The wild wind whirls
but nothing moves
The heather remains still
Does the wind whirl only in my head?
The haggard hand hurtles
but nothing moves
The window clasped shut
Does the man even move in his bed?
The shriek shatters silence
But nothing moves
The house fails to answer the call
Does the anwer remain unsaid?
Thursday, 3 October 2013
Tuesday, 29 May 2012
The chimes of the clock in the background begin to fade and
she wonders casually whether that is because she is moving further away or
because she stopped listening...
Lamplight is not necessary in summer;
The warmth of the air fills the spaces
where the light should be
But we feel little darkness
The steps under her feet are uneven but she pays little attention; like the calls of the hourglass in the cathedral behind these are familiar to her now. She knows where the crevasses fall, where she needs to take a slightly longer step to avoid getting caught between the steps; where to move to left and right to ensure that she continues at the same steady pace.
Wool and fur are not necessary in summer;
the warmth of the air fills the spaces
even the animals shed their coats
But we feel little cold
The water that passes under the bridge sings a soft but recurring refrain that mimics her steps. Lost in thought she fails to notice the clear echoes. But he doesn't. Watching he wonders if she has ever noticed the water as she passes by; he knows she has never noticed him.
Dreaming...
I think it is difficult to argue that I have had one very specific dream from an early age - unless you count getting to write with Shakespeare and even I have come to realise that this is unlikely to happen now. However, given the focus on dreaming that we all have as one of the defining characteristics of our adolescence, I do believe there is some value in the concept.
It is too simplistic to say 'Oh! I just want to be happy.' Tempting but too simplistic because the concept of happiness is subjective and individual. I also think it too easy to respond with 'I want to be adored', because in all honesty we all want that too; presumably the value of adoration is also tied to the esteem in which we hold the person adoring us. So what is my dream? Or perhaps, what have been my dreams?
It is too simplistic to say 'Oh! I just want to be happy.' Tempting but too simplistic because the concept of happiness is subjective and individual. I also think it too easy to respond with 'I want to be adored', because in all honesty we all want that too; presumably the value of adoration is also tied to the esteem in which we hold the person adoring us. So what is my dream? Or perhaps, what have been my dreams?
Thursday, 6 October 2011
Thursday, 29 September 2011
Graham Greene
The sense of unhappiness is so much easier to convey than that of happiness; in misery we seem aware of our own existence. The sense of achievement, however, remains much greater with the former. This consciousness of ourselves makes anything more valued, makes anything more important. However, I do not want to value depression or misery, however alive it makes me feel. I would accept the innocence of happy naivety; the carelessness of ignorant bliss despite, or maybe because of, the emptiness that is incorporated within it.
I've never understood why people yearn for the creativity that allegedly comes from the morbid and the dark - perhaps it is easier to evoke ideas from the shadows than the light because they suggest possibility and not truth; because they suggest the unknown and the uncertain. That possibility never really exists in a smile?
I've never understood why people yearn for the creativity that allegedly comes from the morbid and the dark - perhaps it is easier to evoke ideas from the shadows than the light because they suggest possibility and not truth; because they suggest the unknown and the uncertain. That possibility never really exists in a smile?
Wednesday, 10 August 2011
The Woman in the Shadows
Lettice Knollys was the cousin of Elizabeth I - as is perhaps obvious by the portrait above. Born a couple of years after her more famous cousin, Lettice is the forgotten woman of Tudor History despite her influence on two of the most important characters at Elizabeth's court.
Those familiar with the writing of Philippa Gregory and the TV show 'The Tudors' will be aware of Mary Boelyn nee Carey, sister of the unfortunate queen Anne (Elizabeth's mother.) Mary had a daughter called Catherine Carey, who later married Francis Knollys and gave birth to Lettice. However, it was not her closeness to Elizabeth that gave her influence. In fact it was, as often the case in Tudor history, her relationship with Robert Dudley and Robert Deverux - the two English suitors to gain the affection of the virgin queen.
Deverux was actually Lettice's son by her first husband, Walter (Earl of Essex.) He was executed in 1601 after an ill fated rebellion, ruined in part by his inability to decide what to wear! However, previous to this he had been Elizabeth's favourite in her later years. Her choice in earlier years though had fallen on Robert Dudley, the queen's childhood friend from their time in the tower and as many believe her true love. Dudley however received scorn and temporary banishment from court for his choice of Lettice as a second wife.
The point of this historical summary? Lettice Knollys is difficult to find information on and is only a footnote for most historians of the Tudor Court. I have always felt that there is far more to Lettice's role and appeal than what is commonly accepted and I intend to do keep looking for the women in the shadows.
Wednesday, 27 April 2011
In thoughts of you...
The unlit candles flicker behind me, they shimmer in and out of the reflection in the window as the sun comes and goes. I watch. The pale net curtains flutter, a draft from somewhere in the space behind me. The image of the candlestick is blurred and then settles. I watch.
