07-30-2016, 07:10 PM
(07-30-2016, 02:02 PM)RiverNotch Wrote: 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'm sure that you're correct, kids mimic what they see others doing. I was just saying that I hate that our culture has turned something like this into an insult. That's all. Not attacking the kids, but society.
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? -- Instead of made? Yeah, that would be better.
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 (Mmmmm, I dunno. Just sounded like the speaker was standing up to them, but I can see how the guilt would creep in. Although, it's unclear where the guilt is coming from -- from the retaliation against the teasing or from the content of the teasing.), 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.I smiled inside at this
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. I think all you need to do is provide something concrete like maybe a certain Botticelli painting.
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? Well, it sounds a little patriarchal, if I'm being totally honest. I have no idea what kind of context he was speaking of this is, but women are often told to say yes to men, to sexual advances, to meeting others' needs first, etc. It makes me think that he viewed male/female relationships as dominant/submissive, respectively. There are certainly a fair share of beautiful relationships where the male is more dominant but an equal number where the female is in more of a leadership role. As for 'no' being male, anecdotally, I use the word no a lot in my life -- probably because I have kidsBut, this does run the serious risk of reinforcing the idea of unhealthy gender roles and how it's a woman's job to say 'yes' and not 'no' to men.
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!
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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". Yeah, I like that phrasing. And, no I didn't get the Joyce reference (again), but I'm sure that it's obvious by now that your cultural literacy does exceed my own.
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. Yeah, I didn't make the connection with "straight in the eye" -- I see it now. Straight in the eye, is a great line, btw.
Again, so many thanks! Really helpful stuff -- hopefully, the next edition would come tonight.