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A long winding road in Lower Heswall, the area has remained unchanged for around 100 years.

Heswall

in the county of Merseyside

Regents Canal, Camden Town

Camden Town

in the county of Greater London

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Poetry 2

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Harry E Wheeler
Harry E Wheeler
Posts: 171
Joined: 3rd Feb 2008
Location: Australia
quotePosted at 08:57 on 6th May 2009

Such a beutifully constructed, moving poem, Maria.  It's pleasing to see that the art of poetry is not something to be scoffed at.  There is no other medium which can so thoroughly express one's inner feelings.  You have achieved this with tenderness.

Harry

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Diana Sinclair
Diana Sinclair
Posts: 10119
Joined: 3rd Apr 2008
Location: USA
quotePosted at 16:39 on 6th May 2009
On 6th May 2009 01:07, MariaGrazia wrote:

I  wrote this some time ago. It was in Italian originally and for slightly different circumstances but Diana's recent loss has pushed me to a vague attempt of translation. 

THOSE WHO REMAIN

 

Today has been a special day 

and as the evening sun slowly sets 

and a jealous sky fights the pressing darkness,

I look in the distance, leaning at the window to bear the memories.

 

I can already feel the pain, 

the unharmonious din of a time made of silences and regrets,

of rancours that force new mistakes.

A time when I, indifferent to any call, any offer, any plea

I, with the shoulders to the world, 

would only see all the shades of my self-love.

 

I built a delirious universe all around myself,

where everything had tiredness of exisiting and wide open sorrow.

I look way up high at a star and I can see myself in that suffering,

in that weak and useless gleaming.

 

The victorious darkness towers contemptuous now 

over a sun won and beaten like our brief happiness.

 

Wait a moment before leaving,

I want to look at you again,

wait a moment before turning around,

I want to graze you again

and imagine of you having nice dreams only

where we are happy and we never die.

 

Dream of me, my missed love, I am the time we have never had, 

the unsaid words,

I am the shards of your absence.

 

And then, suddenly and quiet, the sky wears all its colours and its infinities on again.

The darkness fades away and I do stay.

Every gesture weights differently now, every thing has got a new value.

 

Dream of me, my grateful love, I am the time we have lived, 

the shared words,

I am the strength of your absence.


 


Maria, that is absolutely heartrending...in a good way. Thank you my dear friend. You clearly have a gift for the right words at the right time. Smile
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MariaGrazia
MariaGrazia
Posts: 711
Joined: 25th Mar 2008
Location: Italy
quotePosted at 21:30 on 6th May 2009
Thank you all for your kind words. Hope, not tears, siempre .Smile
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Xxxx Xxxx
Xxxx Xxxx
Posts: 292
Joined: 22nd Mar 2009
Location: Canada
quotePosted at 23:18 on 6th May 2009
Taking You To Corfu     
                                                 Like a bright ray,
a coin in the Mediterranean....
among olive trees, bouganvillea~         My Photo


love held in the membranes of the ribs                   
of my yellow boat.

Under a grape arbour ~ heavy sunshine courtyard,
you laugh at your rivers, ones you cursed,
glimmering beam contained
in the leaf ~ shaped yellow boat
of my dreams

Painting: George Frederick Watts ( 1817~1904) Britomart, 1877~1878


Edited by: Ceridwyn at:6th May 2009 23:36
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Xxxx Xxxx
Xxxx Xxxx
Posts: 292
Joined: 22nd Mar 2009
Location: Canada
quotePosted at 16:02 on 7th May 2009

Thomas Hardy  ( 1840~1928 )

"It is difficult for a woman to define her feelings in a language which is chiefly made by men to express theirs."

From ~ Symbolism in Thomas Hardy's 'Tess of the d'Urbervilles'

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MariaGrazia
MariaGrazia
Posts: 711
Joined: 25th Mar 2008
Location: Italy
quotePosted at 22:17 on 7th May 2009
That's quite an interesting thought, Anna. Honestly I'd never thought of it......do you think there's any truth in that ? 

Edited by: MariaGrazia at:7th May 2009 22:18
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Xxxx Xxxx
Xxxx Xxxx
Posts: 292
Joined: 22nd Mar 2009
Location: Canada
quotePosted at 02:31 on 8th May 2009

Maria...When looking for the Corfu poem...I found the above quote among my notes...the rest of it~

"Hardy's women struggle ~ winning and losing~ not tame objects to be manipulated. Their resistance emerges in their sexuality, a quality that Hardy was often forced to cloak or disguise. Rosemary Morgan restores them to the physical and sexual reality which Hardy sees as their birthright, but in a male-dominated world they inhabit seeks to deny them, both within and beyond the novel..."

So, I think women do not have adequate language..at least in English...to express fully, the range of our emotional life.... and Hardy is correct.....however, perhaps antique Greek...where sensuality, ( as a cultural river )emotional ownership was expressed in everyday erotic language, dress, art, music and lyricism of living. Refer to my thread...Restore Pagan Britain..a similiarly sourced discussion. Allow the feminine voice!

If you read Ovid perhaps there you will find his observances resonating with female sensibility..