The glass in my hand is cold, crisp, fragrant. Through it I see the darkness of my stockings, they are soft, new, freshly applied to my newly moisturised legs. My hair, still wet, is beginning to curl upon the soft fabric of my dress, The sharpness of my heel was a deliberate contrast to this as was the white throw covering the chair on which I sit. I like contrasts. I like the sharpness of opposites. I like the definitiveness of it. White and black; dark or light; hot or cold; he loves me – he hates me…I watch.
The only noise comes from the traffic below. I hear the people getting in and out of bright yellow taxis, asking for exciting destinations full of hope or anxiety or uncertainty. I hear the feet on the tarmac, the slam of the doors, sometimes even the insincere sound of familial greeting. I realise to my own surprise that I always watched this and yet never noticed it before. The buzz, the noise, the people. I’ve never seen any of them the way I see the distorted details of the glass in my hand reflected in the bars of my perspective. I watch.
Wednesday, 9 February 2011
Candles
Setebos by Ted Hughes begins with the lines 'Who could play Miranda, only you/ Ferdinand only me.' Hughes uses the characters and themes of Shakespeare's The Tempest as well as the conscious stagecraft that is so important to that particular narrative. The following is a fictional response to that poem but my response uses some of the key ideas in Macbeth.
It was not Sycorax who you heard
in the wings
but the three witches on the heath
plotting in thunder and lightning and wind.
I was not, could not, play Miranda
for my innocence was lost well before
Caliban's touch.
It was the gall in my breasts
and the croak of the raven
that played the music, not Ariel's song.
And you, always the onstage hero
to those who could not know
The man who vanquished
Norway
and yet followed the darkness of Tarquin's path.
I waited, and waited, knowing
that the scorpions in your mind
were simply the serpents in mine
The blood on your hands never
yours
always mine
and the milk of human kindness
in your public soliloquies.
You cry at Sycorax, at Setebos,
at Caliban.
Yet you forgive the forest that moved at Dunsinane,
the man of no woman born
the lament of young Malcolm
whilst I remain
just behind the curtains
seeing your ghosts
desperately hoping the brief candle
will protect me from the coming of the
dark.
You grieve for tomorrow
and call for your harness
and your sword
but not your wife.
Hereafter may have seemed an option for you
but the blood
was enough
for me.
It was not Sycorax who you heard
in the wings
but the three witches on the heath
plotting in thunder and lightning and wind.
I was not, could not, play Miranda
for my innocence was lost well before
Caliban's touch.
It was the gall in my breasts
and the croak of the raven
that played the music, not Ariel's song.
And you, always the onstage hero
to those who could not know
The man who vanquished
Norway
and yet followed the darkness of Tarquin's path.
I waited, and waited, knowing
that the scorpions in your mind
were simply the serpents in mine
The blood on your hands never
yours
always mine
and the milk of human kindness
in your public soliloquies.
You cry at Sycorax, at Setebos,
at Caliban.
Yet you forgive the forest that moved at Dunsinane,
the man of no woman born
the lament of young Malcolm
whilst I remain
just behind the curtains
seeing your ghosts
desperately hoping the brief candle
will protect me from the coming of the
dark.
You grieve for tomorrow
and call for your harness
and your sword
but not your wife.
Hereafter may have seemed an option for you
but the blood
was enough
for me.
Wednesday, 19 January 2011
Some more academic thoughts?
Mirrors of death - the reflection of Tithonus’ will to die in Tennyson’s Ulysses
Jerome H Buckley asserts that, unlike the popular interpretation of Tennyson’s Ulysses as a man longing to live life away from ‘a still hearth’, he is in fact aching to depart to ‘an Elysian retreat from life's vexations’. This immediately resonates with those familiar with poet’s depiction of Tithonus in another of his classical poems. It is therefore worth considering the values that are central in these monologues when looking at the collection of Tennyson’s poems in the ‘Aspect of Narrative’ paper. The connections suggested between texts by Section B of the paper could certainly look at these ideas of death and it is important to be aware of more than just the apparent diversity between the poems.
On a superficial level it appears that there is a great divide between the desire of Ulysses ‘not to yield’ to obstacles, of which death would presumably seem to be one, and Tithonus’ idolisation of ‘happy men that have the power to die.’ However, the attitude of the central protagonists by themselves, and therefore by Tennyson, is one that aligns them far more closely. It is clear that Ulysses knows that his journey will be his final adventure, because he disassociates himself from his previous life. This sense that ‘I am become a name’, and the dehumanising process implied by this transformation, is one also reflected in Tithonus’ declaration of himself as a ‘grey shadow, once a man.’ The sense of striving in Ulysses can therefore be seen as the same yearning that Tithonus feels: a desire for the end of a journey, not the beginning of one. As such, both protagonists can be seen as essentially as having the same longing, for finality. The over analysed context that produced both Ulysses and the early version of Tithonus (Tithon in 1836) is that the death of his best friend Arthur Hallam made Tennyson think much more about death, and this could be used to support the notion that both mythical heroes are asking to depart the known world and venture beyond its ‘quiet limit’.
