yes, Cooee exists
on 8/7/02 9:52 AM, Alison Croggon at [log in to unmask] wrote:
Now I am very curious - where the hell is Cooee? Does it really exist?
Well, you see, when I got together with Marilyn Black the speech therapist of Clifton Hill and Eltham, Melbourne, we bought a house in North Balwyn, and she put out her shingle, naming the practice, the garden and the house, Cooee... after our wedding, I wrote her an epithalamium, which I shall copy&paste below. Many have objected to the word epithalamium but I have fond memories of being taught Spenser at my so-called grammar school in Auckland. (sweet Thames run softly till I end my song) John Leonard patiently read scads of my stuff last summer and says I can keep the word.
Naturally when it came to choosing an email address, Cooee had to be it. The garden at Cooee is unusual and it will be open one weekend in September for its third listing with the Open Garden Scheme....I used to cringe at suburban houses sporting names to distinguish themselves from their neighbours in a monotonous street, but the clinic business called for a name, according to Marilyn...
best wishes from Max Richards
(Though I constantly repeat the slogan that poetry is language under pressure, compressed, and that the best poems dramatise conflict, my own attempts are mostly very discursive, and almost always undramatic, and approximate to the old ten-syllable line I learned to manage at school.)
Within Cooee
for Marilyn Black of Cooee Clinic
August 2000
Remember, dear, my old coo-eeı call,
in carparks and other echo chambers?
Coo-ee (Iım calling you! canıt you hear me?)
with the steepest of rising inflections.
Itıs in the dictionary: sound used
to attract attention, esp. at a distance;
used by Aboriginalscopied by settlers.
Coo-ee: the big old carrying vocal wave.
*
We set it up, our house, your clinic.
Out the front, a sign so discreet
passersby unknowing pass it by!
We set the garden straight with wagonloads
of plants, and curving paths; settling down,
with a puppy, hi-fi, books, an open fire.
Always, your reliable smile. Now
Iım asking: do my smile-lines deepen too?
*
Your speech and language clinic: helping
children (mostly) with auditory
processing, verbalizing, the works.
Our best moments at evening: de-briefings:
how this child is improving,
that doubtful parent suddenly convinced.
And we domestic animal making three
as quiet as quiet could be. Murmurs now
are loud enough, mouth to ear, to and fro.
*
In our home office the screen lights up,
The cursorıs at the mouseıs beck and call.
AppleMac, run softly till I end my song.
Syllables on my mind, on the tip of my tongue
fingers tap keys, deliver symbols shaped
and seen in lines on-screen, set down thus.
Reader over my shoulder, monitoring
the monitor, you eye the screen,
take up images of those symbols.
Together on our tongues syllables form
voiced, uttered, heard, responded to,
shared, tested on our ears; registered.
So these symbols travel as syllables,
touch down, arrive and deliver.
settle at a stand-still.
They are told saveı; shut downı.
The glow of the screen
shrinks to a dot and goes out.
Any particular syllables?
These. To and fro. Contact!
Long live all the necessary senses!
*
Leaving the hi-fi for repair at the makers,
I bring away a receipt made out to us:
Mr and Mrs Marilyn Black. This, dear,
shy attention-seeker that I am,
is our belated nuptial-song, a self-
congratulatory epithalamium.
