11-16-2016, 05:24 PM
Thanks lizzie! I'm struggling -- so my responses.
I think I'll keep Babalon -- at least for me, it sounds close enough to Babylon to seem like an alternate spelling (which, in the essence of Crowley's philosophy, is), such that Google isn't as necessary.
I'll bold, period, and space, the chapter headings, following a certain anthology's convention.
I've tried to clean up those problem-lines in stanzas three and four, the easiest fix.
I disagree with from yet to balm being prosaic, because it gets kinda metrical there, but perhaps. As for the introduction of "student", I'm not sure how it doesn't work -- the speaker's considering his situation of being between old age and youth here, so to soothe his student's calluses, ie to leave behind the pains of youth, is sort of the point. Or maybe you read as to soothe the calluses of the boy he's teaching?, in which case I'd have to rearrange a bit -- rather, I have, but now the sound sorta bothers me.
I've shortened the line to "between my Philippines and your Mexico", hoping that the whole Spanish-galleon thing would be enough for the point (although considering the dense infusion of roughly-gotten gnostic philosophy, I suppose that hope rings a little false).
I'm retroactively explaining one-eye as an evocation of Odin (thanks, Todd!), but really I just prefer the sound of the singular. As to why a diabetic hell should blind, cataracts.
How does it lose you? the leg-severed-bit, I mean. When you get lost later, I get it, but right now I can only do so much, it's a hard change.
Good point. I keep playing with the thought of being transgender as "God-hated" (not that I think so -- but, for one, I really did love Dana's work, for another, to court such thoughts with a rational mind is to invoke sympathy, and for last, it's one of those incredibly interesting dilemmas in theological law, at least in my opinion), so yeah, the possibility of it seeming more as a comment on misogyny (which it also kind of is, really, with the speaker's *lowly* flesh being considered "female", the addressed being considered "genderless" (ie, her eradicating her sex to achieve a new identity), and the bits about anxious Jocastas and whatnot), divorced from the idea of being transgender is a bit of a problem, and thus the more assured move to Teiresias in the longed for third edition.
And also elaborate a bit on the whole woman-is-a-child thing, but for that, I'll be using my poetic license card and, with the already noted conflation of Plato, Plotinus, and Valentinus, stick Plato to Valentinus.
I dunno -- the heavy, heavy ambiguity in that last stanza, I absolutely love. But perhaps for it to work, the earlier stanzas, particularly the last three, really need to gel, so I'll only revise if the complain continues with the reorganized stanzas 9, 8, and 7. I'll return the third line to its original form, though, in case the main blocker was using the Irish word for tower, as yet another play on Yeats.
And I disagree about this being turned into an essay, because so much of this banks on the metaphorical, rather than the logical -- as much as I have to explain a lot of the philosophies behind it, ultimately those philosophies are here used as tools, as points of reference, instead of as frameworks an essay, even an especially poetical one, would demand. Plus, I feel that too much of this already work, as lines, so that a wholesale restructuring would end up being too much of a bother. Although yeah, ultimately the dedication is incidental -- it has, I think, evolved from a direct dedication, to just the acknowledgements-to-the-family page of a Biochemistry textbook. I've snipped it out in the next edit, it's a little useless, though I may return it in the end. Again, thanks!
I think I'll keep Babalon -- at least for me, it sounds close enough to Babylon to seem like an alternate spelling (which, in the essence of Crowley's philosophy, is), such that Google isn't as necessary.
I'll bold, period, and space, the chapter headings, following a certain anthology's convention.
I've tried to clean up those problem-lines in stanzas three and four, the easiest fix.
I disagree with from yet to balm being prosaic, because it gets kinda metrical there, but perhaps. As for the introduction of "student", I'm not sure how it doesn't work -- the speaker's considering his situation of being between old age and youth here, so to soothe his student's calluses, ie to leave behind the pains of youth, is sort of the point. Or maybe you read as to soothe the calluses of the boy he's teaching?, in which case I'd have to rearrange a bit -- rather, I have, but now the sound sorta bothers me.
I've shortened the line to "between my Philippines and your Mexico", hoping that the whole Spanish-galleon thing would be enough for the point (although considering the dense infusion of roughly-gotten gnostic philosophy, I suppose that hope rings a little false).
I'm retroactively explaining one-eye as an evocation of Odin (thanks, Todd!), but really I just prefer the sound of the singular. As to why a diabetic hell should blind, cataracts.
How does it lose you? the leg-severed-bit, I mean. When you get lost later, I get it, but right now I can only do so much, it's a hard change.
Good point. I keep playing with the thought of being transgender as "God-hated" (not that I think so -- but, for one, I really did love Dana's work, for another, to court such thoughts with a rational mind is to invoke sympathy, and for last, it's one of those incredibly interesting dilemmas in theological law, at least in my opinion), so yeah, the possibility of it seeming more as a comment on misogyny (which it also kind of is, really, with the speaker's *lowly* flesh being considered "female", the addressed being considered "genderless" (ie, her eradicating her sex to achieve a new identity), and the bits about anxious Jocastas and whatnot), divorced from the idea of being transgender is a bit of a problem, and thus the more assured move to Teiresias in the longed for third edition.
And also elaborate a bit on the whole woman-is-a-child thing, but for that, I'll be using my poetic license card and, with the already noted conflation of Plato, Plotinus, and Valentinus, stick Plato to Valentinus.
I dunno -- the heavy, heavy ambiguity in that last stanza, I absolutely love. But perhaps for it to work, the earlier stanzas, particularly the last three, really need to gel, so I'll only revise if the complain continues with the reorganized stanzas 9, 8, and 7. I'll return the third line to its original form, though, in case the main blocker was using the Irish word for tower, as yet another play on Yeats.
And I disagree about this being turned into an essay, because so much of this banks on the metaphorical, rather than the logical -- as much as I have to explain a lot of the philosophies behind it, ultimately those philosophies are here used as tools, as points of reference, instead of as frameworks an essay, even an especially poetical one, would demand. Plus, I feel that too much of this already work, as lines, so that a wholesale restructuring would end up being too much of a bother. Although yeah, ultimately the dedication is incidental -- it has, I think, evolved from a direct dedication, to just the acknowledgements-to-the-family page of a Biochemistry textbook. I've snipped it out in the next edit, it's a little useless, though I may return it in the end. Again, thanks!