The yearning for death that both protagonists voice in the dramatic monologues can be seen because they consider themselves already dead in any meaningful way. This is explicit in Tennyson’s violent description that when Tithonus transformed from a man to an immortal being, some of his humanity was destroyed. He recounts how they ‘beat me down’ because he was ‘so glorious in his beauty’. However, the real sense that Tithonus perceives this as a form of death is when he repeatedly refers to himself in the third person. It is notably not ‘my beauty’ but ‘his’ and therefore that person doesn’t exist for Tithonus as a living entity. In fact, Tennyson later draws the reader’s attention to this detachment specifically when he exclaims ‘if I be he that watched.’ The element of possibility when he says ‘if’ shows that Tithonus does not know who he is anymore. As a result, the reader feels an understanding of why the ‘kisses balmier than half opening buds’ that he experienced seem not a memory but a dream and therefore something so intangible. Readers sympathise with Tithonus’ desire to stop being a ‘white haired shadow’ as he is now, because we understand that the man who ‘seemed to his great heart none other than a God’ is already dead to him.
Applying this same logic to Ulysses then, it can be clear that Tennyson’s hero is not a man who is attempting to ‘find’ and ‘seek’ but one who has realised that he is already dead. Ulysses, like Tithonus, reflects on the glories of personal history where he has ‘enjoyed greatly.’ When Ulysses is recounting those deeds of long ago, he has to use the past tense and this distances him in some way from events. However, it is the much more powerful sense that Ulysses has undergone (like Tithonus) a fundamental change in his nature that means he cannot align himself to that identity anymore, and thus that person is dead. The image Tennyson uses to indicate Ulysses’ change is one of metal – he notes that now he is ‘to rust unburnished, not to shine in use.’ This image suggests a change in Ulysses’ chemical make-up and his function as he understood it. Like Tithonus, he sees his younger self as one who ‘strove with Gods.’ Yet the power of this image is subsumed as Ulysses notes metaphorically that the ‘long day wanes’ and therefore the inevitable approach of the end.
The decision by Tennyson to choose to have both characters appeal to the reader through first person monologues is a conscious one. This can be seen as he uses narrative recounts in other poems, such as Godiva and The Lady of Shalott. This suggests that he wants to establish a distinction between a public declaration or narrative and a personal reflection which is something incredibly relevant when comparing the narrative techniques for Section B. Within this, it is the sense of their internal honour being tarnished that causes both protagonists pain. This unhappiness in their current positions therefore features in their desire for death. Whilst not being an entirely internalised thought processes – at one point Tithonus address Aurora directly when he asks her ‘Why wilt thou ever scare me with thy tears’ – the choice to voice these thoughts are part of a grieving process for both Tithonus and Ulysses. It is a chance for them to come to terms with their current desires and, in a sense, make them more real. Tithonus’ use of cosmic imagery in ‘the silver star’ is later displaced by a more down to earth focus. This gives the sense therefore of how the monologue has developed Tithonus’ understanding of his own situation. His depiction of a particularly human burial like those in ‘grassy barrows of the happier dead’ suggests that he has contemplated not just the unattainable nature of death but the reality of it too.
For Ulysses, however, it is this cosmic side of death that appeals. It is his reputation and abstract sense of honour that Ulysses wants to protect in death. Whereas his son Telemachus is the epitome for him ‘common duties’ of leaders in a domestic sphere, Ulysses still wants to glorify in ‘old days’ where he ‘Moved earth and heaven.’ Though he concedes that he is ‘made weak by time’ and therefore accepts that ‘to strive’ will not include victory, it does include an ending that he is now prepared to admit. However, the concession that it is death that he seeks comes earlier in the poem when he talks of ‘that untravelled world’. This phrase has deliberate echoes of Hamlet’s ‘undiscovered country’ and therefore suggests he is contemplating death itself. Ulysses knows that ‘of one to me/Little remains’ but he desires that in his death he will be able to protect the reputation gained in previous years from ‘windy Troy.’ Like Tithonus, Ulysses articulates his thoughts on death through the cosmic simile of ‘like a sinking star’ but the awareness that his star is falling suggests an ending that he desires. The sibilance is echoed in his later description to ‘sail beyond the sunset’ which is a particularly appropriate and romanticised view of the ‘death [that] closes all.’
The narrative structures of both poems are introspective confessions, which are told through the use of iambic pentameter to reflect a real sense of speech. In making these people sound like real characters, Tennyson advocates the personal nature of the voices and their views. Ulysses and Tithonus are the most conflicted of Tennyson’s poetic heroes. The philosophical questions that they pose in their narratives concern the decisions which have dictated their entire lives and as a result, they way in which they choose to end those lives. The conclusion that both reach, that of death as a genuinely appealing option, is one guaranteed to evoke sympathy and sadness from the readers. Crucially though, the same idea is seen from both protagonists and, therefore, the desire for death should be considered in Ulysses’ words as much as in those of Tithonus.
Jerome H Buckley asserts that, unlike the popular interpretation of Tennyson’s Ulysses as a man longing to live life away from ‘a still hearth’, he is in fact aching to depart to ‘an Elysian retreat from life's vexations’. This immediately resonates with those familiar with poet’s depiction of Tithonus in another of his classical poems. It is therefore worth considering the values that are central in these monologues when looking at the collection of Tennyson’s poems in the ‘Aspect of Narrative’ paper. The connections suggested between texts by Section B of the paper could certainly look at these ideas of death and it is important to be aware of more than just the apparent diversity between the poems.
