Sunday, March 21, 2004

Poem for Sunday


The Taxi
By Amy Lowell


When I go away from you
The world beats dead
Like a slackened drum.
I call out for you against the jutted stars
And shout into the ridges of the wind.
Streets coming fast,
One after the other,
Wedge you away from me,
And the lamps of the city prick my eyes
So that I can no longer see your face.
Why should I leave you,
To wound myself upon the sharp edges of the night?

--------

From Poet's Choice by Edward Hirsch in this morning's Washington Post, a column that just makes me so happy, even given my heroine Margaret Anderson (of The Little Review)'s expressed contempt for the poet. "Amy Lowell's poetry has been underestimated for most of the past 75 years. It has been all too easily dismissed, sometimes insulted, often ignored. Lowell's name usually comes up in histories of modernism through a series of anecdotes; one hears of the obese, cigar-smoking Boston Brahmin; the literary impresario condescended to by Pound..." This is so true, even among a lot of contemporary women critics, the ones who've restored Anderson and Harriet Shaw Weaver to their proper places in the editing pantheon but continue to dismiss Lowell.

"As Lillian Faderman points out in a revealing essay in American Modern," writes Hirsch, "Lowell's lesbian love poems 'comprise one of the most detailed records in literature of an emotional and erotic relationship between two women.'" The poem above is one such example.


Also from today's Washington Post: Gene Weingarten, "Aisle Be Damned: Bush hates gay marriage. God knows why," which contains the following: "Proposed Amendment XXVIII: 'It shall be unlawful to use the U.S. Constitution as a plaything for the politically self-righteous. Violators should all go to Hell.'"

got me to take this again even though I have taken it before. Wish I remembered what some of these disorders were. Histrionic I readily own up to, and narcissistic to some extent, but I must be more dependent than schizotypal, and I know I am more obsessive-compulsive than either!

DisorderRating
Paranoid:Low
Schizoid:Low
Schizotypal:High
Antisocial:Low
Borderline:Low
Histrionic:High
Narcissistic:High
Avoidant:Low
Dependent:Moderate
Obsessive-Compulsive:Low

-- Personality Disorder Test - Take It! --


And that word count meme.

the216 this42 his22
and161 at39 because22
i160 but38 has22
to133 not33 had21
a123 me32 would21
my107 was31 will21
of99 current31 your20
in72 from29 mood20
that69 am29 come sail away20
for69 what29 very19
you64 which27 one19
on54 be27 about19
with53 are26 we18
it53 or26 last18
is52 so26 music18
have47 who23 if18
LJ Word Count (Beta!) by




And GIP! Eldarion! Because if you know who he is but you haven't managed to see the movie at this point, it is so not my problem.

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