Thursday 17 April 2008

Purple bathing suit, late at night

Have just finished writing my 1000 word review, and am on an energy high, not at all inclined to go to bed, though it is

1:37 AM
!!

Hadn't realised quite how late. This is silly.

But: was checking out the difference between tone and voice on the web, and got onto a neat website a poet called??
I forgot to note, and the name of her site also escapes me. Shall go back and find it.
a) she said forget about voice, tone is where it's at, and b) she had posted a neat poem by someone called Louise Gluck which is called Purple bathing suit:

I like watching you garden
with your back to me in your purple bathing suit:
your back is my favourite part of you,
the part furthest from your mouth.

You might give some thought to that mouth.
Also to the way you weed, breaking
the grass off ground level
when you should pull it up by the roots.

How many times do I have to tell you
how the grass spreads, your little
pile notwithstanding, in a dark mass which
by smoothing over the surface you have finally
fully obscured? Watching you

stare into space in the tidy
rows of the vegetable gardens, ostensibly
working hard while actually
doing the worst job possible, I think

you are a small irritating purple thing
and I would like to see you walk off the face of the earth
because you are all that's wrong with my life
and I need you and I claim you.


It makes me laugh and cry at the same time.

A wee bit later - the website is called Blogalicious, dianelockward.blogspot.com. Dianne Lockward is a poet.

I'd like to list it on the side of my blog, but don't know how to do that yet; shall have to wait for R or T to come home and show me. (They're 24 and 23 years old, so they know).
Or be struck by inspiration.

1 comment:

Diane Lockward said...

Thanks, Suzannah, for the mention on your blog. I really prefer the term "voice" to "tone" but must capitulate to what seems to be the more widely used term, tone. But I still use voice, can't help it.

Have a good snooze. Over here in NJ it's just about time for lunch.