On a superficial level it appears that there is a great divide between the desire of Ulysses ‘not to yield’ to obstacles, of which death would presumably seem to be one, and Tithonus’ idolisation of ‘happy men that have the power to die.’ However, the attitude of the central protagonists by themselves, and therefore by Tennyson, is one that aligns them far more closely. It is clear that Ulysses knows that his journey will be his final adventure, because he disassociates himself from his previous life. This sense that ‘I am become a name’, and the dehumanising process implied by this transformation, is one also reflected in Tithonus’ declaration of himself as a ‘grey shadow, once a man.’ The sense of striving in Ulysses can therefore be seen as the same yearning that Tithonus feels: a desire for the end of a journey, not the beginning of one. As such, both protagonists can be seen as essentially as having the same longing, for finality. The over analysed context that produced both Ulysses and the early version of Tithonus (Tithon in 1836) is that the death of his best friend Arthur Hallam made Tennyson think much more about death, and this could be used to support the notion that both mythical heroes are asking to depart the known world and venture beyond its ‘quiet limit’.
The yearning for death that both protagonists voice in the dramatic monologues can be seen because they consider themselves already dead in any meaningful way. This is explicit in Tennyson’s violent description that when Tithonus transformed from a man to an immortal being, some of his humanity was destroyed. He recounts how they ‘beat me down’ because he was ‘so glorious in his beauty’. However, the real sense that Tithonus perceives this as a form of death is when he repeatedly refers to himself in the third person. It is notably not ‘my beauty’ but ‘his’ and therefore that person doesn’t exist for Tithonus as a living entity. In fact, Tennyson later draws the reader’s attention to this detachment specifically when he exclaims ‘if I be he that watched.’ The element of possibility when he says ‘if’ shows that Tithonus does not know who he is anymore. As a result, the reader feels an understanding of why the ‘kisses balmier than half opening buds’ that he experienced seem not a memory but a dream and therefore something so intangible. Readers sympathise with Tithonus’ desire to stop being a ‘white haired shadow’ as he is now, because we understand that the man who ‘seemed to his great heart none other than a God’ is already dead to him.
Applying this same logic to Ulysses then, it can be clear that Tennyson’s hero is not a man who is attempting to ‘find’ and ‘seek’ but one who has realised that he is already dead. Ulysses, like Tithonus, reflects on the glories of personal history where he has ‘enjoyed greatly.’ When Ulysses is recounting those deeds of long ago, he has to use the past tense and this distances him in some way from events. However, it is the much more powerful sense that Ulysses has undergone (like Tithonus) a fundamental change in his nature that means he cannot align himself to that identity anymore, and thus that person is dead. The image Tennyson uses to indicate Ulysses’ change is one of metal – he notes that now he is ‘to rust unburnished, not to shine in use.’ This image suggests a change in Ulysses’ chemical make-up and his function as he understood it. Like Tithonus, he sees his younger self as one who ‘strove with Gods.’ Yet the power of this image is subsumed as Ulysses notes metaphorically that the ‘long day wanes’ and therefore the inevitable approach of the end.
The decision by Tennyson to choose to have both characters appeal to the reader through first person monologues is a conscious one. This can be seen as he uses narrative recounts in other poems, such as Godiva and The Lady of Shalott. This suggests that he wants to establish a distinction between a public declaration or narrative and a personal reflection which is something incredibly relevant when comparing the narrative techniques for Section B. Within this, it is the sense of their internal honour being tarnished that causes both protagonists pain. This unhappiness in their current positions therefore features in their desire for death. Whilst not being an entirely internalised thought processes – at one point Tithonus address Aurora directly when he asks her ‘Why wilt thou ever scare me with thy tears’ – the choice to voice these thoughts are part of a grieving process for both Tithonus and Ulysses. It is a chance for them to come to terms with their current desires and, in a sense, make them more real. Tithonus’ use of cosmic imagery in ‘the silver star’ is later displaced by a more down to earth focus. This gives the sense therefore of how the monologue has developed Tithonus’ understanding of his own situation. His depiction of a particularly human burial like those in ‘grassy barrows of the happier dead’ suggests that he has contemplated not just the unattainable nature of death but the reality of it too.
For Ulysses, however, it is this cosmic side of death that appeals. It is his reputation and abstract sense of honour that Ulysses wants to protect in death. Whereas his son Telemachus is the epitome for him ‘common duties’ of leaders in a domestic sphere, Ulysses still wants to glorify in ‘old days’ where he ‘Moved earth and heaven.’ Though he concedes that he is ‘made weak by time’ and therefore accepts that ‘to strive’ will not include victory, it does include an ending that he is now prepared to admit. However, the concession that it is death that he seeks comes earlier in the poem when he talks of ‘that untravelled world’. This phrase has deliberate echoes of Hamlet’s ‘undiscovered country’ and therefore suggests he is contemplating death itself. Ulysses knows that ‘of one to me/Little remains’ but he desires that in his death he will be able to protect the reputation gained in previous years from ‘windy Troy.’ Like Tithonus, Ulysses articulates his thoughts on death through the cosmic simile of ‘like a sinking star’ but the awareness that his star is falling suggests an ending that he desires. The sibilance is echoed in his later description to ‘sail beyond the sunset’ which is a particularly appropriate and romanticised view of the ‘death [that] closes all.’
