I wanted to mention how well this starts: "the annoying way", and then an
interrupting aside. certainly annoying! but I read on & enjoyed.
I also liked the internal monologue, or rather the outward description of
the dialogue. plus your list technique was great, and I especially liked the
line "money, his wife, or dinner." I laughed aloud at that juxtaposition.
quite reminiscent of Woody Allen, to me.
I've also just been recounting Stephen Dedalus' religious crisis, and the
lines "I got tired / of shoveling my best moods / through a hole in the sky"
are especially poignant to me right now, though never having possessed a
religious vein myself, per se.
funny how I'm receptive of this mode of poetry right now, when usually I
find it irksome. I just enjoyed the moment here. I've been receptive to
stream of consciousness recently as well, what with dipping my toes into
Joyce, even utilising it in my own writing.
anyway, thanks Frederick.
KS
2009/11/6 Frederick Pollack <[log in to unmask]>
> Closure
>
>
> I’m proud of the annoying way –
> running into someone
> I haven’t seen for thirty years – I start
> talking as if we’d talked yesterday.
> If he remarks on this, I say
> it shows my contempt
> for Time, which withdraws
> data before I can draw
> conclusions. And whether or not
> he says it aloud, he thinks *He hasn’t changed*,
> and for a moment
> feels how much poorer his life was
> without me. I meanwhile
> judge that despite his joy he will not
> offer me an editorship,
> an interview, a chalet
> in Aspen, money, his wife, or dinner.
> At most he’ll want to send me his grandchildren’s
> poems. He looks
> away, as if for the secret
> police who appear
> when one acts out of character, and asks
> if I’m still religious. No,
> I say, I got tired
> of shoveling my best moods
> through a hole in the sky. Well, what about
> my Marxist phase? I surprise
> us with a class analysis
> of this moment that is so precise
> it belongs in a museum. And suddenly
> I think of Gide:
> how all France once hung
> on whether he would take
> the road to Rome or to Moscow …
> Forgotten now, a great name in his day.
>
>
|