03-25-2012, 08:53 AM
While I am not the lord of irony nor the prince of satire,
my writing hand imbibes in these most judicious manners.
I practice these languages by layering semi-serious self-
promotion upon the backside of the romantic, amorously
excited fool that I am--
my propensity.
By doing this I have a good end in view-- as I watched my
maid this very morning walk up the stairs dressed only in
a white bonnet and ribbons of springtime colors. So here
I am announcing what prose forms lie at the center of my
writing interest in poetry, persuaded by the memory of a
twitching rump.
If Dr. Johnson said to David Garrick upon retreating from
backstage to the wings, "I shall come no more back, David,
for the white bosoms of your actresses excite my amorous
propensities," I, Roy Hobbs, will maintain his position at
the bottom of those stairs mentioned appreciating my maid
for the very purpose of exciting the amorous propensities
of my satire and irony.
We often excite our own and the amorous propensities of
others by our poetry or by our prose. It is as if we have
remembered the reason for poetry in the first place-- to
excite amorous propensities,
to address the coy, to persuade the virgin, to encourage
love-- to capture a boy's love for the sea, a woman's love
for her child, a man's love for his homeland, for his 40
acres north of Cumberland, for God, for an Irish cottage.
Keats's love in a hut.
These amorous propropensites never allow themselves to be
forgotten long. We have poetry in these simple channels of
field and forest, limbs and lung, loins and heart, plow and
fire, bed and bread.
Amorous propensity-- a girl's bones, muscles and fat uphol-
tered in the most wondrous skin of a hue meant for angel
lips, ascending stairs--Elizabeth Taylor, Reflections In
A Golden Eye; Clytemnestra loved by a boy to play out
the Curse on the House of Pelops; The 10,000 ships. Amorous
propensities. Love. Bathsheba, Rachel and Ruth. The inclina-
tion, the tilt, the propensity.
What's a poem for?
my writing hand imbibes in these most judicious manners.
I practice these languages by layering semi-serious self-
promotion upon the backside of the romantic, amorously
excited fool that I am--
my propensity.
By doing this I have a good end in view-- as I watched my
maid this very morning walk up the stairs dressed only in
a white bonnet and ribbons of springtime colors. So here
I am announcing what prose forms lie at the center of my
writing interest in poetry, persuaded by the memory of a
twitching rump.
If Dr. Johnson said to David Garrick upon retreating from
backstage to the wings, "I shall come no more back, David,
for the white bosoms of your actresses excite my amorous
propensities," I, Roy Hobbs, will maintain his position at
the bottom of those stairs mentioned appreciating my maid
for the very purpose of exciting the amorous propensities
of my satire and irony.
We often excite our own and the amorous propensities of
others by our poetry or by our prose. It is as if we have
remembered the reason for poetry in the first place-- to
excite amorous propensities,
to address the coy, to persuade the virgin, to encourage
love-- to capture a boy's love for the sea, a woman's love
for her child, a man's love for his homeland, for his 40
acres north of Cumberland, for God, for an Irish cottage.
Keats's love in a hut.
These amorous propropensites never allow themselves to be
forgotten long. We have poetry in these simple channels of
field and forest, limbs and lung, loins and heart, plow and
fire, bed and bread.
Amorous propensity-- a girl's bones, muscles and fat uphol-
tered in the most wondrous skin of a hue meant for angel
lips, ascending stairs--Elizabeth Taylor, Reflections In
A Golden Eye; Clytemnestra loved by a boy to play out
the Curse on the House of Pelops; The 10,000 ships. Amorous
propensities. Love. Bathsheba, Rachel and Ruth. The inclina-
tion, the tilt, the propensity.
What's a poem for?