The narrative structures of both poems are introspective confessions, which are told through the use of iambic pentameter to reflect a real sense of speech. In making these people sound like real characters, Tennyson advocates the personal nature of the voices and their views. Ulysses and Tithonus are the most conflicted of Tennyson’s poetic heroes. The philosophical questions that they pose in their narratives concern the decisions which have dictated their entire lives and as a result, they way in which they choose to end those lives. The conclusion that both reach, that of death as a genuinely appealing option, is one guaranteed to evoke sympathy and sadness from the readers. Crucially though, the same idea is seen from both protagonists and, therefore, the desire for death should be considered in Ulysses’ words as much as in those of Tithonus.
Friday, 27 August 2010
Lett ers
Words at best insubstantial
Leave me without meaning
Wandering again through nouns, adjectives and verbs
The concept just more intellectual preening
I’m trapped in the alphabet
Lost in the first sub clause
Feelings hidden by the obscurity of verse
More power betrayed in the ever silent pause
The lack of expression
In even the softest glances
Fleeting touches, perhaps misconstrued
Inarticulate in my desire for you
Leave me without meaning
Wandering again through nouns, adjectives and verbs
The concept just more intellectual preening
I’m trapped in the alphabet
Lost in the first sub clause
Feelings hidden by the obscurity of verse
More power betrayed in the ever silent pause
The lack of expression
In even the softest glances
Fleeting touches, perhaps misconstrued
Inarticulate in my desire for you
Saturday, 7 August 2010
Odd Phrases - not happy with this yet though.
Butterflies – seems an odd choice to describe it
That feeling that you will never settle again
The restlessness and the excitement and the pain
Because it is not delicate, like the wings that flutter
Because it is not beautiful, like the patterns that swirl
Because it is not drawn to flowers, or nectar, or sunshine
But it does make you feel alive. And I have just come out from my cocoon.
A little bird – seems an odd choice to describe it
That feeling of knowing something you shouldn’t
The secrecy and the superiority and the surprise
Because it doesn’t chirp a friendly good morning
Because it doesn’t fly away into a distant blue sky
Because it doesn’t converse in a language you can’t understand
But it is a form of communication. And from this I always learn.
That feeling that you will never settle again
The restlessness and the excitement and the pain
Because it is not delicate, like the wings that flutter
Because it is not beautiful, like the patterns that swirl
Because it is not drawn to flowers, or nectar, or sunshine
But it does make you feel alive. And I have just come out from my cocoon.
A little bird – seems an odd choice to describe it
That feeling of knowing something you shouldn’t
The secrecy and the superiority and the surprise
Because it doesn’t chirp a friendly good morning
Because it doesn’t fly away into a distant blue sky
Because it doesn’t converse in a language you can’t understand
But it is a form of communication. And from this I always learn.
Wednesday, 21 July 2010
An older attempt...
Clear links between people
are unlikely to develop without
obstacles; obstacles mean a storm
through which love...
Grows beyond the horizon, a part from the sea.
It bends and falls and bends
and yet, the reflection in the mirror/
mirror the in reflection the
seems unaltered. To me.
and to You? I guess. Despite
your reflection, your rosy cheeks
and enticing lips will fade
and Time in his ship will repossess
that.
I love still and all love still and love is still.
are unlikely to develop without
obstacles; obstacles mean a storm
through which love...
Grows beyond the horizon, a part from the sea.
It bends and falls and bends
and yet, the reflection in the mirror/
mirror the in reflection the
seems unaltered. To me.
and to You? I guess. Despite
your reflection, your rosy cheeks
and enticing lips will fade
and Time in his ship will repossess
that.
I love still and all love still and love is still.
Friday, 16 July 2010
Jealous women
Something random inspired by a trip to the National Portrait Gallery and the odd placing of portraits of Elizabeth I and Mary, Queen of Scots together.
The body of a weak and feeble woman left me many centuries ago,
But my heart remains,
Trapped within a canvas, behind the glass,
never defined in life by man,
No Dudley, no Alencon, No Anjou,
Even my father gave up that ghost
but always and forever by her,
In the frame next to mine
I have majesty, she mystery
I command this room, I dominate
the landscape and yet...
the faceless multitude stare at us both
Seeing me in the context of her,
They change in height and dress
We never do
They glance - slightly fearful at me
Whilst they smile at her
Does she still manage the magic?
The sensual charm from her darkened eyes?
Does she draw even these men to the enseamed sheets of her luxurious bed?
Would they kill for her?
Would they die for me?
I remain here
Always aware
as in life
of her majesty, of her sisterhood, of her divinity
I'll feel it seems forever the fall of the axe at Pontefract
Can she feel the sword on the neck of my mother?
