07-30-2016, 02:02 PM
Many thanks!
1
I'd like to think that the kids who insulted the speaker didn't know what it meant, too -- they just heard especially callous older folks use it as an insult, and decided, in their viciousness, to play with it. Just a wee note, liz.
I think it would change the meaning too match, kole. But it seems a consistent demand that I should use stronger words, so I'll pore over a thesaurus.
3
I'll drop with, kole, liz. I think I took the tone too far, there.
liz: dug?
The earlier edition sort of tried to make that clearer with an additional clause, but the clause failed, so I just removed it -- maybe I need to return a modified version? The wedgie is supposed to be a weird mixture of atonement (and not just the sort of atonement certain abused people feel like they should do -- I think the character of the teasing is inconsistent enough to make the fault of the peers unclear, while the speaker literally pulled their hair and bit their arms) and genital play.
perhaps "staring my reflection on the window / straight in the eye", kole?
4
Yeah liz, your piece sort of influenced that, although I really did mean to put the meaning of the stanza in.
Although the whole stanza may need a bit of redoing. As noted in an earlier stanza, "God is Love", with the Sallman Head and the Image of Edessa being representations of him, yet the character finds the most compelling sort of love in that "little red haired girl", either, I now realize, by falling in love with her, or by subtly echoing Botticelli. Hmm -- perhaps pursuing the Botticelli angle would be a good corrective measure? Making it so that instead of lying on a couch, she was bursting out of a shell -- the couch detail was there only because of a personal experience.
Shut kinda does, but it also plays with the next s sound, so I dunno.
I didn't really consider the Son of God there, but that could be a valid, if in my reading slight, consideration. When I wrote that, I was sort of thinking of James Joyce, and how he thought "Yes" was a very feminine word -- a thought that sort of comes to play later. I could emphasize the point a bit more by adding more "no"s, though. What do you think?
And as for your point, kole, I also wasn't considering all them church scandals (I was thinking more of the old temple than the new), but a very interesting point!
5
So, with "went like mad" comes the James Joyce -- "....yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes." A bit, perhaps, on open sexuality being once more torn down. But a correction, I guess, would be to make it: "from a boy whose heart in my presence / always went like mad".
I'll return "suckling pig".
6
I think the fact that the speaker considers muddying his sexuality "Justice" makes the point a little more confusing, but in a compelling manner. It implies many things, I think, some ~negative~ (repression), some ~positive~ (following the Law), and some truly positive, at least from stranger angles (accepting who he really is regardless of sexuality, following God's Law regardless of sexuality, even rejecting the sexuality question altogether -- I think, bar the fifth stanza, although I do think not all homophobes are closet homosexuals, just as not all anti-semites are closet Jews, or not all white supremacists are closet black, I didn't actually reveal the speaker's sexuality), so that the poem could effectively inhabit different meanings to different readers. But perhaps, to your read, it wasn't at all effective -- care to share in more detail, kole?
Well, besides being a phallic reference (I think I wanted to go with a whole school dance angle here, so that there'd be a lot of talk veiled with pins and boutonnieres, but then I realized that would bloat the piece), "piercing the veil", "piercing eyes", blindness, and the return of the "I"s in the first stanza and "straight in the eye" in the third.
Again, so many thanks! Really helpful stuff -- hopefully, the next edition would come tonight.
1
I'd like to think that the kids who insulted the speaker didn't know what it meant, too -- they just heard especially callous older folks use it as an insult, and decided, in their viciousness, to play with it. Just a wee note, liz.
I think it would change the meaning too match, kole. But it seems a consistent demand that I should use stronger words, so I'll pore over a thesaurus.
3
I'll drop with, kole, liz. I think I took the tone too far, there.
liz: dug?
The earlier edition sort of tried to make that clearer with an additional clause, but the clause failed, so I just removed it -- maybe I need to return a modified version? The wedgie is supposed to be a weird mixture of atonement (and not just the sort of atonement certain abused people feel like they should do -- I think the character of the teasing is inconsistent enough to make the fault of the peers unclear, while the speaker literally pulled their hair and bit their arms) and genital play.
perhaps "staring my reflection on the window / straight in the eye", kole?
4
Yeah liz, your piece sort of influenced that, although I really did mean to put the meaning of the stanza in.
Although the whole stanza may need a bit of redoing. As noted in an earlier stanza, "God is Love", with the Sallman Head and the Image of Edessa being representations of him, yet the character finds the most compelling sort of love in that "little red haired girl", either, I now realize, by falling in love with her, or by subtly echoing Botticelli. Hmm -- perhaps pursuing the Botticelli angle would be a good corrective measure? Making it so that instead of lying on a couch, she was bursting out of a shell -- the couch detail was there only because of a personal experience.
Shut kinda does, but it also plays with the next s sound, so I dunno.
I didn't really consider the Son of God there, but that could be a valid, if in my reading slight, consideration. When I wrote that, I was sort of thinking of James Joyce, and how he thought "Yes" was a very feminine word -- a thought that sort of comes to play later. I could emphasize the point a bit more by adding more "no"s, though. What do you think?
And as for your point, kole, I also wasn't considering all them church scandals (I was thinking more of the old temple than the new), but a very interesting point!
5
So, with "went like mad" comes the James Joyce -- "....yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes." A bit, perhaps, on open sexuality being once more torn down. But a correction, I guess, would be to make it: "from a boy whose heart in my presence / always went like mad".
I'll return "suckling pig".
6
I think the fact that the speaker considers muddying his sexuality "Justice" makes the point a little more confusing, but in a compelling manner. It implies many things, I think, some ~negative~ (repression), some ~positive~ (following the Law), and some truly positive, at least from stranger angles (accepting who he really is regardless of sexuality, following God's Law regardless of sexuality, even rejecting the sexuality question altogether -- I think, bar the fifth stanza, although I do think not all homophobes are closet homosexuals, just as not all anti-semites are closet Jews, or not all white supremacists are closet black, I didn't actually reveal the speaker's sexuality), so that the poem could effectively inhabit different meanings to different readers. But perhaps, to your read, it wasn't at all effective -- care to share in more detail, kole?
Well, besides being a phallic reference (I think I wanted to go with a whole school dance angle here, so that there'd be a lot of talk veiled with pins and boutonnieres, but then I realized that would bloat the piece), "piercing the veil", "piercing eyes", blindness, and the return of the "I"s in the first stanza and "straight in the eye" in the third.
Again, so many thanks! Really helpful stuff -- hopefully, the next edition would come tonight.