless worship utterly dependent utterly
> separate
>
> Always under the patches and scuffs the indomitable cell the living pattern
> of you
>
> my soul is elastic my senses billow like nets to draw in your voices
> your sleep lipping my sleep my sunflower skin beaming to you
> more than the shock of reflection rather a blaze
> in a mansion of unknown rooms and my chilled
> hunger welcomed in and generously feasted at a table always my own
>
>
>
> Alison Croggon
>
> Blog: http://theatrenotes.blogspot.com
> Editor, Masthead: http://masthead.net.au
> Home page: http://alisoncroggon.com
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