The body of a weak and feeble woman left me many centuries ago,
But my heart remains,
Trapped within a canvas, behind the glass,
never defined in life by man,
No Dudley, no Alencon, No Anjou,
Even my father gave up that ghost
but always and forever by her,
In the frame next to mine
I have majesty, she mystery
I command this room, I dominate
the landscape and yet...
the faceless multitude stare at us both
Seeing me in the context of her,
They change in height and dress
We never do
They glance - slightly fearful at me
Whilst they smile at her
Does she still manage the magic?
The sensual charm from her darkened eyes?
Does she draw even these men to the enseamed sheets of her luxurious bed?
Would they kill for her?
Would they die for me?
I remain here
Always aware
as in life
of her majesty, of her sisterhood, of her divinity
I'll feel it seems forever the fall of the axe at Pontefract
Can she feel the sword on the neck of my mother?
Thursday, 15 July 2010
Heathcliff? Hero or Villain?
Hey,
I am bound to come back to this over and over and over again because Wuthering Heights is my favourite novel. Just wondered about the general consensus on Heathcliff. Several questions;
1. Does he really wish he'd dropped Hareton?
2. Is his treatment of Isabella softened by Bronte's depiction of her as an idiot?
3. Does he commit necrophilia with Cathy's body?
4. Does the fact that he gives up on causing destruction towards the end means he is softened by Hareton and Cathy's relationship?
5. Does he cause Cathy's ghost to haunt the moor by his complaint at her death?
What do people think?
This is and always be my novel for making me feel better - if you've never read it, do so now, borrow my copy! Seriously... xxx
I am bound to come back to this over and over and over again because Wuthering Heights is my favourite novel. Just wondered about the general consensus on Heathcliff. Several questions;
1. Does he really wish he'd dropped Hareton?
2. Is his treatment of Isabella softened by Bronte's depiction of her as an idiot?
3. Does he commit necrophilia with Cathy's body?
4. Does the fact that he gives up on causing destruction towards the end means he is softened by Hareton and Cathy's relationship?
5. Does he cause Cathy's ghost to haunt the moor by his complaint at her death?
What do people think?
This is and always be my novel for making me feel better - if you've never read it, do so now, borrow my copy! Seriously... xxx
Tuesday, 13 July 2010
Something more simple?
If I miss you
Softly, quietly
Would you rather you didn’t know?
If I want you
Before, after
Should I make sure you never know?
If I ask you
For honesty, intimacy
Could it be that you can’t reciprocate?
Or should I just understand that you won’t?
Softly, quietly
Would you rather you didn’t know?
If I want you
Before, after
Should I make sure you never know?
If I ask you
For honesty, intimacy
Could it be that you can’t reciprocate?
Or should I just understand that you won’t?
Donne - poet or musician?
Image via WikipediaAlso, having just finished Stanley Wells' 'Shakespeare: Sex and Love' he makes a lot of the idea that a 'little death' is a pun on an orgasm - if this is true does it offer other interpretations of Donne's already heightened sexual imagery - in Holy Sonnet X for example? (http://www.luminarium.org/sevenlit/donne/sonnet10.php)
Monday, 12 July 2010
This was a recent collaborative effort but still a draft...
Soft Day surveys the silken ribbon’s final trail of light
And mourns the inevitable call of Night's alluring charm
The virgin resolve undeterred now as fingers of darkness
begin to trace the stars across the streaked and barren sky
Rebellious shadows move closer, the whispers of engulfing dark
the shameful liaison appeased by the familiar velvet caress
Yearning hands part the firmness of light's faded
lines and encroach upon the space hard and taut beneath
The patrolling moon surveys the now familiar scene
with a seductive wink that closes in a breathless sigh
The seeming slightest touch and the barely quivering clouds
Enough to provoke excitement in his cold and distant loins
At last! She falls and her capitulation welcomes chaos plunging in
The smooth and silken filament frayed by thrusts
of liquescent gold that darkens in the overpowering stream
And disappears behind the crimson sinful thread of maiden’s blood
Soft Day surveys the silken ribbon’s final trail of light
And mourns the inevitable call of Night's alluring charm
The virgin resolve undeterred now as fingers of darkness
begin to trace the stars across the streaked and barren sky
Rebellious shadows move closer, the whispers of engulfing dark
the shameful liaison appeased by the familiar velvet caress
Yearning hands part the firmness of light's faded
lines and encroach upon the space hard and taut beneath
The patrolling moon surveys the now familiar scene
with a seductive wink that closes in a breathless sigh
The seeming slightest touch and the barely quivering clouds
Enough to provoke excitement in his cold and distant loins
At last! She falls and her capitulation welcomes chaos plunging in
The smooth and silken filament frayed by thrusts
of liquescent gold that darkens in the overpowering stream
And disappears behind the crimson sinful thread of maiden’s blood
Sunday, 11 July 2010
English Exams - Getting Easier?
Really interesting... Will have to decide what I think and come back to it though:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/7817602/English-Examinations-Have-they-got-easier.html
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/7817602/English-Examinations-Have-they-got-easier.html
Romeo in love?
