Marine Venus https://bdelectablemnts.runboard.com/t2168 Runboard| Marine Venus en-us Fri, 29 Mar 2024 13:09:11 +0000 Fri, 29 Mar 2024 13:09:11 +0000 https://www.runboard.com/ rssfeeds_managingeditor@runboard.com (Runboard.com RSS feeds managing editor) rssfeeds_webmaster@runboard.com (Runboard.com RSS feeds webmaster) akBBS 60 Re: Marine Venushttps://bdelectablemnts.runboard.com/p15498,from=rss#post15498https://bdelectablemnts.runboard.com/p15498,from=rss#post15498K--- yes, i wasn't thinking statistics, but more like Profrock's lament...his nagging discovery of his half life. Keats: for many a time   I have been half in love with easeful Death, thanks so much for the essay about Henry James; stunning and very insightful. the focus is on the late henry james, after his last great novel and his travels through America before returning to England---and his final days. just great insight and the link to Donald Justice is not one i've seen before, although James afficianado's mention it often in our club meetings...LOL.. thanks again. bernie Donald Justice Henry James by the Pacific In a hotel room by the sea, the Master Sits brooding on the continent he has crossed. Not that he foresees immediate disaster, Only a sort of freshness being lost— Or should he go on calling it Innocence? The sad-faced monsters of the plains are gone; Wall Street controls the wilderness. There's an immense Novel in all this waiting to be done, But not, not—sadly enough—by him. His talents, Such as they may be, want an older theme, One rather more civilized than this, on balance. For him now always the consoling dream Is just the mild dear light of Lamb House falling Beautifully down the pages of his calling. Leon Edel is the master biographer of James: IT has long been known that during his last illness, in the midst of the 19l4-19l8 war, and when he was in delirium, Henry James called his secretary, the late Theodora Bosanquet, and dictated certain passages that dealt with the Napoleonic legend. The text of the dictation has never been published, although Miss Bosanquet once read an excerpt during a BBC broadcast devoted to the novelist; and in 1927 it was mentioned briefly in Pelham Edgar's Henry James: Man and Author as a "Napoleonic Fragment."   nondisclosed_email@example.com (Bernie01)Sat, 27 Apr 2013 20:15:11 +0000 Re: Marine Venushttps://bdelectablemnts.runboard.com/p15491,from=rss#post15491https://bdelectablemnts.runboard.com/p15491,from=rss#post15491Hi again, Bernie, Okay, you've convinced me: half in love it is. nondisclosed_email@example.com (Katlin)Sat, 27 Apr 2013 12:34:19 +0000 Re: Marine Venushttps://bdelectablemnts.runboard.com/p15489,from=rss#post15489https://bdelectablemnts.runboard.com/p15489,from=rss#post15489K--- made three of your suggested changes and thanks for pointing out that spelling error---violent/violet. half in love? oh, isn't that how most folks love? half our marriges end in divorce, how deep could the love be---maybe strong for 15 minutes, but i've revised out that "half" word. how do the students know about the suicide? newspapers, rumors? dunno. sexton, plath, but those suicides from another era. still, an aviator plunging into the ocean would be a top story in any era---adding the word suicide something that might be implied, but rarely designated. thanks for reading and for your comments. changes now posted. bernie nondisclosed_email@example.com (Bernie01)Sat, 27 Apr 2013 12:16:42 +0000 Re: Marine Venushttps://bdelectablemnts.runboard.com/p15488,from=rss#post15488https://bdelectablemnts.runboard.com/p15488,from=rss#post15488Hi Bernie, Overall, the poem works well. Narrative is clear and plays off the Penelope allusion, which is not overdone, in a way that enhances the both stories. A few thoughts for you to consider: My Greek history teacher gave us the Ionic coast, lectures bringing the Peloponnese vividly to life; we could see ripples trailing the ship of Ulysses, feel the wild confusion of Penelope and her son; her feet white as a baby in the bath; hair drying on the hot seacoast wind. At her home, Professor West showed students {us instead of students} engravings, sheet music and exquisite calligraphy gathered in Phoenician trading stations, a violent {Why violent? Doesn't work for me.} handkerchief protruding from her dress sleeve, small breasts formed into a parenthesis, a hint of stutter under her perfect Greek diction; She was the first, but not the last older woman I would half fall in love with. {I agree with Tere here: cut half, which feels tepid somehow.} Ithaca saturating the color of her sea-blue eyes. The sun off Mykonos blinding an aged observer, ears grown deaf from years of ocean waves. An ouzo toast to close out our early night; the room darkening over her collected treasures of ancient Greece. On a piano, unplayed all evening, a gold framed photo of her aviator husband as he looked 20 years ago; his plane fallen by his own will into the Aegean. {I wondered how the students would know this for a fact. Maybe: it was rumored he had taken his own life? That would add to the mystery for the students and the readers.} I find the poem atmospheric in a positive sense and enjoyed reading it. Thanks for posting this one, Bernie. nondisclosed_email@example.com (Katlin)Sat, 27 Apr 2013 11:56:12 +0000 Re: Marine Venushttps://bdelectablemnts.runboard.com/p15459,from=rss#post15459https://bdelectablemnts.runboard.com/p15459,from=rss#post15459T--- yes, detail. how much feeling can be squeezed from the numbers, the listed items, the observed objective facts? i think about it with every poem i write. sometime the numbers add, sometime far less so. here, professor West is still in love with her now dead husband and when she ventures out, intellectually, emotionally, it is into her Greek antiquities; i believe our narrator understands that he can only admire, even love, from some middle distance. unrequited love, the stuff of songs and poems, but not for this narrator---he cannot deny a stirring in his own breast. perhaps his fate