Tuesday, June 06, 2017

Poem for Tuesday, Wonder Woman, Virginia Renfaire

Phenomenal Woman
By Maya Angelou

Pretty women wonder where my secret lies.
I’m not cute or built to suit a fashion model’s size  
But when I start to tell them,
They think I’m telling lies.
I say,
It’s in the reach of my arms,
The span of my hips,  
The stride of my step,  
The curl of my lips.  
I’m a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,  
That’s me.

I walk into a room
Just as cool as you please,  
And to a man,
The fellows stand or
Fall down on their knees.  
Then they swarm around me,
A hive of honey bees.  
I say,
It’s the fire in my eyes,  
And the flash of my teeth,  
The swing in my waist,  
And the joy in my feet.  
I’m a woman
Phenomenally.

Phenomenal woman,
That’s me.

Men themselves have wondered  
What they see in me.
They try so much
But they can’t touch
My inner mystery.
When I try to show them,  
They say they still can’t see.  
I say,
It’s in the arch of my back,  
The sun of my smile,
The ride of my breasts,
The grace of my style.
I’m a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That’s me.

Now you understand
Just why my head’s not bowed.  
I don’t shout or jump about
Or have to talk real loud.  
When you see me passing,
It ought to make you proud.
I say,
It’s in the click of my heels,  
The bend of my hair,  
the palm of my hand,  
The need for my care.  
’Cause I’m a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That’s me.

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Cheryl came over on Monday and after watching some Robin of Sherwood and having Indian food at the mall while Paul had a chicken sandwich, the three of us went to see Wonder Woman. I loved pretty much every single thing about it, and I'm saying this although my back was sore and my head was swimming for the first hour (if I have a complaint, it's that the film never much makes us care about the people Steve Trevor works with so they could skip 20 minutes of setting up the war stuff, because they needed every moment of Diana's backstory on Themyscira with Hippolyta and Antiope, in fact they could have been less coy about her sexual awakening because although she may never have seen a naked man, she clearly knows about female pleasure). If the film has parallels with everything from Captain America to The Little Mermaid, that just makes it resonate with other pop culture myths. I can't wait to see it again.

At some point in the past couple of days, I learned that Cheryl had never seen the new Ghostbusters, so after coming home and taking a bit of a walk, we put that on so we could have a total girl-power day. I thought it wouldn't hold up so well after Wonder Woman, which was very refreshing for an action movie in that I did not feel any of the action sequences were unnecessarily dragged out as I do with Ghostbusters, but it's still lots of fun and Chris Hemsworth is almost as good a mansel-in-distress as Chris Pine, whom I continue to really love in everything apart from the Star Trek reboot films. We also ate hot fudge sundae cake and went for a walk to look for bunnies, though we only noticed one diving into a bush faster than we could get a good look. After Cheryl went home and Adam returned from work, we had dinner and watched Still Star-Crossed, which I did not like as much as the first episode. But speaking of the Renaissance, from the Virginia Renfaire:

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