So I am currently reading Stanley Wells' 'Shakespeare, Sex and Love' (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Shakespeare-Sex-Love-Stanley-Wells/dp/0199578591/ref=cm_cr_pr_product_top) Not only does he show the unbelievable knowledge that makes him the pre-eminent Shakespeare scholar of modern times but it is incredibly easy to read. He does assume a certain level of knowledge from his readers but in all honesty I'd hate it if he didn't.( I still prefer Jonathan Bate - not sure what it is about his style but it makes me think he's the one I'd want to share a bottle of Sauvignon with.)
My dilemma is two fold. I am not sure yet how I feel about his interpretation of the sonnets (although his discussion of the lyrical poems - Venus and Adonis etc is really convincing) and therefore will probably come back to those at another point. More frustrating though is his convinction that R&J deserves a whole chapter on the basis that it is the play that deals with the concerns of love at the most impressive level in Shakespeare's canon. I am in all honesty shocked by this. I can't believe that Wells believes R&J to be an exploration of anything other than teenage hormones amazed by the novelty of lust. Whether Shakespeare himself included autobiographical elements in his plays is a topic too big for most of us to seriously comment on with any authority but it is true that he married a woman eight years his senior, having already got her pregnant, so it is logical to presume he knew about teenage sexual encounters. In my view, R&J is a story about obsession, infatuation and desperation - but not love. Shakespeare, as Wells acknowledges, opens the play not with the romantic sensibilities of finding 'a new heaven, a new earth' but instead with the bawdy exchange about maidenheads and naked weapons from Sampson and Gregory - not an auspcious beginning. He goes on to introduce a Romeo who mourns not just for the lack of Rosaline's fair touch but more for love itself. It is easy to see Romeo as a character who is in love not with his fair maid but with the idea of being in love. It is love who makes 'misshapen chaos from well seeming forms' not Rosaline herself and it is love that Romeo, at his most passionate, chastises. In Tom Stoppard's witty 'Shakespeare in Love' he has Joseph Fiennes playing the role of Shakespeare tell the actor who is playing Romeo that he can't give too much of his passion away in these early scenes before he even meets Juliet- but arguably this is exactly what Shakespeare did. The imagery of Act 1, Scene 1 where Romeo notes that 'Love is a smoke raised with the fume of sighs/Being purged, a fire sparkling in lovers' eyes;/Being vex'd a sea nourish'd with lovers' tears:' is replaced when he finally gains Juliet's approval with an analogy to schoolboys and their books - hardly an image containing the same level of intensity (whilst usefully drawing our attention to Romeo's youth and inexperience.) Later in response to the direct challenge put to Romeo about the fickle nature of his affections by Friar Laurence, the protagonist's reply is the difference between Juliet and Rosaline is not how he feels about them but 'she whom I love now/Doth grace for grace and love for love allow;/The other did not so.' So his commitment to Juliet is not more permanent or stronger than the feelings he had for Rosaline - they are just reciprocated. Rosaline never even appears on stage (at least in the original text - although many modern productions include her at the party scene,) so it beg the question 'why bother to include her?' The only argument surely, is that she illuminates Romeo's character and what we learn through this is that he is a fickle and melancholic young man who tends to obsess over the idea of love rather than the reality of it.
In response to the criticism that Romeo's suicide can be taken as a testament to his feelings for Juliet - again I would point to the style in which Romeo makes this decision as well as the context. The dramatic pace Shakespeare needs at this point in the play may justify the convenient entrance of the apothecary but Romeo shows less doubt than Juliet when she is drinking the friar's potion - from which she believes she will wake up. This again displays the impetuous nature of his character but also an awareness of the situation in which he now finds himself. Romeo has been banished from Verona (and presumably can not go to his family for help - although this remains ambiguous) , his reputation (which we know from Capulet's words earlier was pristine) is ruined and he is responsible for the death of both his best friend and his wife. Irrespective of whether life might be worth living without Juliet herself, it seems that this is a low point for other reasons too.
If Shakespeare really wanted to write the 'greatest love story of all time' then he could have attempted to do that (and arguably got closer with other plays) but what he gives us in R&J is an exploration of the idea of infatuation - intense, beautiful no doubt but fleeting and in its essence, youthful.
