Bingo too - I like those two most recent comments on the poem...
just to clarify a little where I am with it - I have no objection at all to
a 'sensual female voice' - in poetry or in the flesh!
Nor to women's domestic work being referred to with seriousness/playfulness
whatever......
it is this cleansed and domesticated fantasy of female sensuality, and work
done by women that I find I cant enjoy
interesting that these postings repeatedly refer to 'freshly pressed
shirts' which are garments worn by men - seems to me that the whole fabric
of the idea we play with here is laid bare in that phrase! My own response
is formed very much by the fact that as a woman I find these images
limiting, oppressive and loaded with accusations.
Which is not to say that the very _lack_ of similar images of domesticity
and nurturing is not _equally_ oppressive and loaded for men.
My own daughter also loved pink fluffy things and frills at the age of
eleven. Now she wears huge hooded sweatshirts with pictures of suicidal
rock stars on them. (she also grins a lot and dies her hair pink) I am
happier with the later incarnation!
Plus - maybe some of us (- and I accept the right of trivia to be trivial
and still loved for its very lightness/lack of seriousness) have also
reacted strongly to this poem out of precisely jealousy that a frothing and
pretty poem like this should get so much media?
I'm sure I am guilty!
My suggestion for a poem that works a similar theme about a grief stricken
need to love the world is Erin Moure's 'Halls' in 'Search Proceedures'.
the opening reads
'There are motions of the earth in which everything
is forgiven
No one of us is built to earthquake standards
The way they later shored up train stations with their huge halls of air
that had to be kept perfectly still
while the story was being told'
Her publisher Anansi do have a website you can go to - don't know of any
work on-line.
how are your socks?
Liz
(I don't propose this as a poem to be read off the top of Everest of
course, just as a spot knock-er off-er)
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