is to always feel such heat, but never the burn, the incendiary of love. thanks for taking this tourist bus along the Peloponnese. bernie nondisclosed_email@example.com (Bernie01)Mon, 22 Apr 2013 11:56:12 +0000 Re: Marine Venushttps://bdelectablemnts.runboard.com/p15450,from=rss#post15450https://bdelectablemnts.runboard.com/p15450,from=rss#post15450A satisfying narrative poem. Attention to detail puts me there, in that woman's home. I wonder about the diffidence in the narrator's tone. I mean, why half-in-love? especially, since, she has the gift to transport her student to the ancient world wonderfully. The 20 year parallel not lost on me. Terenondisclosed_email@example.com (Terreson)Sun, 21 Apr 2013 12:51:18 +0000 Re: Marine Venushttps://bdelectablemnts.runboard.com/p15372,from=rss#post15372https://bdelectablemnts.runboard.com/p15372,from=rss#post15372bernie - a most sumptuous read! makes me feel hungry for exotic mediterranean food with oodles of olive oil et all! & i have to go back to my mean lean chappattis! enjoyed!nondisclosed_email@example.com (queenfisher)Wed, 10 Apr 2013 01:55:19 +0000 Re: Marine Venushttps://bdelectablemnts.runboard.com/p15340,from=rss#post15340https://bdelectablemnts.runboard.com/p15340,from=rss#post15340VKP--- so happy that the poem in part touched you. me too....LOL Z--- i've added two comments to the poem--- 1. the husband didn't just die in a plane crash---he commited suicide. 2. and the narrator, now admits to being half-in love with Professor West. the first older lady, but not the last. professor West is a greek history prof---natural for her to collect related artifacts, to enjoy lecturing on her favortes subject. if there is a fixation here, it is the budding, maybe lifelong, fascination the narrator will find with intellectual women, touched perhaps with tragedy, but definitely insular and self-contained. better, by far, than Humbert Humbert's fascination with Lolita in that modern classic, Lolita. Or Darlee's fascination with Justine in the four books of the Alexandria Quartet. anna karenina's fascination with count veronsky who destroys her marriage and contributes to her suicide. no older women you found fascinating from time to time in your checkered past? LOL bernie nondisclosed_email@example.com (Bernie01)Sat, 06 Apr 2013 14:27:09 +0000 Re: Marine Venushttps://bdelectablemnts.runboard.com/p15316,from=rss#post15316https://bdelectablemnts.runboard.com/p15316,from=rss#post15316Bernie, Overall, quite good. There is a parallel of sorts. This teacher has lost her husband permanently whereas Penelope lost her husband for a long time. The tragedies center around the same part of the world. There's a fixation on things. Zak b]Bernie01 wrote: My Greek history teacher gave us the Ionic coast, her lectures lightly scented with the Peloponnese; ["lightly scented" doesn't work.] we could see ripples trailing the ship of Ulysses, feel the wild confusion of Penelope and her son; her feet white as a baby in the bath; hair drying on the hot seacoast wind. [The rest of it is very good.] At her home, Professor West showed students engravings, sheet music and exquisite calligraphy gathered in Phoenician trading stations, a violent handkerchief protruding from her dress sleeve, small breasts formed into a parenthesis, a hint of stutter under her perfect Greek diction; [Excellent profile.] Ithaca saturating the color of her baited blue eyes. [Not sure what "baited" means here.] The sun off Mykonos blinding an aged observer, ears grown deaf from years of sea wave cascade. A sip of ouzo in toast to close out our early night. Her home darkening around the aged beauties of ancient Greece wrestled from the curled entrails of an ancient deep water mollusk. On a piano unplayed all evening, in a gold frame I spied a dull photograph of her aviator husband his plane fallen twenty years ago into the Aegean. [This final note of the husband; it might be a clue to her attachment to the Aegean. If she is Greek to begin with, this might not be as strong a factor.]   nondisclosed_email@example.com (Zakzzz5)Thu, 04 Apr 2013 11:21:59 +0000 Re: Marine Venushttps://bdelectablemnts.runboard.com/p15280,from=rss#post15280https://bdelectablemnts.runboard.com/p15280,from=rss#post15280I started this with a set of expectations based on the first lines and was totally turned around by the end. The poem became personal and carefully observant of a specific and well-drawn human being when I thought it was going to be an intellectual or literary exploration. I want to read it again but it struck me strongly, in a good way. The second strophe is where the turn happens, and where the professor is first treated tenderly by the N and it is where I am the most moved. vkpnondisclosed_email@example.com (vkp)Tue, 02 Apr 2013 14:53:00 +0000 Marine Venushttps://bdelectablemnts.runboard.com/p15259,from=rss#post15259https://bdelectablemnts.runboard.com/p15259,from=rss#post15259My Greek history teacher gave us the Ionic coast, lectures bringing the Peloponnese vividly to life; we could see ripples trailing the ship of Ulysses, feel the wild confusion of Penelope and her son; her feet white as a baby in the bath; hair drying on the hot seacoast wind. At her home, Professor West showed us engravings, sheet music and exquisite calligraphy gathered in Phoenician trading stations, a violet handkerchief protruding from her dress sleeve, small breasts formed into a parenthesis, a hint of stutter under her perfect Greek diction; She was the first, but not the last older woman I would fall in love with. Ithaca saturating the color of her sea-blue eyes. The sun off Mykonos blinding an aged observer, ears grown deaf from years of ocean waves. An ouzo toast to close out our early night; the room darkening over her collected treasures of ancient Greece. On a piano, unplayed all evening, a gold framed photo of her aviator husband as he looked 20 years ago; his plane fallen by his own will into the Aegean. nondisclosed_email@example.com (Bernie01)Mon, 01 Apr 2013 23:50:46 +0000