My dilemma is two fold. I am not sure yet how I feel about his interpretation of the sonnets (although his discussion of the lyrical poems - Venus and Adonis etc is really convincing) and therefore will probably come back to those at another point. More frustrating though is his convinction that R&J deserves a whole chapter on the basis that it is the play that deals with the concerns of love at the most impressive level in Shakespeare's canon. I am in all honesty shocked by this. I can't believe that Wells believes R&J to be an exploration of anything other than teenage hormones amazed by the novelty of lust. Whether Shakespeare himself included autobiographical elements in his plays is a topic too big for most of us to seriously comment on with any authority but it is true that he married a woman eight years his senior, having already got her pregnant, so it is logical to presume he knew about teenage sexual encounters. In my view, R&J is a story about obsession, infatuation and desperation - but not love. Shakespeare, as Wells acknowledges, opens the play not with the romantic sensibilities of finding 'a new heaven, a new earth' but instead with the bawdy exchange about maidenheads and naked weapons from Sampson and Gregory - not an auspcious beginning. He goes on to introduce a Romeo who mourns not just for the lack of Rosaline's fair touch but more for love itself. It is easy to see Romeo as a character who is in love not with his fair maid but with the idea of being in love. It is love who makes 'misshapen chaos from well seeming forms' not Rosaline herself and it is love that Romeo, at his most passionate, chastises. In Tom Stoppard's witty 'Shakespeare in Love' he has Joseph Fiennes playing the role of Shakespeare tell the actor who is playing Romeo that he can't give too much of his passion away in these early scenes before he even meets Juliet- but arguably this is exactly what Shakespeare did. The imagery of Act 1, Scene 1 where Romeo notes that 'Love is a smoke raised with the fume of sighs/Being purged, a fire sparkling in lovers' eyes;/Being vex'd a sea nourish'd with lovers' tears:' is replaced when he finally gains Juliet's approval with an analogy to schoolboys and their books - hardly an image containing the same level of intensity (whilst usefully drawing our attention to Romeo's youth and inexperience.) Later in response to the direct challenge put to Romeo about the fickle nature of his affections by Friar Laurence, the protagonist's reply is the difference between Juliet and Rosaline is not how he feels about them but 'she whom I love now/Doth grace for grace and love for love allow;/The other did not so.' So his commitment to Juliet is not more permanent or stronger than the feelings he had for Rosaline - they are just reciprocated. Rosaline never even appears on stage (at least in the original text - although many modern productions include her at the party scene,) so it beg the question 'why bother to include her?' The only argument surely, is that she illuminates Romeo's character and what we learn through this is that he is a fickle and melancholic young man who tends to obsess over the idea of love rather than the reality of it.
In response to the criticism that Romeo's suicide can be taken as a testament to his feelings for Juliet - again I would point to the style in which Romeo makes this decision as well as the context. The dramatic pace Shakespeare needs at this point in the play may justify the convenient entrance of the apothecary but Romeo shows less doubt than Juliet when she is drinking the friar's potion - from which she believes she will wake up. This again displays the impetuous nature of his character but also an awareness of the situation in which he now finds himself. Romeo has been banished from Verona (and presumably can not go to his family for help - although this remains ambiguous) , his reputation (which we know from Capulet's words earlier was pristine) is ruined and he is responsible for the death of both his best friend and his wife. Irrespective of whether life might be worth living without Juliet herself, it seems that this is a low point for other reasons too.
If Shakespeare really wanted to write the 'greatest love story of all time' then he could have attempted to do that (and arguably got closer with other plays) but what he gives us in R&J is an exploration of the idea of infatuation - intense, beautiful no doubt but fleeting and in its essence, youthful.
Friday, 9 July 2010
Has sex always sold poetry?
Just a quick thought but I'm reading 'Wildly Dangerous' by Catherine M Andronik. It's an introduction to the big 5 Romantic poets, aimed primarily at teenage girls (I'm guessing.) It details the biographical histories of Wordsworth, Coleridge, Keats, Byron and Shelley with some of their most famous poems inbetween chapters. It's quite well written considering the audience and has some nice 'human' touches but primarily it relies on the salacious details of the lives of these particular men - lots to choose from I know. Two thoughts initially struck me:
1.) I could write like this and it might be really good fun although not sure how much of a market there is out there - any ideas?
2.) These were really good anecdotes for getting my students interested in the poets next time I teach them - in the same way I use those about Shakespeare or Owen.
However, the second point made me realise that I was equally at fault as the writer of this book. Is it not enough to let the words of Byron or Shelley sell themselves? It is not as though the Romantics didn't make much of this element of the human condition in their writing, so why is it that I feel that I need the content of a tabloid newspaper to capture the imagination of their modern audience before I allow the words to do it? After all, 'She Walks in Beauty' (http://www.bartleby.com/101/600.html) remains one of the most amazing pieces of writing ever.
I could try to justify my behaviour by saying that all literature or in fact all topics need a human element to sell it but poetry by its nature is a reflection of humanity - especially that of the Romantics. So why does this remain the case?
Has poetry lost its mass appeal? Or is it more likely that the Romantics were famous then because they wrote poetry that reflected those same salacious stories? Or is poetry always about sex?
1.) I could write like this and it might be really good fun although not sure how much of a market there is out there - any ideas?
2.) These were really good anecdotes for getting my students interested in the poets next time I teach them - in the same way I use those about Shakespeare or Owen.
However, the second point made me realise that I was equally at fault as the writer of this book. Is it not enough to let the words of Byron or Shelley sell themselves? It is not as though the Romantics didn't make much of this element of the human condition in their writing, so why is it that I feel that I need the content of a tabloid newspaper to capture the imagination of their modern audience before I allow the words to do it? After all, 'She Walks in Beauty' (http://www.bartleby.com/101/600.html) remains one of the most amazing pieces of writing ever.
I could try to justify my behaviour by saying that all literature or in fact all topics need a human element to sell it but poetry by its nature is a reflection of humanity - especially that of the Romantics. So why does this remain the case?
Has poetry lost its mass appeal? Or is it more likely that the Romantics were famous then because they wrote poetry that reflected those same salacious stories? Or is poetry always about sex?
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