tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5610446610888912275.post8775416488735947122..comments2024-03-20T14:04:18.741-07:00Comments on My Continuing Education: The Romance of ListsGarethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03030408024299617701noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5610446610888912275.post-78554122803439601362012-10-29T22:28:38.125-07:002012-10-29T22:28:38.125-07:00Gareth, I would take great pleasure in seeing your...Gareth, I would take great pleasure in seeing your suggestions. Either method would be fine — whichever is easiest for you. I always find the comments/criticism of others to be valuable, even if I reject the suggestions, because the criticism helps me to learn more about my writing and more about people. I will not feel offended at your shredding this. Note: you may find it interesting to read or listen to the poem for which this was a continuation. If so, you can read it <a href="http://egajd.blogspot.ca/2012/06/20120603-cotton-for-comfort-nearly.html" rel="nofollow">here</a> and/or listen to it read by Rose Mary Boehm <a href="http://soundcloud.com/rose-mary-2/audio-recording-on-monday" rel="nofollow">here</a> or as read by me <a href="http://soundcloud.com/egajd/cadaver-poetry-reading-r4" rel="nofollow">here</a>.<br /><br />And, hey! After a careful and well thought out extension of your list conceit, all you can do is focus on my attempt at poetry. LoL! That brings a smile to my face.Guy Duperreaulthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05300018595841442280noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5610446610888912275.post-79847615230252987512012-10-29T13:09:28.162-07:002012-10-29T13:09:28.162-07:00How would you feel about constructive criticism of...How would you feel about constructive criticism of the poem, Guy? If so, through e-mail or here?<br /><br />-GarethGarethhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03030408024299617701noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5610446610888912275.post-24236801282577130382012-10-29T06:57:20.072-07:002012-10-29T06:57:20.072-07:00Gareth, stumbling across this list made the my lis...Gareth, stumbling across this list made the my list of funny synchronicity-petites that I list in my blog because I recently wrote a poem that played with the meaning of lists. Before I post that, some of the most fascinating lists are those of the debt records of Sumer which were almost without doubt the genesis of written language. (The musical genius David Byrne comments on this in his book <i>Bicycle Diaries</i>, which is also a kind of list.)<br /><br />Also fascinating are the lists of values in the Irish Barbarian Codes, for example. Included in them was the value of the (slave) milk-maids as a means of payment.<br /><br />Anyway, my playing with lists was a direct reference to Sei Shonagon's amazing <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18185.The_Pillow_Book" rel="nofollow"><i>The Pillow Book</i></a>, which is also known for being a <a href="http://www.kyotojournal.org/kjselections/kjshonagon.html" rel="nofollow">book of lists</a>.<br /><br />Here's the poem:<br /><br /><b>What's Left But the Bones: Cotton for Comfort Redux</b>.<br /><br />It was my mother who identified me.<br />Not by my remains,<br />For the little that remained of me<br />was comprised of the natural white anonymity of fleshless bone.<br />Sex, once curvaceous and vibrant and fetid<br />had become a dry geometric puzzle,<br />the curve of the pelvic girdle and coccyx<br />the sere mystery of skull and bone density,<br />agéd clues in de-gummed teeth and voided cranial sutures.<br /><br />It was by my clothes,<br />the clothes I'd been killed in,<br />the made of comfortable cotton clothes<br />that so affronted my mother's sense of social propriety,<br />that became the means of my escape from the unmarked grave<br />of an anonymous de-animation.<br /><br />There were tears.<br />But …<br />How to say this? The tears were not for me, now,<br />but for the simulacrum of a corpulent me that once appeared to exist in the mind's eye,<br />the giddy distracted mind for the gaudy embodied me I once dizzily revelled in.<br />Or, at least that's what I'd like to think I want to remember,<br />to be remembered by<br />by the strangers I was bound to by the soft<br />pillowy cotton delicate strings made by<br />and dedicated to the social obligation of family stones.<br /><br />Stones? How to explain this weight?<br />In so far as my skeleton is sensate,<br />I feel compelled to embrace Sei Shonagon's Pillow Book* cant<br />and list my listlessness as follows:<br />cross bones, tomb stones,<br />head stones, hearth stones, heart stones.<br />Cajones, nerve, verve.<br />Vicissitude.<br /><br />In the morgue I rest, un-rued on cold rude un-stained steel,<br />pillowed by the dead sure attitude found solely<br />in an unremarked gravestone, wet from an unexpected cloudburst,<br />and in the lost certitude of my lonesome anonymity.<br /><br /> *The Pillow Book has been called a book of lists because Shonagon included lists of all kinds. And it has some great and quotable observations, such as:<br /><br /> In life there are two things which are dependable. The pleasures of the flesh and the pleasures of literature.<br /> —Sei Shonagon circa 1000ad.Guy Duperreaulthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05300018595841442280noreply@blogger.com