----- Original Message -----
From: "Tina Bass" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Saturday, December 06, 2008 1:26 PM
Subject: Re: "You the Man"
The 'I' of the poem is speculating/projecting some other path that could
have been taken? Some other life?
I can easily read it that way but I don't think it would have occurred to me
spontaneously (difficult to know now if that was careless reading on my
part). I never got as far as thinking about the relationship between the
'he' and the 'I' as anything other than an office friendship. Thank you
again. I haven't had much time to engage with petc lately so it was good to
have your poem appear just as I am finding a little more time to pay
attention.
Tina
Tina, I don't know, this may be one of those demoralizing cases where the
poet thinks h/h subtle intentions are realized but no one else notices them.
I've looked at the poem repeatedly but don't see any way I can, without
strain, signal that extra dimension. Probably it doesn't matter - it will
sneak in as a subtext. But see: both the speaker and "he" had a failed
relationship - the latter's a marriage, the former's a
"joint-living-arrangement." Both later marry - but "he" was "fixed up" by
"office friends," and the speaker seems not to know what office friendships
or office life are like. "He" spent years caring for his dying mother; the
speaker spent years "alone, learning to write." Etc., adding up to a
suggestion of envy - or of an intellectual imagining a non-intellectual, but
more "rooted," version of himself.
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