Rhhardin brought to My Attention a Work That I am Diligently Working Through: Anne Carson's "The Autobiography of Red."
I am Now on the Second Pass: I Think It Will take Me a Few More -- My Escalator Seems to Run Slow, and I May Have a Shoelace Caught in the Grille. But: Enjoyment -- there is Indeed Enjoyment.
That Said: I Would Like to Toss Out a Line or Eight on Occasion to See What People Read into the Tea Leaves of Out-of-Context Thought, Without Feeling Like They Need to Know The Story. Even Better: Do NOT Know the Story. A Guy on the Street Corner Said This and You Overheard.
Yes: I Realize This is Reminiscent of the Gatsby Project: Good Ideas are Good Ideas. Even More: I Would Love Ann to Comment if She Desires.
Did I Mention the Sub-Title is "A Novel in Verse"?
?
No, no: Stay Here, it is Safe.
So:
Later well later they left the bar went back to the Centaur's Place
the Centaur had a cup made out of a skull
Holding Three Measures of wine
Holding it he drank
Come over here you can
Bring your drink if you're afraid to come alone
The Centaur Patted the sofa beside him
Reddish yellow small alive animal
Not a bee
moved up Geryon's spine on the inside.
Have a Bowl of Honeycomb Cereal and a Cup of Coffee and Let us Know Where the Ouija Board Takes You...
16 comments:
Sounds like another poem about being high.
"A Novel in Verse"--now there's a subtitle to send sales through the roof.
He felt a scorpion crawl up his back, assuming Geryon is male, metaphorically speaking, because there isn't enough company in a cup of wine sufficient to counter a three measures of wine imbibed centaur. You know those centaurs, some of them have two dicks and one of them is a horse's dick, and they are never assuaged.
In the days of yore, wine was diluted with water and if you drank it straight, say as a Roman, the other Romans around would cover their mouths and gossip, "He doesn't even water his wine." Meaning you're a sot. I read that in a book. So if you don't care for that interpretation of history then blame the person for who wrote the book for diluting me I meant to say deluding me.
Oh, what would we do without the Times' notable books and the National Critics Circle Awards?
Don't worry max they're all full of shit pretending to "get" what even the poet doesn't understand.
Probably Hardin too.
Don't know the book or the story. I know vaguely enough about the mythological "Geryon" to know he's male. Also, that he has either 3 heads or 3 bodies.
Clearly, to me, this is a seduction scene.
Centaur (known to be savage lascivious creature-- with, as Chip notes, a horse's dick) takes Geryon back to his place, from the bar.
He's kinda scary, dangerous... exciting. Cup made out of a skull (scary-- maybe from one of his past "victims"), which holds 3 measures of wine-- enough to get ALL of Geryon drunk.
Come over here, little boy (don't know Geryon's age, but my impression is there is an age/ power differential here). Don't be shy. If you're afraid, don't come alone-- drink up (the alcohol will give you courage). Patting the sofa.
I think many of us have experienced the feeling metaphorically described there, especially in a situation like this: like a small alive animal moving up your spine on the inside. Like butterflies coming up from your groin.
Fear, nervousness, excitement, desire.
Maybe, as Chip suggests, the animal-- his response to the Centaur-- is a (metaphorical) scorpion: there's something dangerous, poisonous, deadly, even fatal about it.
The author specifies that it's NOT a bee. A bee-- symbolic of what-- fertility, life, resurrection? (Not sure what bees symbolized for the Greeks.)
Anyway, we know that what's happening here, or what Geryon is feeling, is NOT about that.
Eros/ thanatos.
Girls would love centaurs.
Yashu's post at 3:59 is a better poem than the fragment quoted.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QhwwCWkmYoc
rhhardin said...
"Girls would love centaurs."
And lesbian girls would love centaurides.
"Down from the waist they're centaurs, / Though women all above"
Vicki Hearne :
I was once involved in a panel discussion at which the idea was voiced and elaborated that riding horses was a good way for girls to prepare for marriage because it gave them practice controlling something powerful and dangerous between their legs. I thought, and at enormous risk of self-exposure said, that controlling something powerful and dangerous between my legs didn't characterize either marriage or horsemanship as I had experienced them. It is true that some activities that fall under the heading "sex" can be dangerous. but before AIDS it was the thing the man sometimes had in his hand, and not the thing between his legs, that was worrisome. And there are some differences between husbands and horses that I thought worthy of consideration, including the fact that in the case of husbands direct mutual genital contact is to the point, whereas it interferes with horsemanship. I don't doubt that it is possible, only that it is horsemanship.
_Bandit_ "Beastly Behaviors" p.255
If the small red-yellow animal is indeed a scorpion, then maybe we also have an astrological subtext going on: the (planetary) body of Geryon is about to move from Scorpio to Sagittarius.
(Where's my grant?)
Thurber's biographers like to say astounding things such as that the loss of an eye in childhood was what accounted for his genius. For instance, according to Charles S. Holmes in _The Clocks of Columbus_, ``The psychological impact of the injury was more significant than the physical ... In compensation he cultivated his already crowded fantasy life ... Some of the intense competitiveness which marked his character throughout his life obviously derived from this childhood injury and his natural desire to make up for it.'' Holmes is not the only one who talks this way, and it is a very strange way indeed to talk. It is not unusual, of course, being just a new version of the theory of the writer as a human being manque. Or, as in this case, the writer as a baseball player manque. I suppose that Thurber's brothers would also have been geniuses if only they had been in some way maimed early on. My suspicion is that if Thurber's eye troubles can be said to account for anything about his life and career, they probably account for the difficulty he had seeing, for his having submitted to five eye operations, and maybe for his habit of writing short pieces, which are less physically (not psychologically) demanding than long pieces are.
Astrology serves as a much better candidate for the Explanation of Thurber than psychology does. Thurber was born under the sign of Sagittarius, which rules, among other things, archery. The placement of the sun is what rules a man's health, so a man born with any afflictions to the sun in Sagittarius is going to be vulnerable to health problems associated with archery. I don't have an ephemeris handy for December 8, 1894, the date of his birth, but I bet there is either an affliction of the sun to Mercury, the planet of the eyes and of sense perception in general, or else an affliction from his sun to some planet in Gemini, Pisces, or Virgo. An affliction to Virgo, however, is made fairly unlikely by the enormous intellectual and domestic pleasure Thurber got from dogs - Virgo rules animal training. But Gemini rules dogs, so that lets Gemini as a source of affliction out. It was therefore probably an opposition to Mars in Pisces, which would also account for Thurber's excessive dreaminess and his problems with alcohol, as well as the tenderer and more romantic spheres of experience, as Pisces rules love and all other intoxicants. I would also expect to find Uranus, the planet of the inexplicable and especially the planet of misunderstood geniuses, in the constellation Scorpio, which rules erotic thought, since his brilliant visions of the wars and comedies of the sexes are so persistently misunderstood.
So his life is explained, but his life is not what Thurber left behind for us, and it is too late for me to tell him that the placement of his sun in Sagittarius indicates that he ought to have come to terms with horses ...
_Animal Happiness_, Vicki Hearne, p.110
An Eye For an Eye Leaves Everyone a Genius.
I and I
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