What is your opinion...is Hardy correct? If you think so, how may woman write now of their inner life. Not as separate dialect... more a confluence of ideas and feelings..

http://muse.jhu.edu/login?uri=/journals/victorian_poetry/v040/40.3morgan.html



Edited by: Ceridwyn at:8th May 2009 02:37
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Harry E Wheeler
Harry E Wheeler
Posts: 171
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quotePosted at 09:23 on 8th May 2009
On 8th May 2009 02:31, Ceridwyn wrote:

Maria...When looking for the Corfu poem...I found the above quote among my notes...the rest of it~

"Hardy's women struggle ~ winning and losing~ not tame objects to be manipulated. Their resistance emerges in their sexuality, a quality that Hardy was often forced to cloak or disguise. Rosemary Morgan restores them to the physical and sexual reality which Hardy sees as their birthright, but in a male-dominated world they inhabit seeks to deny them, both within and beyond the novel..."

So, I think women do not have adequate language..at least in English...to express fully, the range of our emotional life.... and Hardy is correct.....however, perhaps antique Greek...where sensuality, ( as a cultural river )emotional ownership was expressed in everyday erotic language, dress, art, music and lyricism of living. Refer to my thread...Restore Pagan Britain..a similiarly sourced discussion. Allow the feminine voice!

If you read Ovid perhaps there you will find his observances resonating with female sensibility..

What is your opinion...is Hardy correct? If you think so, how may woman write now of their inner life. Not as separate dialect... more a confluence of ideas and feelings..

http://muse.jhu.edu/login?uri=/journals/victorian_poetry/v040/40.3morgan.html

I raise here several points of view ... first, during which timeline did women lose their ability to express themselves in literary form?  I believe the advent of extravagant expression became prominent with the rhetoric of Dorothy Parker (1893-1967)  For instance, take her cynical poem, 'One Perfect Rose' -A single flow'r he sent me, since we met,= All tenderly his messenger he chose; = Deep-hearted, pure, with scented dew still wet - = One perfect rose.// I knew the language of the floweret; = "My fragile leaves," it said, his heart enclose. = Love-long has taken for his amulket = One perfect rose.// Why is it no one ever sent me yet = One perfect limousine, do you suppose? = Ah no, its always just my luck to get = One perfect rose.

(I chose to space this as not always do the lines fall in place!)

My own poem on the rose would, I believe, be appropriate here, since it is Mother's Day on Sunday:

 A Rose for Mother (Acrostic)





A gift from God

Radiant and delicate
Of all things
So often given
Evoking joy

Flower of remembrance
Object of elegance
Radiant and exquisite

Mystical promises
Of things of beauty.
To let you know
How much we owe
Ever eternal. You are the
Rose

Then there is Margaret Artwood... (1939-) Who (I believe) said, and I quote, "All Literature, Like Music, is Oral Nature". See also her, 'Rape Fantasies' as an example of modern feminine expression.  A subject no male, I would suggest, would consider.

As for your Pagan Britain, Ceridwyn, I shall be checking out your Link.  Meanwhile may I suggest two books which will interest you, namely, 'The Real Middle Earth - Magic and Mystery in the Dark Ages', by Professor Brian Bates, and 'Montaillou - Cathars and Catholics in a French Village' - the world famous. portrait of life in a medieval village. 

 

 

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Xxxx Xxxx
Xxxx Xxxx
Posts: 292
Joined: 22nd Mar 2009
Location: Canada
quotePosted at 15:47 on 8th May 2009

Harry, the English language 'timeline' to which Hardy refers to as the limited vocabulary span, was designed by men and we ( both men and women )remain confined, constrained ~ as Hardy states...Exceptions being, Michael Ondaatje and David Herbert Lawrence..

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Lindsay_Gallery_and_Museum

The Australian painter, Norman Lindsay, in his liberation of female 'voice' in art....had some difficulty with the 'church' when he exhibited his crucified Venus. (model was Rose, a feminist~ married to Lindsay )  What was he saying, actually? A richly sensual and inspiring film titled 'Sirens' illustrates Lindsay's effort by references to the Odyssey, free will and faeries.

Restoring Pagan Britain offers a place to discuss reclamation ceremony ( stories, songs, dance) revering nature.... 'Dancing at Lughnasa' is an example of such tradition~ the lighting of fires to the god Lugh in Ireland. 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dancing_at_Lughnasa

"There is a tension between the strict and proper behaviour demanded by the Catholic Church, voiced most stridently by the upright Kate and the unbridled emotional paganism of the local people in the "back hills" of Donegal and in the tribal people of Uganda."



Edited by: Ceridwyn at:8th May 2009 16:19
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MariaGrazia
MariaGrazia
Posts: 711
Joined: 25th Mar 2008
Location: Italy
quotePosted at 23:40 on 8th May 2009

Anna- I'm not sure that's a shortcoming of the language itself or rather a matter of culture, as usual. I think the words are the same to anyone, it's just what you make or are allowed to make with them.

If you think of it, the issue occurs with the language of math as well. Women basically have not been allowed to do math until the last century. Even nowadays female university teachers of math are a rarity and at high levels of research, math is still universally considered to be a man's language.  

If you can't or are not allowed to use a sense or a talent for thousands of years, that capacity just tends to atrophy and such atrophying goes from one generation to the other and over the centuries until your talent becomes the lack of that talent.  

I don't know if that happened with literature as well at some point but I believe that wasn't for the language but rather for what men and women were allowed to talk about with it.   

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