Worse yet are the one-god-at-most Unitarians, but my
father was a lapsed Methodical who sang but never
danced or wrote a poem. When I tried at the age of 16
to join the Mormons, he refused to allow it on the
grounds that he'd signed a pledge to raise us kids
Catholic.
That's interesting about (St.) Gertrude Stein, but
you're right that the poem need not make that explicit
to be successful, as your poem certainly is.
--- Halvard Johnson <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Oh, well, we lapsed Methodicals can't be expected to
> know all the technicalities of achieving sainthood
> (he
> pleads, eschewing the 5th).
>
> Ste. Gertrude of Baltimore, for me, is Gertrude
> Stein.
> Not that that's essential knowledge.
>
> Glad you like it, btw.
>
> Hal
>
> "If Gladstone fell into the Thames, that would
> be a misfortune, and if someone pulled him
> out, that, I suppose, would be a calamity."
> --Benjamin Disraeli
>
> Halvard Johnson
> ================
> [log in to unmask]
> http://home.earthlink.net/~halvard/index.html
> http://entropyandme.blogspot.com
> http://imageswithoutwords.blogspot.com
> http://www.hamiltonstone.org
>
http://home.earthlink.net/~halvard/vidalocabooks.html
>
>
> On Sep 3, 2007, at 12:45 PM, MC Ward wrote:
>
> > Hi Hal,
> >
> > This is a _wonderful_ poem! I especially like the
> > unidentified "he" who speaks on behalf of the
> saint
> > and himself with no confusion between them. I'd
> like
> > to know more about Gertrude and her "ascent,"
> assuming
> > that she's real. Oh, btw, once she's "ascended"
> > through the pre-saint levels and been made a saint
> > herself, she wouldn't then ascend (if we're
> talking
> > about being bodily raised to heaven) as that's
> always
> > been Jesus and Mary's action, exclusively.
> >
> > Well, it's unexpectedly nice to recall my Catholic
> > girlhood--just ignore me if I get too pedantic
> >
> > Candice.
> >
> >
> > --- Halvard Johnson <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> >
> >> The Ascension of St. Gertrude of Baltimore
> >>
> >>
> >> 1.
> >>
> >> Half objects are alive. Art enlarges
> >> the Western eye, arm reappears as
> >> an extension of his desires. Caucasian
> >> incised edges shrivel as the body
> >>
> >> makes the plane of eye visible, definite,
> >> along the thread of green that marks
> >> the riverbank. Losing its beard,
> >> the inner world, the outer
> >>
> >> spins from nude to nude, making
> >> the dangers of nature seem all too evident.
> >> Myopic sulks, some fertile stamping
> >> ground, flawed but not unastonishing.
> >>
> >>
> >> 2.
> >>
> >> From a moving up toward sunlight, he comes
> >> upon assertions that many might single out
> >> for further clarification. Dour mosaics
> >> have survived in a thousand forms of culture.
> >>
> >> At the apex of his own ducal authority,
> >> the placement of a leg is widely parodied.
> >> Comic realities full of charm and surprise
> >> come to us with very little in the way
> >>
> >> of bad press. A woman is the problem
> >> that the oppressive robes seem to address,
> >> hallmarks of a cold hierarchical mind.
> >> Rarely documented were his private letters.
> >>
> >>
> >> 3.
> >>
> >> I will argue that the implacable memory
> >> vaulting towards the heavenly lens
> >> of age brings us nothing but misery
> >> unless the borders of the body
> >>
> >> be well guarded and observed. Three,
> >> two, one. And what then?
> >> Electrified by her beauty, I wandered
> >> through a sentimental landscape
> >>
> >> stopping only to inquire after lost relations,
> >> their athletic vigor that was told to me.
> >> Self-impairment is what took poor
> >> Shelley down. Was that ever a secret?
> >>
> >>
> >> 4.
> >>
> >> Soft and flowing were her ways and words,
> >> her androgyne friends. The white fez
> >> marked her out in public, at night spots
> >> along the river, or down at the harbor.
> >>
> >> Baltimore gives and Baltimore takes away.
> >> He even said that he wanted to grow
> >> old, no longer in the cloistered
> >> university, but out of town, out in the boonies.
> >>
> >> A face reddens with sexual flush. I met you
> >> and you had the more extraordinary
> >> influence over me. Apollo only comes out
> >> by daylight, the heart irately read.
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> [after, and out of, Camille Paglia’s *Sexual
> >> Personae*]
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> Hal
> >>
> >> Halvard Johnson
> >> ================
> >> [log in to unmask]
> >> http://home.earthlink.net/~halvard/index.html
> >> http://entropyandme.blogspot.com
> >> http://imageswithoutwords.blogspot.com
> >> http://www.hamiltonstone.org
> >>
> >
>
http://home.earthlink.net/~halvard/vidalocabooks.html
> >>
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
>
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>
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